April 30, 2006
End of a Grand Illusion
NewsBlaze
Op-Ed ContributorCrossfire War: Kosovo PM Expects State of Independence by June 2006By Willard PayneCrossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH -Southeast Europe Theatre: Pristina/- (Tehran) -/Belgrade; End of a Grand Illusion - Kosovo PM Expects State of Independence by June 2006 - War of the European Enlargement
Night Watch: PRISTINA - A Grand Illusion is about to end and in this case with more fighting than the conflict that ended the New World Order. Kosovo then Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi stated, earlier this year, that he expects Kosovo to become independent by June 2006. "For us it is important that in June 2006 we should make Kosovo a state. I am convinced we should do that." I don't think his expectations have changed any since the beginning of the year and I suspect every armed Albanian group also expects the same even without the EU/UN/NATO's approval. [EurActiv]Since then he seems to have been replaced by Agim Ceku, who likes to be photographed in uniform. Today Prime Minister Ceku told a Sofia television station that a UN Security Council resolution will declare Kosovo independent by the end of the year but Ceku may just be playing the diplomat. Ceku may know that fighting will resume in May to take advantage of the international arms support they have been receiving from Islamic governments.The position of Serbia President Boris Tadic is just as entrenched. He has always refused to accept or sign what he called an "imposed position" as if he anticipates the negotiations in Vienna going against Belgrade.In the meantime waiting in the wings is Tehran, who has armed Albanian units and in January signed a security agreement with Serbia. Iran knows that it will be mostly NATO and the EU caught in the crossfire of what I am calling the War of the European Enlargement. Perhaps the most ridiculous, most unbelievable decision I have ever witnessed was the agreement to divide Yugoslavia. It was a classic example of the evil with a clown face mentality. I actually thought Europe had gotten tired of map making. Societies obviously retain their character. And Washington allowed itself to be Yanked into it.These endless rounds of negotations and referendums was intended to lead to EU enlargment, incorporating the states that emerged out of the divided Yugoslavia into the European Community. The EU will have to incorporate the war instead and Iran's obvious involvement as Tehran continues to prepare its Avenue of Invasion. The Council of Guardians in Tehran are privately thanking the West for creating this other front.When the war finally ends whatever flags are left flying will withdraw into further darkness-militarism. The leading lights that established progressive European institutions, that broke down a lot of barriers after World War II, were extinguished quite some time ago. What they represented and accomplished died with them.
Night Watch Information Servicehttp://www.crossfirewar.com
Based in Flossmoor,IL 60422.ph:708-957-9651/fax:708-798-2929.
e-mail:III82100@aol.com
Thumbs-up for Independence
Kosovo's press get thumbs-up from OSCE commissionhttp://www.ijnet.org/Director.aspx?P=Article&ID=304911&LID=1
No troop cut before Kosovo status resolution-NATO
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L28676346.htm.................
UN to endorse Kosovo independence
http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/agencija/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=20697&NrIssue=452&NrSection=20............
http://www.dtt-net.com/en/index.php?page=view-article&article=1466
28/04/2006
Russia against Kosovo's independence(Sofia, DTT-NET.COM) - Russian government has voiced its opposal to Kosovo independence arguing that such a settlement is dangerous for the stability in Western Balkans region."We don't agree with those who try to convince us that there is no alternative to Kosovo independence. That's a dangerous path that could lead toward dangerous consequences for the region and create a precedent for other conflict situations," AFP quoted Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov saying to the reporters on Friday after NATO-Russia meeting in Bulgarian capital, Sofia.Lavrov's statement creates a new momentum on the position of major international powers on the future of UN administrated territory.Russia together with US, Germany, France, Italy and UK is member of Contact Group for Kosovo which have said in common statements that the status of Kosovo "should be acceptable to the people".Ethnic Albanians who represent around 90 percent of Kosovo population insist on independence but Serbia and Serbian minority in Kosovo are against.UK and US officials have said that independence is the likely solution for Kosovo.Western diplomats have said earlier that Moscow will not use its veto against Kosovo independence at UN Security Council, but Friday's statement of Russian foreign minister seem to create a new obstacle to the push of London and Washington to make Kosovo independent and split from Serbia and Montenegro state union......................
This is a universe of pain
KiM Info Newsletter 28-04-06
Serbian, foreign writers and artists visit Metohija and Visoki Decani MonasteryBishop Teodosije sincerely thanked the participants in the "Pilgrimage and Brotherly Love" campaign who came to encourage the faithful of Metohija during these paschal holidays. He especially thanked Austrian writer and dramatist Peter Handke for the solidarity he has shown for years toward the suffering Serbian people from Krajina and Bosnia to Kosovo and Metohija. The visit to Orahovac, Velika Hoca, Zociste, Visoki Decani Monastery and the Pec Patriarchate was organized on the occasion of the paschal holidays by the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija and the Association of Writers of Kosovo and MetohijaKIM Info ServiceApril 27, 2006On Tuesday, April 25, a group of Serbian and foreign writers and artists visited Visoki Decani Monastery together with several displaced Serbs from the Orahovac region. They have been visiting Metohija for the past two days as part of a campaign called "Pilgrimage and Brotherly Love".Prior to stopping at Visoki Decani Monastery participants in this noble campaign visited the village of Retimlje near Orahovac where a number of Serbs were kidnapped and killed during the course of 1998. Together with members of the Kostic family, which lost 14 of its members during the war, the writers and artists lit candles at the Orthodox cemetery now completely overgrown with weeds. On that occasion the group of writers was exposed to verbal attacks by local Albanians. The members of the Kostic family visited their native villages of Opterusa and Retimlje for the first time in almost eight years. Protosingel Petar, the chief priest of Zociste Monastery, served a memorial service at the cemetery in Retimlje for all Orthodox Serbs buried there and those whose bodies have not yet been found.The visit to Orahovac, Velika Hoca, Zociste, Visoki Decani Monastery and the Pec Patriarchate was organized on the occasion of the paschal holidays by the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija and the Association of Writers of Kosovo and Metohija. In Visoki Decani Monastery the poets read poems dedicated to the Serbian holy shrines in Kosovo and Metohija and Svetlana Stevic sang an old song originating in the Metohija region. The guests were especially delighted by the brothers Marko (12) and Nikola Maksimovic (13), guests of the monastery from Kraljevo, who performed several traditional Serbian melodies on the flute together with Decani monk Jovan.Bishop Teodosije sincerely thanked the participants in the "Pilgrimage and Brotherly Love" campaign who came to encourage the faithful of Metohija during these paschal holidays. He especially thanked Austrian writer and dramatist Peter Handke for the solidarity he has shown for years toward the suffering Serbian people from Krajina and Bosnia to Kosovo and Metohija.Upon entering the town of Decani as well as upon departing from it on their way to Pec, the bus transporting the writers was showered by stones by the local Albanians, whose whistled in disapproval when the bus carrying Serbs passed. According to poet Ranko Djinovic there was some damage to the vehicle but no one was injured. Despite the unpleasant experience, the writers and artists said that they would always respond to words of derision and rocks with songs and forgiveness, recalling the words of the Gospels: "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do."The delegation of foreign writers also included Kurt K�pruner, Thomas Diechmann and several of their colleagues from Austria, Germany and Russia. The delegation completed its visit to Metohija with a tour of the Pec Patriarchate...................http://www.blic.co.yu/danas/broj/E-Index.htm#9Blic (Serbia and Montenegro)April 28, 2006Austrian writer Peter Handke in KosovoThis is a universe of painStanding on the side of justice, as he said, and always with the victims, Austrian writer Peter Handke visited Kosovo several days ago.Standing at burnt homes of the Nikolices, Kostices, Bozanices and Bandices in the villages of Retimlje and Opterusa near Orahovac, Handke said: 'These are universes of pain. I do not have the right to speak. I shall keep silent, I have to keep silent. Thank you for making it possible for me to see this horror personally. This is not the 21st century'.Together with a group of domestic and foreign writers, Handke visited the most jeopardized locations in Kosovo under patronage of the Coordination Center.'He was speechless but he promised to tell in his way the horror that Kosovo Serbs are exposed to', organizer of the visit Ranko Djinovic said.'Feeling terrible that a mother cannot find her son's grave in a destroyed cemetery in Retimlje, Hendke defended a Serb woman who at that moment was verbally attacked by Albanians. He managed to get from Austrian KFOR commander a helicopter escort in continuation of the visit but was astonished to witness stoning of the convoy downtown Decani in spite of escort and a minute later while approaching the Monastery of Visoki Decani', Djinovic said.Handke left yesterday but promised to return soon with far larger number of writers having world reputation in spite of the threats he received 'in order to awake the world that has fallen asleep'.
April 27, 2006
US: Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia- the unfinished businesses in Balkans
http://www.dtt-net.com/en/index.php?page=view-article&article=1435&CMSSESSID=7686c2b28d97163f80934ae60a922c21
US: Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia- the unfinished businesses in Balkans
26/04/2006
(Athens, DTT-NET.COM)- US government top officials said that a lot of unfinished issues still remain in Western Balkan region related to Bosnia and Herzegovina future, democratisation of Serbia and especially the Kosovo status.
"There are important decisions that will have to be taken about how to move forward on the Balkans. We are watching the evolution of Bosnia-Herzegovina toward a more normal state and trying to support that at the same time that we try and encourage the continued democratization of Serbia and Montenegro and try to determine how to think about the future of Kosovo," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on Tuesday in Greek capital, Athens.
Rice said she is to discuss the three issues with EU and NATO colleagues this week.
"Of course, when you think about where the Balkans was 15 years ago, it's night and day. And now there is still a good deal of unfinished business in the Balkans. As I said, continuing the process of democratization is extremely important. The issue of a European horizon for the countries of the Balkans is also at issue" she added.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is currently undergoing the revision of its 1995 constitution and is being pushed by US and EU to make necessary changes of the key document in order as Washington and Brussels say, to strengthen its central institutions.
Serbia is faced with the fate of Montenegro as on 21 May Montenegrins are to decide whether the smaller republic to remain in state union with Serbia or become independent state. Belgrade is also facing the fate of Kosovo this year, with Ethnic Albanian majority of UN administrated territory insisting on independence.
Rice said that US is involved very closely at the current process of negotiations on Kosovo future under auspices of UN special envoy Martti Ahtissari.
"And I think what we need to do is to support Special Representative Ahtisaari in his work. I know that these are very delicate issues and we want both a democratic and a stable Balkans. That's the real goal before us. That is going to require a realistic assessment of what the final status can be. But I think it is appropriate to have discussions go on for a while to see what the parties can - the interested parties can- come to on their own," she said.
US has appointed its own envoy (Frank Wisner) working together with Ahtissari in order to achieve a solution which Rice said must contribute to the stability in the region.
"We have appointed to help with that work with American Special Envoy Frank Wiesner, a very dedicated and experienced diplomat who is working with Mr.Ahtissari and consulting the parties, discussing with the members of the - the states that have been active in the situation. I've talked with my Russian colleague (Sergey Lavrov) about this and I think we're going to have many other conversations, but the goal here has to be a final status outcome that is - that contributes to a democratic and stable Balkans. "
Current talks between Kosovo and Serbia politicians are focused on the self-rule powers for Serbian minority at municipal level. Ahtissari has said that at the second phase of the talks the issue of status will be tackled.
UK and US officials have indicated that independence is the likely settlement which both (London and Washington) are to support.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1761545,00.html
Barbed wire and bridges
The Balkans will continue to fragment unless the EU makes cooperation a condition of membership
Gyula Hegyi
Wednesday April 26, 2006
The Guardian
Dolce Vita is a small cafe in Kosovska Mitrovica, on the Serbian side of the city. It is on the river bank, in front of the bridge leading to the Albanian part. Sometimes the bridge is opened to traffic, other times it is barricaded with barbed wire and tanks of the French gendarmerie. After decades of the cold war, Berlin is now united, but those with nostalgia for its wall have only to travel to Kosovska Mitrovica. It is a city divided into two hostile parts.
The former Yugoslavia is split into ever smaller units. Where once there was one country, now there are five states, plus smaller entities clamouring for independence or at least complete autonomy. This chain of mini-states and enclaves lacks economic viability, but is rich in well-paid "ministers" and "parliamentarians". Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were oppressed by Milosevic, so the US and its European allies bombed the so-called smaller Yugoslavia.
Now Milosevic is dead, the name of Yugoslavia exists only in history books, and the Serbs have been expelled from the larger part of Kosovo. Pristina, freed from Serbian rule by the Americans, became a 100% Albanian and Muslim city. The twin symbols of the city are the wondrous new mosque, built with Saudi money, and a local replica of New York's Statue of Liberty, painted pink. The veil and huge American billboards go hand in hand in this part of the world, where Muslims still admire the United States.
Albanians in Kosovo want an independent state, while its Serbs are afraid of the Albanians and prefer to remain part of Serbia. Under international law Kosovo still belongs to Serbia. The aim of the 1999 war was, at least officially, to establish the rule of law and democracy. Serbia is a democratic country now, and it would be wrong to break international law by taking away its province against its will. If we accept that state frontiers can be changed by wars, and new states created by bombing, then we risk opening a Pandora's box. On the other hand, the ethnic Albanians have good reasons for not wanting to live under Serbian rule. And Kosovo's ethnic Serbian community does not want to live under Albanian rule, also with reason. So is the answer to create one Kosovo for the Albanians and a smaller one for Serbs?
There is only one viable long-term solution. All states, regions and entities of the former Yugoslavia want to join the EU. And the EU can build upon that ambition. It should make cooperation between the small western Balkan countries the most important criterion of any enlargement in the Balkans. It would be silly to start talks with one or two small states that are not ready to have good relationships with their neighbours.
Croatia and Macedonia are on track for EU membership. Two other countries wish to join as well: Bosnia and Herzegovina, with its three ethnic communities - Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats - who don't want to live together in one state; and Serbia and Montenegro plus Kosovo, where some of the Montenegrins and most of the Albanians want an independent state. If all the separatist dreams were to be met, that would mean six new states instead of two.
Europe's response should be: "Look, we want you, but all together. If you can create two loose federations in which every entity has its own rights, if you can cooperate in a smaller union, then you are more than welcome in our bigger union as well. But do not think that one entity can join earlier than the others, just because of its war record."
We want to create real peace in the Balkans, not new frustrations by selecting the good guys against the bad ones. As far as the economy and infrastructure go, there are no real differences between these two federations. The EU should, therefore, start the pre-accession process on the principle of equal chances for all.
A loose federation should include Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and an autonomous Vojvodina inside Serbia. Respect for the rights of all nations and religions, autonomy in internal affairs, and a common strategy for EU accession and foreign affairs would be necessary. The Vienna talks on the future of Kosovo, which began earlier this year, should lay the basis for a new, creative structure for the future. An independent Kosovo or Montenegro with hostile minorities would regenerate the old conflict, while a new EU-backed form of coexistence could stabilise the region.
· Gyula Hegyi is a Hungarian Socialist MEP
ghegyi@europarl.eu.int
April 26, 2006
Spring in the Balkans
AntiWar.com
April 26, 2006
Interesting Times
by Nebojsa Malic
Spring in the Balkans
News from the Balkans over the past week almost created the impression that this was just another ordinary region in the Empire's periphery, where local rustics practice entertaining eccentricities and cope with natural disaster. The greatest flood in 100 years along the Danube has attracted a lot of attention, as has the discovery of a "pyramid" in central Bosnia by amateur archaeologists.
The publication of a 250-page report, compiled by Croat and U.S. intelligence and warning that al-Qaeda is recruiting in the Balkans, almost came in under the radar. After all, this wasn't news; numerous sources have alleged and documented this activity for years, only to be ignored or dismissed as "pro-Serb." There's Islamic terrorism in the Balkans? Quick, outlaw the term "Islamic terrorism"!
Yes, the region may seem quiet, but the calm is relative and deceiving. Albanians are determined to achieve control of Kosovo, and perhaps beyond. Montenegro's ruling clique is desperately pushing for secession, with less than a month left before a referendum decides its political future. And in Bosnia, seemingly unimpressive constitutional reforms may open doors to omnipotent government the likes of which even that country has not seen before.
Easter in Kosovo
As beleaguered and besieged Kosovo Serbs gathered in their enclaves to celebrate Easter this Sunday, they could not escape the occupied province's politics, even on this holiest of Christian holidays. The head of the provisional Albanian government, former KLA leader and Croatian officer Agim Ceku, had asked to attend the service in Gracanica � a request politely but categorically denied by Bishop Artemije.
With the KLA responsible for the fact that the bishop and so many Serbs have become refugees in their own homeland, letting Ceku use Easter as proof of political correctness and "tolerance" toward Serbs would have been grossly inappropriate. But where Ceku failed, the Albanian "president" of Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu, succeeded; Bishop Teodosije allowed Sejdiu to attend the service in Visoki Decani, and one Kosovo Serb leader praised the precedent.
The diametrically opposite decisions of the two bishops mirror the division in Serbia when it comes to Kosovo. Even the leaders of Kosovo Serbs are divided; while Oliver Ivanovic praised Sejdiu's visit, his colleagues Rada Trajkovic, Marko Jaksic, and Milan Ivanovic claimed that the UN and WHO have been planning to evacuate some 40,000 Serbs from the occupied province once it became independent (and Albanian).
Their claim was denied by both the UN and WHO. However, even the province's international occupiers agree that Serbs won't survive long in an independent, Albanian Kosovo:
"The more vulnerable and isolated [Serb] enclaves will be emptied within one to two years. � I give [North] Mitrovica and the other entirely Serbian-populated areas to the north 10 years at the most."
Albanians insist the independence is inevitable, and a chorus of voices in the West backs up that assertion. There are murmurs that Albanians in southeastern Serbia (Presevo, Bujanovac), eager to win special status � or even annexation to the expected independent "Kosova" � are considering resorting to violence again. The game is afoot, and the plot thickens by the day�
Toil and Trouble
Meanwhile, the Western editorial propaganda apparatus has already begun lining up behind the Montenegrin separatist cause. Marcus Tanner, a journalist for The Independent and IWPR and Croat hagiographer, recently offered a sympathetic account of how the poor Montenegrins are "hostages" to Serbia, just like "everyone in the Balkans," and how they are determined to win their "freedom" despite the opposition from Brussels.
In truth, the separatists could not have stayed in power for eight years without generous financial backing from the outside � primarily from Washington. And Brussels may have declared a preference for a joint state of Serbia and Montenegro, but has treated the two as separate nations in practice.
Tanner says the Montenegrin authorities are acting as if the secession were a done deal. However, at least part of it is bravado in face of somewhat different reality. The New York Times' Nicholas Wood finds Montenegrins divided on the issue, sometimes down to husbands and wives. And the Italian AKI news service reports that, with the separatists 10 percentage points short of the majority they need, yet another film showing them trying to buy votes has surfaced. Furthermore, the government was outraged when a delegation of pro-union politicians who visited Washington last week was actually received by U.S. officials. Until now, only the separatists enjoyed access in Washington's circles of power.
With the referendum scheduled for May 21, the next 25 days will be anything but calm.
A Trojan Constitution
On Tuesday afternoon, the joint parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina was supposed to adopt a set of constitutional reforms that, though relatively innocuous, could have major repercussions for the country's future.
Paradoxically, even as they seek to streamline government for greater efficiency, the reforms actually increase the size of the government and the number of bureaucrats, supposedly only temporarily. And while most changes are minor, they contain the equivalent of the U.S. "commerce clause" that could unleash centralization � "a legislative Trojan horse if ever there was one," as even the pro-reform, pro-Empire Transitions Online described it.
Another irony is that the reforms brought out sharp divisions among the Bosnian Muslims ("Bosniaks"). Wartime Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic emerged from his hideaway in Turkey to organize opposition to the reforms. His "patriotic bloc" consists of demagogues, rejects, and has-beens of Muslim politics over the past decade, and while condemned by the Muslim establishment (including the Islamic clergy), commands great attention in the media.
Silajdzic's criticism of the reforms plays the crudest nationalist card, claiming that only he and his are defending "Bosnia," and everyone else is plotting to destroy it. To counter it, Muslim politicians have had to trumpet their "patriotic" credentials; that has inevitably meant denouncing the Serbs and Croats. According to Transitions Online:
"For years, the Bosniak leadership has pretended that the issue � how to bring the Serbs and Croats who are alienated from Bosnia back into the political fabric of their country � didn't exist, or that it was the fault of Serbs and Croats to begin with."
Desperately in need of a "reality check," the Muslims are now reverting to this fiction instead, thanks to Silajdzic's demagoguery. If the constitutional reforms really result in a bigger, stronger central government, this will not bring peace to Bosnia's feuding communities. Quite the contrary: it will provide a massive bone of contention and promote more fighting.
The "Chinese" Curse
Robert F. Kennedy once mentioned what he said was a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." With the political winds in the Balkans gathering into a storm, this will certainly be an interesting spring.
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=8901
April 25, 2006
Southern Serbia, or the Albanian "Motive-Hunting"
Axis
24.04.2006
Southern Serbia, or the Albanian "Motive-Hunting"
Can Karpat, AIA Balkan Section
Their reasons are numerous: they are Albanians and the majority, the region is deliberately left undeveloped and poor by Serbia, their history and fate should be linked to Kosovo�s, they have the right to take their destiny into their own hands. One thing is certain: They want to have a �special status� within Serbia and they need a �motive� for this. Do the Albanian politicians of southern Serbia try to turn the Kosovo issue into a wider Albanian question in the Balkans?A meaningful timing
Those, who are acquainted with Shakespeare, know how difficult it is to analyse Iago, the wonderful villain of �Othello�. The puzzling question about Iago is the question �why�. Famous Shakespeare scholar, Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses the expression of �motive-hunting� for Iago, who seems not to know his main motive even himself, and who, with numerous soliloquies, tries to justify his deed.Nowadays the Albanian politicians of southern Serbia (the three towns of Presevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja) seem to be in a similar �motive-hunting� process. They want to be granted a �special status� within Serbia and for this they need a convincing motive, so that the international community could commit themselves on their behalf as they did on behalf of Kosovo in the past. However the international community prefers to consider the Kosovo case as a sui generis. As it is known, the US administration convinced Moscow not to oppose to Kosovo�s independence with the guarantee that this will not set a precedent for Chechnya or elsewhere. Western powers do not wish a further ethnic-based atomisation in the Balkans. Yet, the Presevo Valley Albanians continue to look across the mountains at Kosovo, where they see the prospect of an independent Albanian state. And this is a great hope for the Albanians of southern Serbia, who have never been really happy to be just a minority in a Slavic majority state. The platform, which was adopted on 14th January by council members from Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja, �respecting the will of the citizens to define the Presevo Valley as a constitutional and territorial region�, demands for a �special status�, which definitely goes beyond standard autonomy. According to this platform, the Presevo Valley must have special relations with Kosovo, including the possibility of joining Kosovo. As the negotiations for the final status of Kosovo go on, a great opportunity offers itself to theAlbanian politicians of Serbia. The acting mayor of the Presevo Valley and the president of Democratic Albanian Party (DPA) Ragmi Mustafa stated: �Since Rambouillet, the parleys should have been attributed an Albanian-Serbian character, for the Albanian question concerns the whole ex-Yugoslavian territory. Since 1999, problems of those Albanians in Montenegro, the Presevo Valley and Macedonia should have been discussed�. As to the moderate president of Albanian Party forDemocratic Action (PDD), the most influential Albanian party of southern Serbia, Riza Halimi assured the international community that their demand to join the Kosovo negotiations does not mean that they demand the unification of these three municipalities with Kosovo. Yet, since the appearance of the Albanian National Army (ANA) in 2001, the Albanian political scene in southern Serbia has been radicalised. As a result, local parties have become more nationalistic. Politicians such Riza Halimi, who favours cooperation with Serbia and moderation are not popular any more. In November 2005, Ragmi Mustafa tried to oust Riza Halimi, who has been the mayor of Presevo since 1992. Along with Mustafa, Skender Destani, president of Democratic Union of the Presevo Valley and Orhan Rexhepi, president of Party of Democratic Progress pointed out that Halimi was an obstacle to their cherished goal, which is to unite to Kosovo the three municipalities in Serbia with large Albanian communities. That is why, today, the statement of Halimi does not gain much support among the southern Serbia�s Albanian politicians.This month, thousands of Albanians gathered in Bujanovac and Presevo in order to display their general dissatisfaction against the Serbian authority. Some shouted out �Presevo Valley is Kosovo�. According to rumours, southern Serbia�s Albanians expect an exchange of territory between northern Kosovo and southern Serbia. Northern Serbia, being a de facto Serbian enclave, is one of the main bones of contention between Belgrade and Pristina. Although every party involved refute these rumours, even the existence of such rumours is per se very interesting. This is a risky bluff. Pristina is careful not to unveil its position about the demand of the Presevo Valley to participate in the negotiations. This demand, which is disapproved by the international community, may harm Kosovo�s cause. Even Hashim Thaci, ex-chief of Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), now - the president of Democratic Party of Kosovo, emphasised that their aim is to have an independent Kosovo, not a �Greater Albania� nor a �Greater Kosovo�. Will the new Kosovo Prime Minister, Agim Cheku, ex-UCK�s chief of staff, behave differently? Probably he will not. Kosovo politicians will avoid any radical attitude in order to obtain what they have ever wanted: full independence. However it is probable that the Kosovo politicians hold this card as a trump against the Serbs during the negotiations. If Belgrade insists on the partition of Kosovo, Pristina will not hesitate to demand about the status of the Albanians in the Presevo Valley. Whether the establishment of such a direct link between the Serbs of Kosovo and the Albanians of southern Serbia will be blessed by Western powers, which are determined to conclude the Kosovo question by the end of 2006 at any price is another interesting question. All the more as there is already a great pressure upon Belgrade. The signals coming from the politicians from Pristina and Presevo would be an ultimate �stick� to Serbia: �Our demands will be more radical if only Kosovo is divided�. Maybe not physically, but spiritually the Presevo Valley seems to weigh on the negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina. An artificial problem?The Albanians of southern Serbia are culturally and economically identical to those of Kosovo. Until 1946, when a decision by the Yugoslav government to separate these three municipalities from Kosovo and place them under direct Serbian Republic jurisdiction was taken, southern Serbia was a part of Kosovo. With the beginning of the unrest in Kosovo during the 1990s, the Albanians of southern Serbia organised an unofficial referendum in which they voted nearly unanimously to re-attach the Presevo Valley to Kosovo. In 2000, the unrest began, this time in southern
UCPMB patch
Serbia, with the terrorist attacks of the Liberation Army of Presevo-Medvedja-Bujanovac (UCPMB). Between March and May 2001, following intense NATO and US-led diplomacy, the international community brokered a peace agreement between the Albanians and Serbs that led to the disbanding of the UCPMB (Konculj Agreement) and to the famous Covic Plan. The Covic Plan foresaw economic, social and political amelioration of the region. Five years have been passed since the creation of this plan and the region, with an unemployment rate of about 33 percent, is still one of the poorest in Serbia. Presevo is the most undeveloped municipality, with a GDP per capita that is a sixth that of Serbia's average. Many Albanians are persuaded that Serbia deliberately condemns the region to chronic poverty. However the Serbian government has already invested 300 million Dinars (around 3.5 million Euros) this year in the three south Serbian municipalities and around 3.435 billion Dinars (about 40 million Euros) in the past four years. An additional 1.55 billion Dinars (18 million Euros) has come in foreign grants and donations, which makes a total of more than 5 billion Dinars (60 million Euros). Yet, it is true that most of the funds were spent on infrastructure, with little direct investment in the economy. No new jobs have been created in southern Serbia as a result of the investment. And although privatisation plays a key role in Serbia�s economic policy, not a single local public company has been privatised yet. These are the facts, though there is no clue that Serbia has any deliberate purpose in delaying the privatisation process. That the Albanians of southern Kosovo have serious problems is a fact. Yet, their case is definitely not comparable to that of Kosovo during the 1990s. Serbia is not the Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic any more. On the contrary, Serbia today wants to be a part of Europe as it never wanted before. And whereas there was once an open war in Kosovo, there is only a general dissatisfaction in southern Serbia. And this is not enough for the international community to multiply the Kosovo example. According to the EU officials, the Albanian youth would prefer to stay in Serbia, which will be a member of the EU and enjoy some visa facilities in the future. According to the same officials, only the elderly Albanians wish the annexation of the Presevo Valley to Kosovo. And after all, as they already dominate the town council, ethnic Albanians have little to gain from further divisions of the resources of an already impoverished community. And finally, the Albanians of southern Serbia, who did not support the UCPMB as a whole as the Kosovo Albanians supported the UCK, certainly will not approve of the use of violence to resolve their problems. The international community emphasised more than once that the Kosovo negotiations will only handle the Kosovo question and nothing else. The problems of southern Serbia will probably be dealt with in the framework of the democratisation and decentralisation process within Serbia. If the standards of minority rights are harmonised and generalised during the Kosovo negotiations, this will be a positive and productive evolution for the stability of the whole region. If these standards are the same in Serbia as well as in Macedonia and Montenegro, this will sure prevent further probable ethnic-based conflicts. So it seems that the international community will not let the Kosovo question be degenerated into a wider Albanian question in the Balkans. However the upcoming local elections in southern Serbia and the improbability in the Kosovo negotiations may prepare some unpleasant surprises for Serbia. �The situation in the south of Serbia is dramatic and I am afraid that serious incidents might affect security situation�, stated Riza Halimi this month. Local elections for Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja municipalities have not been scheduled yet, and they should, according to the law, take place in July. So this summer will be a turning point for Serbia as well as for the international community. One will see if the Albanian voters share the radical views of some of their politicians.
NATO�s Invasion of Kosovo & Apologetics for State Violence
Home � ZBlogs � Noam Chomsky
NATO�s Invasion of Kosovo & Apologetics for State Violence
Z Sustainer: In an interview on Irish television (RTS News �On the Iraq War and Rendition Flights�, January 19, 2006) you were asked some questions about NATO�s �humanitarian intervention� in Kosovo. The interviewer quoted the executive summary of the OSCE report KOSOVO � As Seen, As Told concluding that the Serbian forces� �intent to apply mass killing as an instrument of terror, coercion or punishment against Kosovo Albanians was already in evidence in 1998�. You responded �They didn't say that. What they said is that they had contingency plans to carry out atrocities if they were under attack�. I haven't been able to find any mention of �contingency plans� in this report.
Noam Chomsky: Hard for me to remember exactly what was said in an interview 3 months ago, particularly one like this, which was mostly a tirade in which I was barely able to get a word in edgewise. However, what you cite -- "intent to apply mass killing" -- is a contingency plan, in that context: intent under certain circumstances, if they arise. That wasn't in question. It would have been unnecessary to add, redundantly, that the intent if those circumstances arise was formalized in a contingency plan. That's taken for granted. If the US and UK "intended" to invade Iraq, they had "contingency plans" to do so. That seems elementary. And note that after the period you are referring to, there was a tentative settlement, which more or less held until it was broken by the KLA guerrillas, and was maintained, in fact, until NATO announced the intention to bomb and withdrew the monitors and the KLA escalated its attacks (the OSCE reported)
When I wrote about this at the time and since, I mentioned that obviously the Serbs had contingency plans, as every sane person knew. The US has contingency plans to invade Canada. Israel has contingency plans to expel Palestinians, and few sane people doubt that they would carry them out if under attack. That&undefined;s what military planners do for a living.
The OSCE (and other Western) records are reviewed in some detail in my book A New Generation Draws the Line. I don&undefined;t know of any other detailed review. Later, I also reviewed the British Parliamentary Inquiry, which reached the remarkable conclusion that up to January 1999, most of the atrocities -- ugly, but at a low level, by international standards -- were committed by KLA guerrillas attacking Serb targets in the hope of eliciting a harsh response, and we know from OSCE and other sources that nothing substantial changed from then until the announcement of the bombing. The OSCE records describe an upsurge in KLA attacks when the monitors withdrawn were withdrawn in preparation for bombing (March 20). In that book I reviewed the kind of material selected from the OSCE report by the Irish TV announcer, but also reviewed the material that would have been selected by his exact counterpart in Belgrade, and the full conclusions. You can check and see.
There are a few serious scholarly studies by supporters of the bombing, which I&undefined;ve cited, in particular Nicholas Wheeler&undefined;s. Unlike almost everyone, he reports the timing of atrocities accurately. He draws the astonishing conclusion that of the 2000 killed in the year up to the bombing, 500 were killed by Serbs. That&undefined;s even more extreme than the British Parliamentary Inquiry. You can find citations in my Hegemony or Survival.
Z Sustainer: In the interview you also talk about �the entire Western documentation�. Is there any mention of �contingency plans� or any suggestion that the atrocities committed against the Kosovo Albanians were the product of the Serbs� implementation of �contingency plans� that were only set in motion because the Serbs �were under attack� in these documents? Or anything that amounts to same thing (in other words)? Your interpretation seems reasonable, but is there anything that suggests that the documentation (or NATO or the political leadership) interpreted the events the same way?
Noam Chomsky: That's constant, throughout, including the phrase you quote from the interview. Throughout, the record reviews possible "intent" -- that is, contingency plans. After the bombing, with the anticipated atrocities, it was commonly argued that the Serbs were going to carry them out anyway, so that the US and its allies are not responsible for the atrocities which, they anticipated, would result from the bombing. There was one explicit discussion of contingency plans (instead of just "intent," which is about the same thing, under the assumption of sanity). After the bombing elicited the anticipated atrocities, there was a leak of an alleged contingency plan -- Operation Horseshoe -- which was brought forth to show that the atrocities would have taken place anyway. Nato commander General Clark was asked about this, and said he had never heard of it. Even if true, it's irrelevant anyway, since it was not "known" before the bombing was undertaken, and therefore couldn&undefined;t have been a motive. The "Operation" was soon exposed as a probable intelligence fabrication. You can find details in my book. However, after exposure, and despite the transparent irrelevancy even if true, it continues to be evoked as a justification for the atrocities that were the anticipated consequence of the bombing.
As to NATO interpretation, in the same book I reviewed the official story. Once the standard inversion of the historical record is corrected (the timing of the bombing and the anticipated atrocities), the US official justification reduces to preserving "the credibility of NATO," which of course means "credibility of the US." For the meaning of "credibility," ask your favourite Mafia Don.
We know have a more authoritative source, however. From the highest level of the Clinton administration: Strobe Talbott, now director of the Brookings Institution, who was the lead American negotiator and director of a joint National Security Council-Pentagon-State Department task force on diplomacy during the bombing. Talbott wrote the foreword to a recent book on the war by his director of communications, John Norris. In it, Talbott writes that thanks to Norris�s book, anyone interested in the war in Kosovo �will know...how events looked and felt at the time to those of us who were involved� in the war. That sounds fairly authoritative. Presenting the position of the Clinton administration, Norris writes that �it was Yugoslavia�s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform � not the plight of Kosovar Albanians � that best explains NATO�s war.� That had been surmised, but is now confirmed from a very high level.
Z Sustainer: Another Kosovo question. In a review of your book The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo Adrian Hastings writes the following: �Doubtless without intervention there would not have been hundreds of thousands of Kosovars fleeing the country within weeks, but there were already - as Chomsky admits - several hundred thousand internal refugees and an extensive policy of torching Albanian homes. There is no reason to think that this would not have continued and grown worse. The refugees were bound to abandon the country in ever-increasing numbers with no likelihood of return and the permanent destabilisation of neighbouring states. A Kosovo left in the hands of Milo�evic would have continued in a state of bitter conflict unless it became one in which over a number of months the majority of Albanians were ethnically cleansed. The growing flow of Albanian refugees all across Europe would have been as big a problem as that of Bosnians had been a few years earlier. Chomsky repeatedly claims that the bombing �failed� in that it greatly escalated the refugee flow; but its failure in that regard was only temporary. It in fact ensured the rapid return of the refugees, undoubtedly to miserable conditions but not to worse conditions than they had experienced in the months before the bombing, and essentially to a situation which would improve rather than indefinitely deteriorate.�Noam Chomsky: The word "admit" gives the game away. There's no "admission," any more than there is an "admission" that the KLA committed atrocities. Rather, I reviewed the record prior to the bombing. The book that infuriated him said virtually nothing about the decision to bomb; it was about a different topic, as the title indicates. But in my next book, when the record was available from impeccable Western sources, I did review it, infuriating the Hastings of the world even more.
Z Sustainer: 1. How would you respond to this kind of �it had to get bad before it could get better� argument? 2. Is the argument sensible if we make the assumption that diplomacy was not � and could not ever be � an option (just like our leaders)?
Noam Chomsky: I rarely bother to respond to vulgar apologetics for state violence. We can put aside Hasting's surmises, which have no interest or credibility. What we do know is that there had been a steady low level of violence, with some surges and declines, and that nothing special happening up to the bombing, apart from the KLA escalation right before the bombing, reported by the OSCE. We also know that according to the British parliamentary inquiry, most of the violence (as noted) was provoked by the KLA guerrillas seeking (as they openly said) to provoke a harsh response that they could use to elicit Western intervention, and that the bombing was undertaken with the clear anticipation that it would lead to an escalation of atrocities, as it did. This much was already clear from the Milosevic indictment, relying on US-British intelligence: with one exception, the charges were after the bombing -- which also elicited the first refugee flow out of the country sufficient for the UNHCR to begin issuing reports. Hasting also knows -- but would never say -- that there were two diplomatic options on the table at the time when NATO bombed, a NATO proposal and a Serb proposal, and that after 78 days of bombing, a compromise was formally reached between them, ending the war (I add "formally" because NATO instantly violated it, as he also knows). That at least suggests that peaceful means were still available, had NATO (meaning the US and UK) not been intent on military action -- for reasons that are now conceded publicly. Of course, if we adopt the North Korean stand and worship our Dear Leaders without question, then there were no diplomatic options.
To see how depraved such arguments are, consider a comparable one. Suppose that the relative military strength of Iran and Israel were the same as that of NATO and Serbia. Suppose that an Iranian Hastings were to advocate bombing of Israel, knowing that it would lead to an escalation of atrocities against Palestinians and probably expulsion of Palestinians, but saying that it doesn't matter because after Israel was forced to capitulate after heavy bombing the Palestinians could return. How would we react? How is this different?
It is also worth adding that the hypocrisy of the pretense of concern for the fate of the Kosovar Albanians is so colossal that it takes a really well indoctrinated educated class to suppress it. To mention only the obvious (discussed in New Military Humanism, but scrupulously ignored by outraged reviewers), at the very same time, the US and UK were not only tolerating comparable or worse atrocities, but were actively participating in escalating them -- including a major case that was not "at the borders of NATO," as the Hastings and others like him lamented, but right within NATO. To "overlook" all this and shed tears for the victims of the crimes of others takes a really impressive level of vulgarity and disciplined subordination to power.
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About Noam Chomsky
Biography
Linguistics Professor at MIT, critic of US foreign policy, anti-capitalist, and long time advocate of liberation and justice, Noam Chomsky lives in Lexington, Massachusetts. Author of dozens of books and hundreds of essays, the content of this blog is drawn largely from the ZNet Sustainer Forum where he answers queries from members of the ZNet Sustainer Program.
April 24, 2006
Tiny Montenegro Is Split on Cutting Ties to Serbia
NY Times
Europe
April 23, 2006
Tiny Montenegro Is Split on Cutting Ties to Serbia
HERCEG-NOVI, Montenegro � In May, Montenegrins will vote in a referendum to decide a question that has hung over them since four other former Yugoslav states � Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia � declared independence in the early 1990's: whether to retain ties with Serbia or go their own way.
Like much of Montenegro, this seaside resort on the Adriatic, a favorite of vacationers from Serbia, appears split down the middle.
"We all have friends or relatives on one side or the other," said Miroslav Milosev, 32, a waiter who came here five years ago to find a job.
He favors independence. "We are struggling together, and it's inevitable that we will go our own way eventually," he said. "Everyone else has."
But his wife, Ksenja, wants to keep ties with Serbia, where the economy and population of 9.7 million dwarf tiny Montenegro, which has slightly more than 600,000 people.
"I think it's silly to make new borders now," said Mrs. Milosev, whose parents are from Montenegro but live in Serbia. Not only does the town benefit from Serbian tourism, she said, but residents go to Serbia to attend a university or for medical care. "Education and health care is much better there," she said.
In reality, Serbia and Montenegro are quite separate already. Each has its own customs service, currency and government. They share little beyond the military forces and a foreign service.
But the debate over official independence is tense. And in this town, pollsters say, they have had to stop asking their questions on doorsteps.
"We give them the questions to fill out by hand," said Rasenko Cadenovic, of the Damar polling agency, based in Podgorica, the capital. "It's the only way to avoid a family row."
Montenegro, which shares a religion and a language with Serbia, supported the Serbian republic in the wars of 1991 to 1995. The two republics are all that remain of the former Yugoslavia. In 2003 they adopted the name Serbia and Montenegro, formally putting an end to the federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
But a small independence movement took root, and in 1998, when Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic embraced it when he was distancing his republic from Slobodan Milosevic.
Since then, the government has repeatedly noted that Montenegro was independent from 1878 to 1918, and became part of Yugoslavia only after World War I. Mr. Djukanovic describes the referendum as a chance to restore that independence.
But while his government argues that independence is needed to complete political and economic changes, Mr. Djukanovic's critics say it is a move initiated by him, the region's longest-serving leader, to entrench his control over Montenegro. And some, who want independence, resent his use of the issue.
Nebojsa Medojevic, a leading critic, predicted that nothing would change much for Montenegrins after a vote to break away, considering that Mr. Djukanovic has been in office for 17 years.
"Why would he start to reform things?" said Mr. Medojevic, who is the director of a group called the Center for Democratic Transition, which lobbies for Mr. Djukanovic's removal from office. "Any serious reform would endanger him and his friends. I am for independence, but I am absolutely against this regime."
Mr. Djukanovic's administration has been tainted by repeated accusations of corruption and links to organized crime. The prime minister is also wanted by a court in Bari, Italy, which investigated him on suspicion of links to cigarette trafficking.
For separation to occur 50 percent of those eligible must actually vote, and 55 percent must vote in favor. The terms were agreed on by the government and the European Union, which Montenegro hopes to eventually join.
Mr. Cadenovic says the elderly are more inclined to support the union with Serbia and younger people are more likely to favor independence.
There are geographic divisions too, with areas in the northeast, near Serbia, generally in favor of the federation, and areas on the coast wanting to break away. The pro-independence bloc is thought to have a majority, but perhaps not the 55 percent Mr. Djukanovic needs.
"With a 100 percent turnout, we estimate he has a 6 to 8 percent lead," Mr. Cadenovic said.
Should separation be approved, there is little Serbia could do. Montenegro has a constitutional right to independence, and diplomats say that Serbian retaliation could harm Serbia as much as Montenegro, which is Serbia's only route to the sea.
The prospect is tricky for Serbia. Negotiations are under way on Kosovo, the war-torn, Albanian-dominated province where Yugoslav forces withdrew only after NATO bombing in 1999. It has been run by the United Nations since, and it too could become independent.
There is little doubt the referendum will prompt high emotions, but few expect the kinds of conflict that followed declarations of independence in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia.
"It won't be like that here," Mrs. Milosev said. "Everyone's roots here are so mixed."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/world/europe/23montenegro.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Kosovo: The emerging terror state
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http://www.serbianna.com/columns/mb/048.shtml
Serbianna
Views & Analysis Monday, April 24, 2006
Kosovo: The emerging terror state
By M. Bozinovich
Back in February, we spoke with Julia Gorin, a contributing commentator for the Jewish World Report and Front Page Magazine, about Kosovo and its links with the Islamic terror. The conversation eventually lended a front page cover for the Belgrade independent Weekly Telegraph, abut here we are transmitting it in its original, long format.
Why does the US have an ambiguous position on the Kosovo status: it publicly supports a negotiated solution, while privately numerous individuals involved in those negotiations support independence? What does that mean?
Bush does want a negotiated solution, but he also has to choose his battles carefully these days. In Congress, there are Democrats and Republicans who have been supporting an independent Kosovo, for whatever reasons, since 1999 and they aren't about to admit that they were/are wrong. The rest, including the old Clinton cronies pushing for independence, as well as the State Dept., would like to take the path of least resistance--namely, sweep Clinton's screw-up (Kosovo) under the rug and get it out of our hair. After all, it's a lot safer to screw over the Serbs than to anger the Muslims. So our policy is two-faced.
How much is the question of Kosovo's status the reflection of relations between the US and EU and the American desire to dominate the Balkans?
Despite how it may appear, the United States is not seeking to dominate the Balkans. The corrupt Clinton administration involved us in Kosovo mostly because they didn't want Monica Lewinsky to be the last thing people remembered about his presidency. If anyone lied to get us into a war, it was Clinton who claimed that the Serbs had killed 100,000 Albanians and expelled another million. (The American public is of course culpable for going along with it.) The Bush administration's interests in the Balkans have mostly to do with the war on terror. As for Europe-which usually creates its own problems-Clinton's America defecated in the middle of it and made it Europe's problem to clean up. Now, of course, the situation is so far gone that it's very difficult to straighten out or turn back. On top of that, the Balkans are a mystery to almost every American, including the intelligentsia, who stay away from the subject like a plague. Even conservatives, who support the war on terror and the war in Iraq, have a blind spot and an apathy when it comes to the Balkans, as well as to the fact that a lot of the terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere are connected to the Balkans. The lack of commentary, due to the culpable media's blackout on this topic, is largely responsible for the ambivalence you're observing.
Do you think US is supporting the policy of Greater Albania in the Balkans?
Before you can "support" a policy of a Greater Albania, you'd have to first understand that the Albanians' goal is a Greater Albania. But most in the United States don't understand it and they don't care enough to try. The Bush administration's acts of omission--coupled with the Clinton administration's aggressive acts of commission--tacitly support it. Members of the Clinton administration act with intent, knowing they are creating a Greater, Islamic Albania but hoping that voters here don't notice. And they won't.
Since 1999, we saw the departure of the last remaining Jewish family out of Kosovo. Why is Washington shy at actually doing something to protect the minorities in Kosovo?
Washington knows that setting standards for Albanians before independence is unrealistic for this bunch, so if you say to them-as we did to the Palestinians-"You have to first stop the terror, and then we can talk independence," it's the same as saying, "No independence for you." While I believe that's exactly what we should do, the administration can't suddenly reverse course and say, "We are not supporting an independent Kosovo." There would be an uproar in Europe, since they're the ones who would have to deal with angry Albanians in addition to the problem Muslims they already have, and this could also mess up the coalition in Iraq. The administration is being badgered even over obviously legitimate actions it's undertaking-from Iraq to Afghanistan to Lebanon to Iran--so Bush isn't going to overtly say Bosnia and Kosovo are Islamic terror states. We're just going to quietly put the Balkan Islamists on our watchlist. Bush is doing what he can, under the circumstances.
We've woven such a tangled web in the Balkans, the conflict is so misunderstood by most, there is so much inaccurate "common knowledge," that it would take too much political capital to explain and say we got it wrong from the start. It's the media's job to raise awareness, and the media failed--purposely. There are only a few in the media who understand, and they're not powerful or mainstream journalists. Don Feder and I are the closest to the "mainstream", and neither of us has been able to push this issue to the fore. It's just very hard to talk about when it's not on people's radars, and all they've heard from every media source is opposite of what you're telling them.
Even when people hear that there are Kosovo/Bosnia connections to the London and Madrid bombings, no one connects the dots and thinks that maybe what the Serbs were doing in their own backyard was the same thing that we've gone halfway around the globe to do. To be fair, the average thinking American has been suspecting this since 9/11, but his suspicions are not reinforced anywhere in the media or by politicians, because no one dares look back.
Is there a misperception in the Jewish-American community about the true state of affairs in Kosovo and Bosnia? How can this misperception be cleared up?
Yes, unlike our Israeli counterparts, American Jews are as confused as everyone else. What's interesting, and what gives me some hope, is that there are independent documentary filmmakers popping up, doing movies like "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," and "Islam: What the West Needs to Know." The first one is a product of "Honest Reporting," which counters the international propaganda campaign against Israel, and the second one also has Jews involved. Both of these films touch on the fact that Bosnian Muslims fought for Hitler; the first shows Serbian churches being destroyed by Bosnian Muslims during the war in Bosnia, and the second (which you can read about at www.WhatTheWestNeedsToKnow.com) demonstrates with a map all the regions that have been falling to Islam-including how Greater Albania fits in (it mentions the bridging of Kosovo, Macedonia, Greece and Albania). Also, there is something called "Holocaust Museum Watch", which in at least one press release mentioned the Albanian SS Skanderbeg division and Bosnian Muslim SS Handzar division-and it faults the Holocaust Museum for not documenting or addressing the history of Islamic anti-Semitism.
With my article last year "A Jewish Albatross: The Serbs," I was trying to guilt my fellow American Jews into making some noise about this, before it's too late for Kosovo. I hope to write at least one follow-up article on this theme. I'm afraid that the only way to "clear up" the misperceptions is through a high-profile book. Because the pattern now is that even when it's widely reported that terrorist attacks originated in the Balkans, or that "we were suckers for the KLA", as one Washington Post article was titled (and there have been similar ones more recently), the press makes sure the subject has "no legs", as we say in journalism-meaning, that it won't go anywhere. So it's dropped like a hot potato to ensure that there will be no discussion and the subject never reaches a critical mass. In this way, the subject remains under the radar, and when we do hear anything at all about it, it's only when there is a good opportunity to support the view of Serbs as evil and everyone else in the Balkans as their victims.
Judea and Samaria, also called West Bank, are officially a non-sovereign Israeli territory. Kosovo is Serbian sovereignty. What impact will a decision to grant independence to Kosovo have on Israel?
What's interesting is that when Clinton attacked Belgrade on behalf of Albanians in Kosovo, the Saudi Prince Khaled Bin Sultan, commander of the allied Saudi troops during the first Gulf War, called on the US to do the same against Israel on behalf of Palestinians. Israel had a clear understanding of the situation in the Balkans. In fact, Axis Information and Analysis ( <http://www.axisglove.com/>; www.AxisGlove.com) mentioned in a December 2005 report that Israel secretly supported the Serbs during the Balkan wars (despite outwardly offering humanitarian aid to the Albanians, as they were pressured to do). In April 1999, Ariel Sharon visited the US and "called for an end to the fighting in Kosovo", stating that the KLA was being "supported by Iranian-backed terrorist organizations, and that an independent Kosovo would enable Islamic terrorism to spread throughout Europe." He also saw it as a dangerous precedent for the future possibility of Israel's Arab minority calling for autonomy. Aware of the parallels, Sharon asked American Jews to stop supporting the bombing of Yugoslavia.
As far as what impact a decision to sever Kosovo from Serbia will have on Israel, even though it does set a precedent, the Israeli conflict is old, with its own history, so not much can affect it. But many Islamic separatists who want to cut up other places into chunks are definitely emboldened by what they see in Bosnia and Kosovo.
How come Washington is not hawkish on eliminating al-Qaeda in Bosnia and Kosovo?
Everyone-the EU, U.S., NATO, the UN-is aware of the problem, and the terrorists are being hunted quietly, under the radar, so that the perception of Bosnians as victims remains. Publicly, politically and PR-wise, it's not going to help the current situation to suddenly accuse a country of fabricating a genocide. Especially with all the noise about Srebrenica, it would be almost impossible. How many people know that Srebrenica was not just a UN "Safe Haven"? The media won't tell you that Bosnian Muslims were using it as a base from which to launch attacks against Serbs. And when every Muslim is yelling about Srebrenica, it's hard to declare the "victims" a terrorist state and go all out on Bosnia. In general, with this war on terror, some battles are lower-key than others. But I don't have any inside information on the Bush administration; from what I can tell, however, it seems they are aware, things are being done, but a lot of it seems to be low key or covert.
But the truth of the matter is that the Muslim world has the West by the testicles. No one dares question what happened in Bosnia, for fear of worldwide rioting by Muslims. For the same reason, the Hague has to convict Milosevic regardless of the court's findings.
Nebojsa Malic put it very well in an August article: "Every time the Western powers clash with Muslims, whether at home or in Iraq, Afghanistan or another Muslim country, they crack the whip over Serbia. To show the world that their military interventions and intolerance are not driven by hatred of Islam and Muslims in general, they decide to help the Muslims of the Balkans."
Do you think Kosovo negotiations will precipitate tensions in the region and Albanian terrorism?
If the negotiations do not look to be heading toward the Albanian goal of an independent Kosovo, the Albanians will let the world know of their displeasure. They are committed to an all-out war to achieve their goal of an independent, Islamic Kosovo and they will be assisted by Islamic fighters from all over the globe, as they have been since the 1990's. What the Albanians did to Serbs, NATO and UNMIK in March of 2004 will pale in comparison.
This is why those who know that we screwed up--the State Dept., CIA, the old Clinton cronies still working behind the scenes through NGOs, and all the Congressmen who got Albanian money--are sweating to make sure that the terrorists just get what they want in the Balkans. This way, everything can get swept under the rug, and the American public won't find out the deadliness of that mistake and can continue to act like 1999 never happened. When the fighting does break out, the West will never be able to control it, but it will be interesting to watch how the press scrambles to keep a lid on it or twist the truth of the situation into even more of a pretzel.
Is there a hidden agenda behind the Islamic demand to mischaracterize Srebrenica as an Islamic genocide?
Absolutely. The Bosnians' mischaracterization (with journalists' help) of Srebrenica serves to deflect from the fact that the president of Bosnia during the wars, Alijah Izetbegovic, was a fundamentalist Muslim who had stated that "there can be no peace or coexistence between 'the Islamic Faith' and non-Islamic social and political institutions."
Izetbegovic was also a recruiter for the Nazi SS Handzar division which butchered Serbs and ethnic minorities in Yugoslavia during WWII. After he died in 2003, the ICTY revealed that he was being investigated for war crimes committed during the 1990s. Mischaracterizing Srebrenica also deflects from the Bosnian Muslims' actions during the 1990s wars which, as Balkans historian Carl Savich describes, included propaganda, staged massacres, and killing their own civilians to garner sympathy (e.g. the Markale Marketplace bombings in 1994 and '95).
On a more philosophical and humorous note, Muslims have always been jealous of the attention that Jews have gotten for their suffering (though, contrary to popular mythology, Jews are not thrilled that the Holocaust should be their defining historical event). The Muslims can't stand it that no one ever killed six million of them, when they have so many to spare--an event that would lend credence to their constant crusade promoting themselves as "victims". That's why they get so angry, for example, when Israelis kill only two or three Palestinians in the course of responding to suicide bombings. It's the agonizingly slow pace of this "genocide" that's killing them (which is why they're always padding the numbers of their dead, both in the Middle East and the Balkans). This also accounts for why they engineered the Bosnian "genocide" and the Albanian "genocide". They've since exported this successful strategy to the rest of the world, wherein they go about killing anything that moves, while claiming that Islam is under attack, which then "justifies" more killing.
If you were to change the American policy in the Balkans, what would you do?
The situation in the Balkans is currently so very in favor of the Bosnian and Albanian Muslims that only some major event could even begin to change world opinion on the region, and create an environment in which it is possible to change course. For example, the Palestinians have just blown their disguise completely by electing Hamas. The headlines read, "Hamas Election Victory Shocks World." Well, it didn't shock anyone who had a clear understanding of the region, and that the only Palestinian goal is the elimination of Israel. Hopefully, this major event "shocks" the world into a better understanding of the Palestinians. The Balkan Muslims would have to do something just as, or even more, "shocking" to get the world to start reevaluating the situation. Ultimately, the American policy in the Balkans should be the policy we established in our War on Terror after 9/11: You're either with us or you're with the terrorists. And the Bosnian and Albanian Islamists are not our allies in the War on Terror.
How do you see the outcome of Kosovo's status talks?
The Albanians will go to war if they do not receive an independent Kosovo. Understandably, the Serbs don't want to carve a chunk, especially the birth place of their national identity, out of their country and hand it over to Islamic terrorists. But the overwhelming international pressure is going to force them to do just that. Hopefully, between now and then, someone or something will prevent the official creation of another Islamic terrorist state in Europe.
Milosevic Lawyers Press for Unsealing of Records
Milosevic Lawyers Press for Unsealing of Records
TU No 449, 21-Apr-06
The lawyers responsible for assisting Slobodan Milosevic with his defence case prior to his death in March have written to the president of the Hague tribunal as part of their ongoing efforts to have records of the court's dealings with him made public.
In the latest submission, Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins urge Judge Fausto Pocar to assign a chamber of judges to the task of considering whether the material in question can be unsealed.The paperwork apparently consists of pleadings and medical records relating to the medical treatment the former Yugoslav president received in the court's detention unit and his efforts to secure a period of release to receive care in Moscow. Kay and Higgins say Milosevic told them before he died that he wanted the material made public.
The lawyers note that when they originally considered asking the chamber that had been hearing Milosevic's trial to release the material, they were informed by the court's registry that following his death, those judges no longer had anything to do with the case.
When they approached another set of judges – those responsible for deciding whether material from the proceedings could be made available for the purposes of an inquest and an internal inquiry – they were again told that they were speaking to the wrong people.
Kay and Higgins are currently in the process of appealing this decision.
In their simultaneous request for Judge Pocar to assign a chamber to resolve the issue, they argue that the matter is "particularly pertinent" given speculation regarding the circumstances of Milosevic's death.
Tests carried out on a blood sample taken from Milosevic earlier this year revealed the presence of a drug which was not prescribed to him by court doctors and which is known to counteract medicines he was taking for high blood pressure.
Following his death, it was revealed that Milosevic had written to the Russian authorities, expressing concern that he was being poisoned. The possibility has also been raised that Milosevic might have been taking the illicit medication in an effort to manipulate his own health and secure release from the tribunal's custody.
April 19, 2006
Borislav Milosevic blames tribunal for brother Slobodan's death
Borislav Milosevic blames tribunal for brother Slobodan's death
20:08 | 19/ 04/ 2006 MOSCOW, April 19 (RIA Novosti) - The brother of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic said Wednesday that The Hague tribunal should answer for his death.
"He was deprived of the right to treatment and subsequently the right to live," Borislav Milosevic said. "We must call a spade a spade - if a person is denied [medical] treatment than it is murder."
Milosevic, 64, was on trial in the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on charges of war crimes and genocide when he was found dead in his prison cell March 11.
Borislav Milosevic said the future of The Hague tribunal should be called into question.
"It is high time to raise the issue of the future existence of the international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia," he said. "If an international body does not do what it was formed to do than it loses the legal basis for its existence."
The tribunal rejected Slobodan Milosevic's request to release him temporarily from detention in December 2005 to undergo treatment in Moscow, on the grounds that the former Serb leader would flee the trial.
MOSCOW, April 19 (RIA Novosti) - The brother of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic said Wednesday that The Hague tribunal should answer for his death.
Ethnic Hungarians in Serbia seek autonomy for Vojvodina
"This crossing is a part of Corridor 10 and is very important in international trade"
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2006/04/18/feature-03
"This week, the Bosnian parliamentarians have the chance to send a positive signal to Europe that the country is ready and able to reform itself"
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2006/04/18/feature-01
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http://www.dtt-net.com/en/index.php?page=view-article&article=1381&CMSSESSID=8b937fbb7fbe79f3320a97950edd1cda
Ethnic Hungarians in Serbia seek autonomy for Vojvodina
18/04/2006
(Novi Sad, DTT-NET.COM) - Ethnic Hungarian politicians in Serbia have called for Northern Province of Vojvodina to be granted autonomy, same as Belgrade is offering to Kosovo Albanians and is seeking for Serbs in UN administrated territory.
Andras Agoston from Democratic Party of Vojvodina Hungarians, Sandor Pal from the Democratic Community of Vojvodina Hungarians and Laslo Rac Szabo from the Hungarians' Civic Alliance have said in a letter sent to Serbia's President Boris Tadic that Hungarian and other minorities in the northern part of Serbia should be granted autonomy the same political rights that Serbia is offering to Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and also seeking for Serbian minority there.
"We think that the principles of autonomies that are in the basis of the Serbian Government plan for resolving the position of Serbs in Kosovo are also valid in relation to the open and unresolved position of Hungarians and other minorities in Vojvodina," the three leaders wrote in the letter.
It's the second time in last four months that Hungarians raise the issue.
In December of last year the same three leaders in a letter addressed to Tadic and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica called for talks for new upgraded status of Vojvodina to be held in parallel with already UN led launched process on the future of the breakaway Kosovo.
There was no response from Serbian leaders on the letters.
Serbia lately has been under pressure from international human rights groups and European Parliament for repeated acts of violence in the Northern Province which has a minority of more than 300,000 ethnic Ethnic Hungarians.
Last month two incidents against Hungarians were reported.
An Ethnic Hungarian was beaten by unknown attackers in Subotica town. According to Hungarian agency (MTI) the young victim, who has received cuts on his face has said that the assault was ethnically motivated as he was attacked when speaking in Hungarian language on the phone.
Another assault happened against a 28 year old Ethnic Hungarian in town of Kikinda. But this time the man was beaten at the police station.
The victim according the MTI has received serious injures that his spleen had to be removed. Twelve policemen have been sacked by Serbian authorities.
In the report by International Crisis group (ICG) Serbia has been criticised on its Hungarian minority human rights record. The ICG said that local politicians have recorded only in first five months of 2004, around 300 incidents orchestrated by members of Serbian radical party, including beatings, threats, the destruction of graveyards and national monuments, and anti-minority graffiti.
The European Parliament (EP) in a second resolution adopted in September last year warned Serbian government that respect of human rights is a strict condition Serbia must implement in order it can move closer toward EU and to conclude the talks on Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with EU.
The resolution also called for increased competencies of Vojvodina's institutions, which were abolished in early '90s by Slobodan Milosevic.
The issue of Hungarians in Serbia is followed closely by Hungarian government and Hungarian members of European Parliament. Hungary joined the EU in May 2004.
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2006 a decisive year for the Balkans
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002936762_balkanyear18.html
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http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=8869AntiWar.com
April 19, 2006 Birth of an Empire by Nebojsa Malic Review of Fools' Crusade
by Diana Johnstone
317 pages, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2002Books that have accompanied the 1990s Balkans wars have by and large been complete rubbish. There were, to be fair, some works worth reading. Yet the Balkans tragedy was missing a book that would explain things in layman's terms – yet accurately – and put the events that took place between 1990 and 2000 in a coherent context. Diana Johnstone, a respected commentator on the American Left, wrote a "well-documented and lively study" (cover) that accomplished just that.
From the very beginning to the last page of this book, Johnstone challenges the prevailing orthodoxies in the West about what happened in Yugoslavia. Conventional wisdom, constructed from layers of careful propaganda, has been that the West's intervention in Bosnia was too little, too late – and that the intervention in Kosovo was motivated by determination not to have "another Bosnia." Johnstone explodes this easily, offering facts instead of claims, arguments instead of assertions. She sets out to show that "the intervention of the NATO powers in Yugoslavia, far from being a last-minute rescue, was from the start a major driving factor in the tragic course of events." (p. 14) And she does.
The Yugoslav Guinea Pig
"The objective is not to recount the whole story … but to put the story in perspective." (p. 15)
Yet Johnstone does try to tell as much of the whole story as possible. Events in Yugoslavia had not taken place in a social, political, ethnic, religious, or diplomatic vacuum – yet the mainstream media and press have presented them precisely as such. Insofar as they've recognized any context at all, it was that of a villainous Slobodan Milosevic and "Greater Serbian nationalism." Johnstone explores the real Milosevic, deliberately ignored by the Western opinion-makers. She also spends time on the influence of IMF, and Yugoslavia's bad debt, which left it a hostage to foreign dictates.
Thus it was the Badinter Commission, an ad hoc advisory committee of European lawyers, who declared in 1991 that Yugoslavia had simply ceased to exist, and that its republics should be recognized as independent states. This decision, entirely in contradiction to the Yugoslav constitution, escalated the secession crisis into open warfare.
When, as a consequence of the Badinter ruling, Bosnia seceded – and immediately exploded into civil war – in 1992, Western journalists and activists who visited the region created a "Bosnia cult." Having condemned a multicultural Yugoslavia, they suddenly elevated an allegedly multicultural Bosnia into a paragon of modern virtue.
"A real aversion to war might have led journalists and writers to find in Bosnia merely the destructive chaos that can result when human beings fail to manage their collective affairs in a sensible way." (p. 48)
Instead, searching for the Great Cause of their generation, they created an idea of Bosnia as a multicultural paradise under threat:
"The notion that 'Bosnia' represented the model for Western Europe's integration of its Muslim immigrants helps explain the vehement hostility that arose against the Bosnian Serbs, accused of destroying this model society out of sheer racist nationalism." (p. 49)
In the end, Bosnia – and later Kosovo – were not at all about the people who suffered there, but about the Westerners who could cast themselves as their saviors and liberators.
Moral Dualism in a Multicultural World
But salvation required the threat of damnation first. In the second chapter, Johnstone explores how in the effort to present the conflict as a Manichaean struggle of good and evil, the Serbs were cast as demonic villains and their adversaries as angelic victims. The press and the public became obsessed with "war crimes," going so far as to claim they were the purpose of the war. And yet:
"The state of war is a state of crime. Killing people in peacetime, the worst of crimes, becomes a laudable act of civic courage. … Destruction of public and private property that would be considered vandalism and arson is encouraged and carried out systematically. On the sidelines of this massive and official criminal activity, war provides an opportunity for a multitude of more or less surreptitious private crimes, notably pillage and rape." (p. 75)
Faced with an onslaught of claims that genocide was taking place, the press had to decide: report it as true even if it might not be, or risk dismissing genocide that might later turn out to be real. They chose to err on the side of horror:
"A basic principle of caution, essential to justice, was rapidly abandoned. That is the principle that the more serious the accusation, the greater the need for proof. … Most in need of proof is the fact that the crime in question was actually committed. … The principle that has prevailed in Western media and public discussion has been quite the opposite, namely the more grave the accusation, the less the need for solid proof. Simply demanding evidence may be stigmatized as disrespect for the victims." (p. 75)
Johnstone spends the rest of the chapter exploring the devilish details: the origin of "genocide" imagery and words, the manufacture of "systematic rape," the numbers game, the uses of Srebrenica. She also dedicates several pages to the Hague Inquisition, showing how it was set up to validate the official story of genocide and war crimes.
Comparative Nationalisms and the Making of Empires
The next two chapters are pure context. "Comparative Nationalisms" deals with nationalist movements promoted by the West as a counter to the alleged "Greater Serbian" ideology supposedly championed by Milosevic. Here we get an overview of the role Slovenian, Croat, and Muslim nationalism played in the destruction of Yugoslavia.
One cannot discuss Slovenian or Croat nationalism without mentioning one of its principal sponsors, however. While the foremost champion of the Bosnian Muslims was the Clinton administration, Ljubljana and Zagreb were sponsored by Berlin. In chapter four, "The Making of Empires," Johnstone analyzes the role of Germany – an old Imperial power twice humiliated in the Balkans, who sought to settle old scores and assert its newfound political and military influence after reunification.
The New Imperial Model
Chapter 5 is dedicated to Kosovo. Three pages of Johnstone's background on the region are more informative and accurate than the 300 pages of Noel Malcolm's hack "short history." This is a story of the conflict in Kosovo, the Racak "massacre," the Rambouillet ultimatum, and the 78 days of terror from the skies NATO dubbed "humanitarian intervention."
Importantly, Johnstone does not end her account in June 1999, when Kosovo came under UN/NATO occupation. NATO continued the war through other means, eventually establishing in Serbia an acceptable client government through the "revolution" in October 2000. Since then, the cornerstone of NATO's policy towards Serbia has been straightforward:
"It was not enough to bomb Serbia and detach part of its territory. The Serbian people must be made to believe – or to pretend to believe – that they deserved it." (p. 258)
Perpetual War
The title of the postscript refers as much to the continuing story of Yugoslavia as to the ongoing intervention by the American Empire. Kosovo was the culmination of Balkans interventions that established the U.S. as the overlord of Europe, and created an "imperial condominium" between Washington and Brussels.
"The NATO war against Yugoslavia might be studied by ethnologists as a contemporary example of the familiar role of blood rituals in sealing the unity of groups. … Once the NATO governments had taken part in devastating a country that had done them no harm, they had to stick together…." (p. 261)
Interventions in Yugoslavia were subsequently used as a template for conquest: economic crisis (debt, blockade, "reforms") impoverishes the nation, aggravating ethnic and/or regional tensions. Ethnic conflicts are then dubbed a "human rights crisis," at which point the U.S. intervenes. The resulting destruction only deepens conflict and bitterness. The region is then placed under the protectorate of the "International Community," which crushes any local government with potentially independent ideas. (p. 262)
Johnstone's leftist politics come into play here, as she argues that Yugoslavia's mixed-property socialism was an unacceptable alternative to globalization (i.e., hegemony of American capitalism). To support her argument, she cites (p. 263) Thomas Friedman's notorious proclamation that "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas" (New York Times, March 28, 1999). Friedman wrote this in one of his vitriolic tirades about bombing the Serbs into the Stone Age. Even though it is utter nonsense, on par with Friedman's extensive opus of idiocy, most people in power consider it true and act accordingly. How else explain the war in Iraq, or the desire to control the world in general?
And this is where Yugoslavia comes in. It was a case that established a precedent for a pattern of aggression that has since become the hallmark of American Empire:
"The bombing of Yugoslavia marked a turning point in the expansion of U.S. military hegemony. … International law was circumvented in the name of an alleged higher moral imperative. A precedent was set…. In a world with no more legal barriers to might proclaiming itself right, there was nothing to stop a U.S. president from using military force to crush every conceivable adversary." (p. 1-2)
The end result of "humanitarian" interventions in the Balkans is the current world of perpetual war: a global Balkans, if you will, where might makes right and truth is whatever the mighty want it to be.
More than just telling the story of Yugoslavia's dismemberment, Johnstone has told a story of American Empire's rise to power in the 1990s – something no one else has seriously attempted, much less accomplished, to date. Fools' Crusade is not the ultimate book about the Yugoslav 1990s, but it comes fairly close.
"This is the kind of Kosovo that we want"
"I am excited to be in Kosovo so I can make sure myself to what extent the projects supported by Britain help the development of the Kosovo Protection Corpus (KPC) and to what extent they help KPC facilitate the transformation and improvement of living conditions for all ethnic communities in Kosovo," Adam Ingram (British Minister of State for the Armed Forces)
http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=144&newsid=86717&ch=0
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Latest news:
http://news.google.be/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Kosovo
"Negotiations have not failed, I am optimistic'
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/us-envoy-says-kosovo-status-talks-have.html
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http://www.dtt-net.com/en/index.php?page=view-article&article=1371&CMSSESSID=7aba6eac5825773f4999fea48b5883bb
Serbia tells US envoy autonomy best solution for Kosovo
17/04/2006
(Belgrade, DTT-NET.COM)-Serbian government has rejected the independence for Kosovo and has told US special envoy that a substancial autonomy for UN admnistrated territory is the best solution and authorities are to table more detailes of the proposal in coming days.
The head of Serbia government Vojislav Kostunica told Frank Wiesner on Monday (the special US envoy for talks on the futur of Kosovo) that Kosovo problem must be resolved in "accordance with international law and modern democratic principles and UN documents, especially the 1244 resolution" of Security Council, Serbian government said in its website.
Kostunica has told Wiesner that a "substancial autonomy for Kosovo inside Serbia guaranties such a solution" and that soon Serbian authorities are to detail their offer to Ethnic Albanians.
Wiesner has called on Serbian authorities to alow Serbian minority participate fully in institutions of Kosovo and also to engage more constructively in UN mediated talks on self-rule powers for minorities.
"Ambassador Wisner will focus on strengthening relationships with Serbia's leaders and will urge them to play a constructive role in the ongoing negotiations to ensure a peaceful, democratic Kosovo that protects the rights of all its residents." US embassy in Belgrade wrote in its website before the meeting of the envoy with highest Serbian officials.
Serbian government has been criticised by western powers in recent days for inciting the boycott of Kosovo institutions by majority of Serb representatives and in several municipalities also refusing their salaries from public administration.
Wisner, who visited Kosovo during the weekend, has asked the Serb minority political representatives to join the Kosovo institutions expressing his disagreement with Belgrade's call to Serbs employed in the health and education sector in Kosovo to refuse salaries from the Kosovo budget.
Kosovo is officially part of Serbia and Montenegro union and is being ruled by UN since the war ended in June 1999. Ethnic Albanians, who represent around 90 percent of 2 million population insist on independence but Kosovo Serbs and Serbia refuse it.
In May Kosovo and Serbia negotiators are to meet for the fourth time at UN mediated talks in attempt to find a deal for Serbian minority rights, but both sides remain divided on the issue.
Serbian government wants to have a direct role and relation with current and new municipalities for Kosovo Serbs to be created, but Ethnic Albanian leadership says that any political and financial relation of Belgrade with Serb majority municipalities must be made in cooperation and through central institutions of Kosovo.
Major international powers from Contact Group for Kosovo (EU, Russia and US) have said that solution must be acceptable for Kosovo people.
UN envoy Martti Ahtissari has said last week in Brussels that talks on the status are to take place after the current ongoing talks on minorities in Austrian capital of Vienna.
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"Romania wants a compromise in the Kosovo case"
http://www.daily-news.ro/article_detail.php?idarticle=25330
New Kosovo party vows to protect Serb community
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/new-kosovo-party-vows-to-protect-serb.html
Serbs to choose Kosovo return sites
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060418-103439-3974r
West Prepares To Evacuate 40,000 Serbs From Breakaway Kosovo
http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=144&newsid=86704&ch=0
Pristina ready to develop relations with Macedonia
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/pristina-ready-to-develop-relations.html
"We will continue working towards our goal"
http://www.eciks.org/english/lajme.php?action=total_news&main_id=371
"This is the kind of Kosovo that we want"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/kosovo-government-to-tackle-corruption.html
April 17, 2006
Both sides dragging their feet over Kosovo
By Nicholas Wood International Herald Tribune
MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2006
PRISTINA, Kosovo Two months after talks began in Vienna on this province's future, both sides appear to be maneuvering to change the facts on the ground to help determine whether Kosovo will become an independent state or remain a province within Serbia.The issue has been regarded as the most intractable in the Balkans since NATO bombers forced Yugoslav security forces to withdraw in 1999, halting what international war crimes prosecutors say was a brutal campaign to force ethnic Albanians to flee.Ethnic Albanians make up over 90 percent of Kosovo's population and want total independence. Serbs, within Kosovo and without, want a return to rule from Belgrade. With little progress in the initial phase of talks, the likelihood of an eventual imposed solution in the Albanians' favor grows ever stronger.The United Nations has been administering Kosovo since the Yugoslav withdrawal, but in recent weeks, Serbia, which finances many services in Serbian enclaves across the province, ordered all Serbian government employees in Kosovo to resign from any responsibilities with the United Nations or lose their Serbian paychecks.Serbia had continued to pay Serb public employees in Kosovo since 1999 despite the transition of the region's administration to the United Nations. Many Serb officials have therefore been able to earn two salaries, one from the Serbian government and another from the United Nations.Diplomats say that if Serbia were to find and arrest the leading war crimes suspect and former commander of the Bosnian Serb army, Ratko Mladic, its negotiating hand might be strengthened.At the same time Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership is trying to make the case that an independent Kosovo would protect and nurture its minorities. Kosovo's new prime minister, Agim Ceku, took office in March, after his predecessor, Bajram Kosumi, was forced to step down under pressure from international officials who considered his efforts at reconciliation with Kosovo's Serbs ineffectual.Ceku made his inaugural address to Kosovo's Albanian-dominated assembly partly in Serbian, to the astonishment of several members of Parliament."I want to be seen as the prime minister of all Kosovo's citizens, Serb and Albanian," he said in an interview. His primary challenge, he said, is to convince Kosovo's Albanian leaders and government officials to make changes that benefit the Serbs, rather than just pay lip service to foreign demands for multiethnicity.Ceku, a former Croatian general, was a wartime commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group. Serbian government officials refuse to meet with him, but Western officials say he is one of the few ethnic Albanian leaders with the standing to convince local Kosovar authorities that they need to provide services to Serbian communities. He helped calm ethnic tensions at several critical junctures over the last six years.The negotiating teams - a Kosovar panel of ethnic Albanians, and a Serb group drawn from both Belgrade and Kosovo - are to return to the table in Vienna on May 4, where they will debate proposals to give more powers to local authorities. That measure would allow Kosovo Serbs a greater say in running their affairs. The following week discussions should start on the protection of religious and historical sites, in particular the Serbian Orthodox Churches and monasteries that are dotted across Kosovo.The diplomats have a genuine intent to find an agreement on issues which they believe could be negotiated before the issue of sovereignty, such as the devolution of powers to the local authorities, and the protection of patrimonial sites, but both negotiating teams have shown little room for compromise.Comments from representatives of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Germany, who together make up the Contact Group overseeing Kosovo's negotiation process, indicate there is little alternative to granting the majority population its wish for an independent state.A statement issued by the group following meetings with Serbian leaders in Belgrade on April 6 called on Serbia to be "realistic" in its proposals and find a solution "acceptable to the people of Kosovo."The head of UN mission here, Soren Jessen-Petersen, said he expected Martti Ahtisaari, a Finish statesman and negotiator, to conclude the initial negotiations by midsummer, enabling talks on sovereignty to begin.Whatever course is taken on political authority, officials here expect the international community to retain significant governing powers.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/16/news/kosovo.php
Copyright � 2006 The International Herald Tribune www.iht.com
How to make a non-nationalist a Serb
How to make a non-nationalist a Serb
I returned from Belgrade on 23 March, where I attended a conference on Kosovo (16-18 March) at the Serbian Academy of Arts & Scoences.
After Sloba's death on 11 March, Austrian TV faked pictures showing him with eczema. When I saw him on 8, 9, and 10 February his color was excellent.
His mood was proud and confident, ready to give a thrashing to the post-Orwellian Mr Nice & Co. I was there to prepare testimony especially on the non-destruction of Dubrovnik.
While I was at Scheveningen, judge Patrick Robinson, instantaneously closed down testimony by Eve Ann Prentice that she and a correspondent for Der Spiegel, sitting in the waiting room for an interview with the Islamist Bosnian President, had seen Osama bin Laden enter and be escorted directly into the office of "our SOB" , Alija Izetbegovic.
-- Either the tame colonial boy is a quick thinker or Prentice and Sloba were bugged by the court while preparing her testimony. He had his instructions to throw the switch.
Unless we hold a tribunal on the Tribunal and publish our testimonies, the truth will be buried with him.
In Belgrade Sloba's body arrived from the Netherlands. I was at a rally in front of the Parliament, where 80,000 people assembled. The crowd was civil, disciplined, un-cowed. Peter Handke, Russian dignitaries and Ramsey Clark delivered eulogies. Handke spoke mostly Serbian.
Anti-Milosevic "protesters" at the Square of the Republic numbered 600, which was magnified with a zero or two by the BBC and CNN. They show-biz American eventwas like the "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Ukraine, Georgia etc. The props were green and blue balloons. They must have run out of orange T-shirts.
The citizens people filing past the coffin, in a minor museum, to pay their respects numbered 102,000.
The quislings blocked a proper funeral. The funeral at Pozarevac was huge.
Proof that Milosevic was no nationalist is that the priest (Father Filaret) who waited to perform the Orthodox burial ceremony at the grave was prevented from doing so, and the interment took place, against Orthodox rubrics, after sunset.
More proof: that Milosevic was no nationalist: the casket was draped with the communist Yugoslav flag, with red star. There was no Serb Orthodox cross for a grave marker, but the communist pentagonal wooden slab, the "pyramid".
Milosevic was an internationalist to the end. The only reason that Milosevic is dead is the malfeasance of the ICTY kangaroo court, with its Dutch cops and jail, British transvestites ambulance-chasers prancing about in effete silken robes and, as in a cheap TV docu-drama.
After the dirge, the band played the 1960s' pop song "Moscow Nights". This, I presume, was on Mrs Milosevic's orders. A nice piece of pop music, it was not the thing for the national moment.
Milosevic's daughter castigated her family for the whole affair. Burial in the family garden was something for the family canary, she said.
Milosevic was betrayed by quislings and kidnapped on the Serbs' most sacred day, the anniversary of the 1389 Battle on Kosovo Polje and the 1914 assassination of the universally unloved Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which Austria used as a casus belli to destroy and annex Serbia. -- Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf how relieved he was to hear it was "Slav fanatics" and not German students who had carried out the assassination.
The only reason Milosevic was in the Hague at all is that he was a Serb. They made him one.
j p maher
'Solution' for Kosovo
Serbs, in and out of Kosovo, want a return to rule from Belgrade. With little progress in the initial phase of talks, the possibility of an eventual solution imposed by the international community � in the Albanians' favor � grows more likely.
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/scant-gains-raise-chance-of-imposed.html
NY TimesApril 16, 2006
Scant Gains Raise Chance of Imposed Solution in Kosovo
By NICHOLAS WOOD
PRISTINA, Kosovo, April 9 � Nearly two months after talks began in Vienna in February on this province's future, both sides appear to be maneuvering to change the facts on the ground to help decide whether Kosovo will become an independent state or remain a province within Serbia.
The issue has been regarded as the most intractable in the Balkans since NATO bombers forced Yugoslav security forces to withdraw from Kosovo in 1999, halting what international war crimes prosecutors say was a brutal campaign to force ethnic Albanians to flee.
Ethnic Albanians make up more than 90 percent of Kosovo's population, estimated at more than two million, and want total independence. Serbs, in and out of Kosovo, want a return to rule from Belgrade. With little progress in the initial phase of talks, the possibility of an eventual solution imposed by the international community � in the Albanians' favor � grows more likely.
The United Nations has been administering Kosovo since the Yugoslav withdrawal, and as a result has been paying the salaries of many local officials. Meanwhile, Serbia has continued to finance many services in Serbian enclaves across the province, including paying those local officials a second salary. In early April, Serbia ordered all Serbian government employees in Kosovo to resign from any responsibilities with the United Nations or lose their Serbian paychecks.
Diplomats say that if Serbia were to find and arrest the leading war crimes suspect and former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladic, its negotiating hand might be strengthened.
At the same time, Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership is trying to make the case that an independent Kosovo would protect and nurture its minorities. Kosovo's new prime minister, Agim Ceku, took office in March, after his predecessor, Bajram Kosumi, was forced to step down under pressure from international officials who considered his efforts at reconciliation with Kosovo's Serbs ineffectual.
Mr. Ceku made his inaugural address to Kosovo's Albanian-dominated assembly partly in Serbian, to the astonishment of several members of Parliament.
"I want to be seen as the prime minister of all Kosovo's citizens, Serb and Albanian," he said in an interview on April 7. His primary challenge, he said, is to persuade Kosovo's Albanian leaders and government officials to make changes that benefit the Serbs, rather than just pay lip service to foreign demands for multiethnicity.
Mr. Ceku, a former Croatian general, was a wartime commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group. Serbian government officials refuse to meet with him, but Western officials say he is one of the few ethnic Albanian leaders with the standing to convince local Kosovar authorities that they need to provide services to Serbian communities. He helped calm ethnic tensions at several critical junctures in the last six years, including during widespread rioting in March 2004 when 19 people were killed.
The negotiating teams � a Kosovar panel of ethnic Albanians, and a Serbian group drawn from Belgrade and Kosovo � are to return to the table in Vienna on May 4, when they will debate proposals to give more powers to local authorities. That measure would allow Kosovo Serbs a greater say in running their affairs. The next week discussions should start on the protection of religious and historic sites, in particular the Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries that dot Kosovo.
But the negotiating teams have shown little room for compromise even on these issues, and diplomats expect that they will have to be dealt with in the final phase of negotiations. And comments from representatives of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Germany, who together make up the Contact Group overseeing Kosovo's negotiation process, indicate there is little alternative to granting the majority population its wish for an independent state.
A statement issued by the group after meetings with Serbian leaders in Belgrade on April 6 called on Serbia to be "realistic" in its proposals and to find a solution "acceptable to the people of Kosovo."
The leader of the United Nations mission here, Soren Jessen-Petersen, said he expected Martti Ahtisaari, the Finnish statesman and veteran negotiator, to conclude the initial negotiations by midsummer, enabling talks on sovereignty to begin.
Whatever course is taken on political authority, officials here expect the international community to retain significant governing powers. The European Union is expected to take a major role, while NATO will continue to keep the peace. It has 17,000 troops in Kosovo.
*********************http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/kosovo-serbs-tell-us-envoy-they-fully.html
Kosovo Report
Sunday, April 16, 2006Kosovo Serbs tell US envoy they "fully agree" with Belgrade on status
Excerpt from report by Belgrade-based private BKTV on 15 April[Presenter] Representatives of the Serb List for Kosovo-Metohija [headed by Oliver Ivanovic] have told the special US envoy for Kosovo status talks, Frank Wisner, that they are against any kind of imposed solution for the future status of Kosovo, a member of the List, [member of Serbian Kosovo status talk team] Goran Bogdanovic, has said.[Reporter] Serbs noted their full agreement with the authorities in Belgrade as regards the manner of solving the Kosovo crisis and its final solution, a solution which envisages the greatest possible autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia and the Serbia-Montenegro state union.Wisner, who is in Kosovo on the second day of his visit, asked the Serb political representatives to join the interim provincial institutions. Wisner said that he did not agree with Belgrade's call to Serbs employed in the health and education sector in Kosovo to give up their salaries from the Kosovo budget. [Passage omitted]Source: BKTV, Belgrade, in Serbian 1655 gmt 15 Apr 06
posted by KosovaReport @ 12:15 AM 0 comments
"Preservation" of Serbian religious and cultural-historical monuments
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/rts041506.htm
Serb church vandalized in Kosovo
http://www.slobodanmilosevic.org/news/mina041606.htm
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http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2006/April_17/1.html
KiM Info Newsletter 17-04-06Frank Wisner visits Visoki Decani MonasteryAmbassador Wisner stated that the purpose of his visit to Kosovo was to learn more about the situation under which various communities were living in order to better determine needs that need to be taken into consideration while resolving the future status of Kosovo. Bishop Teodosije emphasized that in addition to institutional protection for the Serb people and the return of displaced persons to their homes it is also necessary to find appropriate models for the protection of monasteries and other Serbian religious and cultural-historical monuments. The protection of holy shrines and cultural treasures should serve to bring us even closer in our responsibility for their protection instead of becoming an obstacle to reconciliation and common life among communities, concluded the BishopKIM Info ServiceDecani, April 15, 2006U.S. special envoy for Kosovo status Frank Wisner visited Visoki Decani Monastery today accompanied by the head of the U.S. office in Pristina Philip Goldberg and Steven Gee. Ambassador Wisner first visited Prizren, followed by the families of victims of war in the village of Mala Krusa/Krusha e Vogel near Orahovac, and after the visit to Visoki Decani the U.S. delegation continued its tour to Belo Polje near Pec, where they visited Serb returnees. Ambassador Wisner and his associated were received in Visoki Decani by the monastery's abbot, Bishop Teodosije of Lipljan, Fr. Sava and Fr. Nektarije, the director of KIM Radio from Caglavica.During the meeting, which was held in the monastery library, Ambassador Wisner stated that the purpose of his visit to Kosovo was to learn more about the situation under which various communities were living in order to better determine needs that need to be taken into consideration while resolving the future status of Kosovo. He demonstrated considerable understanding for the protection of Serbian Orthodox monasteries and other cultural-historical monuments, emphasizing that the U.S. Administration is firm in its determination that these sites must be preserved for the future. Ambassador Wisner also emphasized that the protection of monuments is not just the responsibility of the international community but also the local ones, which should be more active in their efforts to establish mutual confidence.Bishop Teodosije of Lipljan sincerely thanked Ambassador Wisner for his understanding of the present situation of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the region. He emphasized that in addition to institutional protection for the Serb people and the return of displaced persons to their homes it is also necessary to find appropriate models for the protection of monasteries and other Serbian religious and cultural-historical monuments. The Bishop pointed to the example of the Special Zoning Area (SZA) around Visoki Decani Monastery as a model that could be implemented in other locations, too. He explained that the SZA represents an attempt to preserve the monastery and its immediate environment, which represent a unified whole, in an appropriate fashion. He emphasized that the Serbian Orthodox Church does not want the protection its holy shrines to unnecessarily politicized. The protection of holy shrines and cultural treasures should serve to bring us even closer in our responsibility for their protection instead of becoming an obstacle to reconciliation and common life among communities, concluded Bishop Teodosije.After the meeting Ambassador Wisner and members of the U.S. delegation toured the monastery and learned more about the activities of the monks. Upon seeing the church Mr. Wisner said that he was deeply impressed by the beauty of the church and the artistic treasures guarded in Visoki Decani Monastery, which are the treasures of the entire civilized world.Prior to leaving Visoki Decani Monastery Ambassador Wisner made a statement for representatives of the Albanian and Serbian media in the monastery courtyard.
April 15, 2006
The Real Butchers Of Serbia: Clinton, Clark, NATO
http://www.infowars.com/articles/world/milosevic_real_butchers_of_serbia_clinton_clark.htm
The Real Butchers Of Serbia: Clinton, Clark, NATO Slobo death media spin intensifies, speculation rife that Milosevic was going to call Clinton as witness
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | March 15 2006
The media coverage of Slobodan Milosevic's death has branched off into two distinct contexts. One is the desperate scramble to spin evidence and testimony suggesting Slobo was murdered and the other revolves around discussion that Milosevic was knocked off because he was about to call Bill Clinton as a witness at the Hague.
The consequence of 'The Butcher Of Serbia's' death remains the same. The only man in a position to legally implicate the real butchers of Serbia, Clark and Clinton, in war crimes that all but wiped an entire race off the map, is silenced.
Today both Milosevic's son and his wife went public to say that in their opinion Slobo was deliberately poisoned by the cocktail of drugs that negated the effects of his high blood pressure medicine, leading to his heart attack.
"They kept cameras and lights on in Slobodan's cell non-stop, so that he could not sleep. That is an officially recognised form of torture,"
said Mirjana Markovic. Which makes the UN's claim that the drugs found in Slobo's body were smuggled into his jail cell all the more ridiculous. This is the biggest conspiracy theory of them all. Milosevic was under constant monitoring and surveillance yet we are led to believe he had a 'dealer' who was able to provide the goodies.
The truth is that the prosecution was losing the case against Milosevic and as the trial was wounding down to a close the only evidence regarding ethnic cleansing implicated Wesley Clark, Bill Clinton, NATO and all the other warmongers in chief who oversaw the 78 day bombing of Yugoslavia.
What of the U.S. bombing of Radio Television Serbia, the cluster bombing of the Nis marketplace, the use of depleted uranium munitions and the targeting of petrochemical plants causing toxic and chemical waste to pour into the Danube River, or the deliberate targeting of civilian transport? As Jeremy Scahill adeptly points out,
"What the corporate media overwhelmingly ignores in Milosevic's death is what they ignored in his life as well-his intimate knowledge of U.S.
war
crimes in Yugoslavia. While Milosevic was undoubtedly a war criminal who deserved to be tried for his crimes, he was also the only man in the unique position of being able to expose and detail the full extent of the U.S. role in the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In fact, that is precisely what he was fighting to do at his war crimes trial when he died."
"Milosevic's death means that those who bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days beginning 7 years ago this month, killing thousands, will be, once and for all protected from any public scrutiny for their crimes. However opportunistic Milosevic may have been, he would have been one of the few people to appear at the Hague that could have and would have laid out these crimes in great detail."
"To be sure, there will never be indictments of these U.S. war criminals at the Hague: Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, Jamie Rubin, William Cohen, Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke and Wesley Clark. For many of Serbia's victims of U.S. war crimes, Milosevic's trial was a "Hail Mary"
pass, as awful of an historical irony as that is, aimed at someone recognizing their forgotten suffering."
And what of the rather troubling little matter of US government support for Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda' not fighting the evil Commies in the 70's and 80's, but helping the death squads of the KLA ethnically cleanse the last remaining Serbs and ethnic minorities from Kosovo, outnumbered nine to one by the ethnic Albanian colonizers, in the late 90's?
>From the very opening statement of his trial, Milosevic had made his intentions clear by outlining the true power structure behind Al-Qaeda.
"In 1998 when [Clinton envoy Richard] Holbrooke visited us in Belgrade, we told him the information we had at our disposal, that in Northern Albania the KLA is being aided by Osama bin Laden, that he was arming, training, and preparing the members of this terrorist organisation in Albania.
However, they decided to cooperate with the KLA and indirectly, therefore, with bin Laden, although before that he had bombed the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania [and] had already declared war." Milosevic concluded that "one day all this will have to come to light, these links."
The media fallout from Milosevic's death has predictably split down myopic partisan lines.
The establishment left press, who only cry bloody murder about a war if a Bush is in office, were quick off the mark to denounce questions about the nature of 'The Butcher's' death and rally round to defend their darling war criminals Clinton and Clark.
One example is Media Matters, who called Rush Limbaugh's sanity into question, after Limbaugh suggested that Milosevic may have been the final victim of the Clinton Death List, whose previous members include Ron Brown and Vince Foster. Like others, Limbaugh speculated that Slobo was about to call Clinton as his last witness, implicating Clark and the rest of the NATO collaborators in the process
Although Limbaugh has about as much objectivity as a 9/11 Commission panel member, he is right to make this connection. The Brown and Foster evidence lead right back to Clinton and for Media Matters to couch this in the context of another madcap Rush rant betrays the hypocrisy of the left.
It was Bill Clinton who turned Serbia into a DU ridden hellhole and it was Bill Clinton who initiated sanctions in Iraq that killed 500,000 children, a "price worth paying," according to his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
But to the left Clinton can do no wrong, so for them the blame must be pinned on Slobo. And when a Democrat gets in after 2008 and launches an unjustified and unconstitutional war against a defenseless sovereign nation, the majority of them will drop their Bush banners, line up in an orderly queue, and assume the position to lick government boots.
As Paul Craig Roberts highlights, Serbia was a practice run for the ethnic cleansing we now see unfolding in Iraq. It doesn't matter what letter the Commander In Butchery has before his name, governments and terrorist henchmen are bought and paid for while American soldiers are used as cannon fodder for the New World Order's next imperial conquest. Any individual that has intimate knowledge and evidence of that fact, like Slobodan Milosevic, is a target for elimination.
Albanian gangs running Kosovo
Albanian gangs running Kosovo
Tom Walker,
Pristina, Serbia
April 11, 2006
KOSOVO, the former Yugoslav province, is falling into the grip of Albanian organised crime gangs, casting a shadow over attempts by the international community to turn it into a fully fledged independent state by the end of this year.
Participants in talks in Vienna, sponsored by the UN, on the "final status" of Kosovo, are concerned that the mafia networks that smuggled guns into the disputed province from Albania in 1997 and 98 are using the same channels for a burgeoning trade in illicit petrol, cigarettes and cement. Prostitution and drugs are also popular staples of the black economy.
The profits are ploughed into shopping centres and hotels, which are going up as part of a building boom in the province. Petrol stations are especially popular - there are more than 2000 of them catering for a population of two million.
Many are believed to be part of a money-laundering racket, controlled by a few of the largest clan families, involving oil smuggled in from Montenegro.
Despite attempts by the head of the UN mission in Kosovo, Soren Jessen-Petersen, to downplay the extent of the problem, UN officials admit the corruption extends deep into the heart of the Kosovo Government.
"Crime groups have been able to operate with impunity," said Marek Antoni Nowicki, Poland's leading human rights lawyer and the UN's international ombudsman for Kosovo until last year.
"You have a criminal state in real power - it needs underground illegal structures to supply it with everything to survive.
"These networks can rely on the weakness of the public institutions to sanction their operations."
The UN's internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight, accused Mr Jessen-Petersen on Friday of turning a blind eye to widespread fraud at Pristina airport. He said the report was "entirely unwarranted".
Kosovo is still technically part of Serbia, and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica argues that Belgrade must retain some form of control.
The fight against corruption is complicated by the fact that the task is shared between different bodies of varying degrees of competence.
"The aim is to keep the criminals under control," Mr Nowicki said. "The question is: can the international community do it? It is very doubtful."
The Sunday Times
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18778323-2703,00.html
Kosovo: All scandals of UNMIK
Prishtinë, Apr 14, 2006 - There would be a scandal if the allegation about misuses at the Airport of Pristina during the time when Ioan Woollet was the manager, would be substantiated by Prosecution. It would be about hundreds of redundant workers, the sale of working positions, and even the murder of a young person involved in such a sale. The case is in the hands of international prosecutors, and they will show if the OIOS report was worth to seek responsibility from the UNMIK heads for allowing such things to happen.
Still, the affair of Ioan Woollet is not the first one, neither the heaviest scandal since the UN Mission in Kosovo began. The Organization of United Nations has turned a blind eye to all affairs in public institutions managed by internationals, despite domestic and international media reporting on them.
Agron Dida did not have much time for enjoying the return to work. He was discharged in December 1999 for “lacking cooperationâ€. In fact, he was dismissed for not signing the contract with Monaco Telecom. Dida had said that the offer from Siemens was financially and technically much more favorable. Gerard Fischer, whose name was mentioned in many media reports, and by investigation procedures by international prosecutors, replaced him.
Still, the SRSG of that time, Kouchner had secured Monaco Telecom and Alcatel the most profitable business they ever had. The last report from the Council of Europe proved that the services of mobile telephony were the most expensive and the poorest in the region.
In the time of Kouchner, Siegfried Brenke was the Pristina Administrator, in the time of which un-permitted construction took a boost, and many were legalized. But there was no single reaction from UNMIK or the United Nations.
While Haekkerup was Head of UNMIK in 2001, the PTK management signed contracts with the Austrian companies Infonova and Management Partners Business Solution GmbH, at the amount of €10 million or more.
These contracts were then basis for the investigation against Gerard Fischer, Deputy SRSG, Lesar Rainer, Director of Infrastructure and Telecommunications Directorate, Leme Xhema, former PTK Director, Bedri Rama, Director of PTK Telecom, whose signatures were on the contract. But, the investigation initiated in 2004 were surprisingly halted in 2005, with the justification of “the prosecutor not finding sufficient facts†to initiate the file.
Thanks to the former Head of the KTA, and the predecessor of Joachim Ruecker, Nikolas Lambsdorff, the privatization process was blocked for a full year, while no official explanation was given for this. Not a single KTA Board meeting was held for a full year. There was no reaction or report by the United Nations.
At Holkeri’s time, the former Minister of Education and Science, Rexhep Osmani, as compensation for his land in Sllatina, through which the road was foreseen to be paved towards the airport, was given land of a public enterprise in the industrial area of Pristina, which was worth at least half a million Euros more than the land in Sllatina.
During the mandate of Michael Steiner, German authorities arrested one of his fellow citizens. Joe Trutschler had admitted that he had taken €4.5 Million from the KEK cashbox and had sent them to Gibraltar, though not for personal benefit, as he had said.
“The money was parked there to be used for another need that Kosovo would have,†had said the Spokesperson for the Special Investigator of Economic Crimes in Bochum. Trutschler was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison.
Koha Ditore
All scandals of UNMIK
http://www.eciks.org/english/lajme.php?action=total_news&main_id=370
April 14, 2006
The Serbs and Yugoslavia: Betrayed again and again
Kathimerini
12 April 2006
In response to "President blasts Balkan failings," (12 April), President Papoulias "warned that multiculturalism had not yet taken root in the Balkans
and that the problem of nationalism would have to be overcome to ensure a brighter future for the region."
Before U.S. intervention, Yugoslavia was exactly a multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious state. Although there are several reasons for the breakup of Yugoslavia sought primarily by the United States, one of the main reasons was because President Clinton wanted to appease the Islamic world for our daily bombing of Iraq even if it meant destroying the Christian Serbs. Furthermore, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty) needed a new mission since the Soviet Union no longer existed. Without a new mission, NATO would have ceased to exist, and what better place than Yugoslavia to drop their bombs for 68 unmerciful days on innocent Serbs?
I attended one of the demonstrations during the bombing of Yugoslavia in Washington, D.C., and I have to say that I was never more proud of being an American of Greek descent than when I saw the Greek flag, with its Cross, its beautiful blue and white colors, fluttering in the breeze.
Stella L. Jatras
Camp Hill, PA
USA
"The core of the problem is that the Balkans are still treated as a sphere of influence"
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100006_12/04/2006_68550
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http://expatriatedamerican.com/2006/04/12/the-serbs-and-yugoslavia-betrayed-again-and-again.aspx
Exaptriated American
Personal reflections of a man without a country...
"I love America; but the America in which I believe
doesn't exist anymore."
The Serbs and Yugoslavia: Betrayed again and again
This entry was posted on Wed, 12 Apr 2006 10:57:00 GMT and is filed under religion,Terrorism,Foreign Policy,ISLAM.
When I moved to Montenegro I had the same impression of the situation in former Yugoslavia as most Americans: that the Serbs were monsters who subjugated the other nationalities in Yugoslavia. I learned the truth first hand.
Like many views created and fostered by the media, this one was a lie.
This hateful view of the Serbs was a huge lie propounded by the EU as a weapon to destroy Yugoslavia! Why? Because Yugoslavia was the only state that could have successfully stood outside it in Europe. To accomplish this, the EU supported thugs in Bosnia and Croatia who were as bad or worse than Serbia's Milosevic.
Worst of all the US participated in the bloody dismembering of Yugoslavia by contributing the bulk of the NATO troops who fought an aggressive war against a sovereign nation in violation of NATO's defense-only charter. The same United States which worries about fighting Muslims during Ramadan had no compunctions whatsoever about bombing Orthodox Christians on Easter.
The simple truth is that the US, NATO and the EU intervened on the side of the Muslims in Yugoslavia because they were pandering to the oil-rich Arab states.
Here are some facts that Americans need to know:
+ during World War II, the Allies betrayed the King of Yugoslavia in exile in London and supported Tito and his communists over General Mikhailovic and the royalist forces;
+ the "westernized" Croats established a fascist puppet state headed by a wacko who murdered Jews and Serbs and forced Serbs to convert to Catholicism at gunpoint (as opposed to the Serbs who have no record of anti-Semitism);
+ Kosovo is the heart of Serbia-the Muslim Albanians were brought in by Tito and the Communists in an effort to "divide and conquer" the royalist Serbs;
+ the only sin of the Bosnian Serbs was that they wanted to stay united with their fellow Serbs, rather than forced into a state of permanent subjection to the Bosniak Muslims back by NATO guns;
+ the EU, NATO and the US have promoted self-determination for the Slovenians, the Croatians and the Bosniaks, but not for the Bosnian Serbs;
+ before the Dayton Peace Accords, the Bosnian Serbs controlled 75% of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in a huge sacrifice for peace, they willingly cut that back to 49%;
+ since the peace accords and under the NATO occupation, tens of millions of dollars of international aid has been poured into the Muslim side of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and almost nothing has found its way to the Serb side;
+ since the NATO occupation, the allies have been teaching the Serbs "democracy" by disallowing a majority of the officials they elect because those officials want union with Serbia.
Let me make one more point about Kosovo. Kosovo Polje (field) is to Serbs what the Alamo is to Texans-the place of a great defeat which led directly to their independent nationhood. I wonder if Texans would be willing to let a majority of Mexicans voted San Antonio back to Mexico?
The death of Slobodan Milosevic was a renewed opportunity to trash the Serbs.
The simple response is this:
+ the Serbs are not perfect;
+ there were certainly atrocities; any perpetrated by Serbs were done in the heat of anger and in retaliation for atrocities visited upon them by the Muslims;
+ the Serb Orthodox Patriarch has forbidden the attack on the religious institutions of any other group and has insisted "we only protect our own";
+ Christians are being persecuted today in Muslim controlled Kosovo and Bosnia and this will only get worse if Kosovo is granted independence.
Who gains from this misdirected US policy? What strategic interest does the US have?
The Serbs are being offered to the Muslims by the NATO as a sacrifice to keep the oil flowing. One cannot help but wonder who they will sell out next-I certainly hope it is someone more deserving France or Germany.
Reflections on Milosevic
Milosevic's death & Carla's coiffure
Sent to BBC "News":
I filmed the Old City of Dubrovnik on 25 March 1992, 3 months after the total destruction. The roof tiles were old, the graffiti read "lynch the Serbs" [srbe na vrbe]... Columns of black smoke are -- ask any fireman -- from burning petroleum, outside the walls...
The synagogue was whole, but a Croat had taken a chunk out of the "Jewish Street" marble plaque with a pistol shot. The only gutted building was one marked with a sign in English -- "ICONS" and, in Serbian Cyrillic "IKONE". In autumn 1991 Croat gunners were firing from hotels full of refugees.Tito had built the hotels for dual purpose: tourism and defence. On 1 October 1992 a flood of 7000 Croats, who feared the fascist rebirth, and 3000 Serbs fled Dubrovnik. The first deaths were Serbs. A resident told me his neighbor's car had been set alight.Neighbors -- Croats and Serbs and others -- tried to extinguish the blaze. I asked why the attack: "because he's Serb; I'm not;I'm a Muslim." British Honorary Consul Sarah Crowgey Marojica starred (Nov 1991) in a kitschy (but proze winning) docu-drama with ITN's Paul Davies. Remember ITN of the kinny guy hoax at Trnopoljse "Death Camp"? --Sighed Sally: "Like the Blitz, isn't it?". -- So, from Act I Britain's consul was in on the break-up of Yugoslavia. -- On 6, 9 and 10 February I spent hours with Slobodan Milosevic, preparing my testimony, not buried along with him. He was not suicidal, but confident of trumping amblance chaser Geoffrey Nice.. Milosevic complained that the "court" was accusing him of (pick one) not taking his hypertension medication or (2)smuggling in a medication for TB and leprosy, which neutralized the blood pressure medicine. The guards at Scheveningen must be careless. --Milosevic was confident of refuting the ICTY "court". I dare you to put the Hague Show on the BBC telly. Let the public judge the judges and the "journalists"...
The Serb atrocity stories are as fake as WMDs, incubator babies, Tonkin Gulf, or the 2 SAS men caught in Basra in a van packed with bombs and timers (wearing Arab garb). Or Carla's blonde mop.
John Peter Maher
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http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=656
Balkanalysis
Reflections on Milosevic
Date: Friday, April 14 @ 01:00:00 EST
Topic: Other Balkans Articles
By David Binder
No Serbian leader had such renown since the time of Prince Lazar and Tsar Dusan. No Yugoslav except Tito had such international recognition. One must concede that to Slobodan Milosevic and, at the end of his days he appeared to relish that prominence immensely - the sole reminder of his years in power over the shredded country he left behind.
But keep in mind, his notoriety was manufactured largely outside of Serbia, outside of the larger Yugoslav frame, by adversaries who became enemies slavering over his final defeats and rejoicing in his incarceration.
"Butcher of the Balkans!" (who was it that coined that ludicrous epithet reminiscent of World War I or World War II propaganda?) "He was a monster!" trumpeted Richard Holbrooke adding, "Sometimes monsters make the biggest impact on history. Hitler, Stalin. And such is the case with this gentleman."
Note the sly addition of "this gentleman" - because Holbrooke, the failed diplomat, had not merely shaken the putatively bloody hand of the monster, he had also smoked fine cigars and drunk excellent whisky with him, again and again.
Wesley Clark, the failed general - the U.S. Army retired him after his troubled stint as NATO commander - faintly echoed Holbrooke calling Milosevic a "petty Hitler."
Why such preposterous exaggeration? Because it provided a venomous rationale justifying the United States and its allies to subject Milosevic's Serbia first to severe sanctions and then to bombs, rockets and uranium-laced munitions. Of parallel importance, it elevated Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton, the Holbrookes and the Clarks to the status of giant-killers.
No wonder that the Hague Tribunal's chief prosecutor bemoaned the death of Milosevic. Without such a star-quality defendant in her dock, Carla del Ponte would have a hard time generating attention and publicity for what for many if not most has become a tiresome expenditure of resources and time. Amid the Milosevic post-mortem frenzy and with the logic of a Hollywood producer, she told anyone who would listen that it was now more important than ever to bring the fugitive General Ratko Mladic and his political collaborator Radovan Karadzic to trial.
The first time I reported about Milosevic was in autumn 1987 when he politicked his way to the top of the Serbian Communist party and began to manipulate the media through his adjutants. A Belgrade colleague told me how Milosevic had brutally threatened Azem Vlasi, the Kosovo leader, using vulgarities about the Albanian's mother. Vlasi replied: "I do not say that about your mother, but I do not forget what you said about my mother." As soon as he could Milosevic had Vlasi, the one Albanian who might have preserved Kosovo for Yugoslavia, thrown in jail.
In 1988 I sought an interview with Milosevic. I got only as far as Mihailo Crnobrnja, at the time his adviser on economic policy, who said he had a strong impression Milosevic was striving to assume the mantle of Tito. "That is his ambition," Crnobrnja emphasized.
In following years I asked six times for an interview with Milosevic. He never replied. The only time I encountered him was in January 1993 when I followed Cyrus Vance, the international mediator, to the Federal Executive Building in New Belgrade. Milosevic shook hands with us journalists, but he declined to answer questions.
Another snapshot from 1993: I was strolling on a Washington street with P.J. Nichols, a State Department Yugoslavia specialist and one of the principal architects of the punishing economic sanctions instituted against Serbia. We talked about the Yugoslav wars.
All at once, his eyes glistening with missionary zeal, Nichols put a hand on my elbow and declared: "I have a vision! A vision of a worker from Rakovica, who grabs a pistol and goes up and shoots Milosevic!" I shook my head: "You've got that wrong, P.J. The workers in Rakovica are some of Milosevic's strongest supporters!"
Now in looking back on the astounding career of a provincial politician who now ranks as one of the 20th century's leading villains, I remind myself of what he was and what he wasn't.
Milosevic did conduct himself as a petty despot.
His actions turned Serbia into a kind of prison.
By action here and inaction there he fostered massive corruption at the state level and below, some of which is still flourishing.
He also left Serbia behind in a condition of economic and political weakness unmatched since the Ottoman conquest and occupation.
But he did not himself start four Balkan wars.
He did not strive for a "Greater Serbia."
He did not play a part in the massacres around Srebrenica.
He did not mastermind the expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo.
Nor could the Hague prosecution, with all the time and all the resources at its disposal, have proven any of those charges.
So what will the judgment of history be on Slobodan Milosevic?
It took Sidney B. Fay, an American historian, a decade after the end of World War I to demonstrate exhaustively and definitively that Germany did not by itself precipitate World War I, with his The Origins of The World War. But that was much too late to prevent crippling reparations and other punitive actions by the victorious entente powers, or their deadly impact on postwar German politics.
But I suspect it will take historians much, much longer to redress the current one-sided version of the true causes of the wars of Yugoslavia and the real nature of Slobodan Milosevic's part in them.
.............
David Binder (born 1931) was a correspondent for The New York Times from 1961 until 2004. He specialized in coverage of central and eastern Europe, based in Berlin, Belgrade and Bonn. The current piece was published in Belgrade's Politika on March 22, 2006.
Requiem For Milosevic
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By Edward W. Miller
"I'll be the judge and I'll be the jury," said cunning old Fury. "I'll try the whole case and condemn you to death." (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) Lewis Carroll, 1865
"Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it... I am truly convinced that... Socialism ... being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect." (Milosovic speech made in Kosovo in 1989)
On March 13th, 2006 ( NY Times) Slobovan Milosevic was found dead in his prison cell in the Hague. After suffering during his four years in prison from high blood pressure, Milosevic had recently asked the Court's permission to seek medical treatment in Moscow where his son and wife were living.. She had been facing possible indictment by the Serbian government. The Hague Court's Chief Justice declined Milosevic's request. An autopsy performed in the Netherlands determined his death to be from coronary disease though some had accused the authorities of murdering him.
Milosevic's body was flown from the Netherlands to Belgrade, where, as Daniel Williams noted : (Washington Post 16 Mar) "The trip into the city of his flag-draped coffin provided signs that Milosevic still inspires some measure of adulation. Several hundred mourners lined part of the road and tossed carnations at the hearse. When the vehicle reached the St. Sava Hospital morgue, supporters waved the red flags of his political party, some clutching photos of the former leader." His coffin was placed inside Belgrade's Museum of the Revolution for two days of public viewing, where on March 18 well over 50,000 Serbs massed on the central square here ...in the public wake, representing, in this nation's deep divide, either his final victory or one last embarrassment for Serbia at his hands. (New York Times, Mar 19) The following day he was buried at his own residential compound in Pozarevac, his home town 50 miles east of Belgrade. The government rejected burial in a section of Belgrade's central cemetery called the Lane of the Greats.
Just as Gaius Julius Caesar, Rome's general during her Gallic wars, paraded the captured Versingetorix, brave leader of the revolting Gauls, in chains before the Roman populace before executing him in 45 BC, just so, Clinton and our Western media paraded Milosevic, as the Serb's criminal, before a misinformed public before he was murdered in the Hague prison. A routine coronary bypass, easily available in Moscow might have added years to the life of this man who died at age 62. To many of his countrymen, Milosevic was a hero, a tough politician who fought a defensive battle against those Western countries which had been tearing apart his beloved Yugoslav Federation for their colonial economic gain.
Twice elected president of the Serbian Republics, and once President of Yugoslavia, Milosevic during his last years in office was increasingly demonized by Western media while he resisted the dismemberment of his Yugoslavia, the only country in Europe which would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy. A campaign of disinformation and villification provided the media cover under which NATO politically and militarily destroyed the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia and then decimated the Kosovo, a Yugoslav economy, leaving millions homeless, cities in ruins, factories and refineries smoking environmental hazards and highways and rivers (the Danube) obstructed and useless. The 78 days of intense NATO bombing, in 1999 destroyed Serbia's economic infrastructure, laying bare its remaining government-owned and private businesses to the predatory jackals of international commerce to seize at rock-bottom prices. The Western-controlled election which followed the military devastation left Milosevic only marginally defeated but a run-off election, demanded by Yugoslavia's Constitutional Court never took place. It was canceled by NATO.
Much of the intrigue associated with the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation was hidden from the public, however, Jared Israel and other investigative political writers from the USA, Canada and the Netherlands (see http://emperors-clothes.com) had earlier reported that Senator Biden, with Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gebard, confirmed during the July 1999 Senate hearings on Yugoslavia, that: "The US pays and controls the so-called 'independent democratic' opposition."... "In the two years leading up to the Kosovo crisis, we spent $16.5 million in support of Serbian democratization... Gebhard's millions had "funded or even created political parties, radio stations, even trade unions." The Senate had previously voted $105 million to the Yugoslav opposition. Jared, et al, noted: "If any hostile foreign power did that in the USA, their local agents would be thrown in jail."
Clinton's top advisor also testified that the US distributed money in Yugoslavia via the National Endowment for Democracy, which calls itself "non-governmental" but is actually funded by Congress, and does openly what our CIA does under cover, recruiting peace and democracy activists, and "independent economists." During those Senate hearings, Senator Biden said: "... We are kicking the living hell out of Milosevic. There ain't no alternative left... My dream is to visit Milosevic in prison."
Jared's investigative group added: "These (Serbian) people were wined and dined and paid well. With fellowships, scholarships, and internships, they were made to feel they were tomorrow's leaders
in the American Empire."
Recruited reporters were overnight transformed into "independent journalists" who took over newspapers, radio, TV stations, and TV shows. Small underground print shops and distribution networks were set up. The international financier and crook, George Soros, using his Open Society Institute, had spent millions, both working with the CIA and funding "independent" media and other organizations in Yugoslavia. Almost a year before the Serbian election, leaders of OTPOR, a US-funded student resistance movement, attended a seminar on "Non-Violent Resistance" at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest, Hungary, some 12 miles across the border from Serbia where, American pollster Doug Schoen briefed the students on strategies for toppling Milosevic and in the months following, US-funded consultants "played a crucial role in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic drive, running tracking polls, and training thousands of opposition activists."
US taxpayers paid for 5000 cans of spray paint to scrawl anti-Milosevic slogans across Serbia, and 2.5 million paper stickers to paste on walls across the country, with the slogan: "GOTOV JE" (he's finished) and a clenched fist. Over three tons of these stickers were plastered across Serbia. As one, Serbian pollster noted: "The brand to sell was Kostunica. The brand to beat was Milosevic." Retired US Army colonel Robert Helvey briefed OTPOR students on non-violent civilian actions, organizing strikes, communication, undermining a regime's authority and overcoming personal fears. Eventually, OTPOR trained over 70,000 "activists."
Had Yugoslavia been a totalitarian state, the US strategy would not have worked, but Milosevic's free society gave western backers their all-important opening.
Before the NATO bombing, Yugoslavia had 101 radio and TV stations, most independent. Belgrade alone had 14 daily newspapers. Even rival Albanian groups sold opposition papers on Belgrade streets On voting day, polling places across Yugoslavia were monitored not only by foreign experts, but by student activists trained by OTPOR. The media declared Kostonika "winner" by a slender margin, and thousands of demonstrators surged through the streets of Belgrade.
However, when Belgrade's Constitutional Court ordered a run-off election, the Western powers, using OTPOR and trained activists brought to Belgrade by the DOS party, created riots, protesting any run-off. Police fired tear-gas as the crowd stormed the federal parliament, smashing windows and destroying files and computers, and setting fire to office equipment, even destroying that Serbian Television station RTS previously bombed by NATO.
NATO then declared Kostonika "winner" and canceled the runoff election." US-trained activists carried out a three-day reign of terror against Milosevic's Socialist (SPS) Party. Members were threatened and physically beaten, SPS offices broken into and destroyed across Serbia, and SPS-radio and TV stations were seized. Thus the US and Germany, supported by other NATO countries, first subjected democratic-socialist Yugoslavia, to 78 days of fierce NATO bombing, and then politically seized power in a carefully rigged election.
In the midst of this NATO savagery, on October 2nd, 2000 Milosevic via the media addressed his people in an effort to outline for them the West's subversive campaign to destroy his country. Exerpts are as follows:
"Honored citizens.. I'd like to explain my views on the political situation in our country... As you know, efforts have been underway for a whole decade to put the whole Balkan Peninsula under the control of certain Western powers. A part of the job was accomplished by establishing puppet governments in some countries... transforming them into countries with limited sovereignty or no sovereignty at all. Because we resisted, we have been subjected to all the pressures that can be applied to people in today's world... There has been a group amongst us which, under the guise of being pro-democratic, has in fact represented the interests of the governments attacking Yugoslavia. The group calls itself the "Democratic Opposition of Serbia" (DOS)... represents the armies and governments which recently waged war against Yugoslavia... With the establishment of an administration... installed by NATO, Yugoslavia would be quickly dismembered...
All governments controlled by foreign powers speedily become impoverished in a way that destroys all hope... a great division into a poor majority and a rich minority... national humiliation, state fragmentation and social misery... lead to forms of social pathology... crime would be the first. One of the obvious consequences of takeover is the loss of national identity... the greatest defeat a nation can know... The leaders of this (DOS) are trying to stop production, all work, all activity. Using money that is being shipped into the country, they are bribing some, blackmailing or harassing others, organizing strikes, unrest and violence. I consider it my duty to warn the citizens of our country about the consequences of the activities financed and supported by NATO."
While our media was hiding from Americans their government's pre-emptive campaign to destroy the Yugoslav Federation and criminalize its leaders, a few investigative journalists reported Washington's activity in detail.
Writer Michael Parenti (www.tenc.net 05/22/2000 ) wrote: "For the better part of a decade, the US public has been bombarded with a media campaign to demonize the Serbian people and their elected leaders. During that time, the US government has pursued a goal of breaking up Yugoslavia into a cluster of small, weak, dependent, free-market principalities. Yugoslavia was the only country in Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy... it still is charting a course not in keeping with the New World Order. "
From the Jordan Times (12/04/2000) Alexander Schlevogt reported: "The war over Yugoslavia was fought not only inside the country, but also on a global front, through the international public opinion... the strategy proved successful. During the whole string of events that lead to the toppling of the legitimate president, America used its flagship propaganda mouthpiece, CNN, to broadcast manipulated information to a global audience. In addition, television stations together with American coercion, most governments and people spoke with the same voice (and picture)... CNN manufactured and told a one-sided propaganda tale... conveying the impression that the whole people in Yugoslavia not only opposed the president, but deeply despised him." The whole intent behind Washington's ten-year Balkan adventurism had been to first disassemble that Federation of Yugoslavian States (structured by Tito toward the end of WWII ..), and then present these small once-socialist countries on the silver-platter of "democratization" to feed the rapacious appetites of international business, the IMF and the World Bank."
The process had its beginnings shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when political groups in both Washington and Berlin visualized the Balkan States as potential targets for first, military, and then economic exploitation. At Berlin's Brandenberg Gate on October 12, 1994, President Clinton referred to Germany's then-Chancellor, Helmut Kohl as "my principal partner in Europe." To create military backing for this colonization of the Balkans,
Clinton peddled that straw tiger, NATO across Europe to the border of Russian, while the arms industry lobbied our Senate for NATO expansion. Giant Lockheed-Martin in 1996 offered a $2.3 million campaign fund contribution. Meanwhile, arms manufacturers, Saab/British Aerospace, Boeing/McDonnell
Douglas, and others, envisioning a central European arms market, spent millions on "voter education" in the projected NATO countries, thus violating local media laws regarding foreign contributions (The Nation, March 16, 1998). Early in 1998, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 16/2 to extend NATO membership to Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, followed by Senate approval in April of that year.
With minimal media coverage in the US, the Balkan countries were violently separated from one another as the West employed nationalist Trudjman in Croatia and Izetbegovic in Bosnia-Hertzegovinia to assist in "ethnic cleansing" of their Serb populations. Over 350,000 Serbian farmers were killed or expelled from their farms in eastern Croatia alone. Our CIA offered arms and military assistance (air cover), and dismantled the Serbian military and police communications systems, while stirring up anti Serb feelings in both countries.
Protestant Germany, along with the Vatican, had secretly armed the Roman Catholic Croats, while working politically to separate, first Slovenia and then Croatia from the Yugoslav Federation. Our media constantly demonized Slobodan Milosevic, as he tried in vain both to protect his Serbs and hold his Yugoslav Federation together.
In Bosnia-Herzegovenia, our CIA even brought in thousands of its old Muslim mujahedin fighters from Afghanistan to help drive the Serbs out of their homes. Both the US and Germany using the UN and NATO, as well as compliant members of the EU to shield their activities, secretly supported ethnic cleansing of the Serbs from these states while both demonizing Milosevic and reporting Serb efforts to defend their lives and homes as "Serbian Terrorism."
CNN and other media reported Bosnia Serbs "raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 Muslim women." Michael Parenti noted the Helsinki Watch could find no credible supporting evidence of these "atrocities."
As NATO bombs rained down on Yugoslavia and Kosovo, the anti-Milosevic and anti-Serb media campaign expanded exponentially. In the now infamous Racak incident, our ex-El Salvador ambassador William Walker, escorted foreign reporters to the "execution massacre of 45 Kosovo Albanians in a mass grave." However, foreign forensic experts brought in at Serb request discovered the bodies had been assembled at the "grave" from some distance, that rifle shell casings were missing and only one body had been shot in the head. European news reported these victims as killed in the crossfire actually filmed earlier by an Associated Press TV crew. So much for CNN.
The anti-Milosevic campaign continued up to his death. The US with NATO assistance had set up a pseudo "International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia" to indict Serbs accused of crimes genocide. Milosevic was the NATO target.
As Black and writer Edward S. Herman pointed out: " On May 27, 1993 in the midst of the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, the US "International Criminal Tribunal's chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour, announced the indictment of Serb president Slobovan Milosevic and four associates for war crimes, as a "public relations coup to justify the NATO policies and help permit the bombing to continue." This pseudo International Tribunal was set up by the UN Security Council in the early 1990s "to serve the Balkan policy ends of its dominant members, especially the United States." ("Z" Magazine Feb. 2000) Toronto lawyer Christopher Black, specialist in International Law, stated this court in the Hague was illegal, and was instigated and funded by private US corporations and NATO. Black said that though the UN Security Council tried to legitimize it, the Council lacked the credentials to do so, since International Tribunals, could, under the UN Charter, only be established by the UN General Assembly, not the Security Council. The Hague, court's chief prosecutor, Carla D el Ponte, in an interview on 12 March 2006, in the Italian newspaper La Republica said: "Perhaps he did commit suicide. He could have done it as a last act of defiance towards us."
Manufacturing a crime to justify military intervention has become the custom in Washington. Noam Chomsky called it "the principle of retrospective justification," while political writer Diana Johnstone prefers "making the crime fit the punishment," saying, "In any case, the object is to present our military adventurism in such a way as to hide both intent and process, thus achieving tacit support from an uninformed public while avoiding such politically-embarrassing backlash as Washington suffered during the Viet Nam war. This smoke-and-mirrors approach to our little wars requires extensive planning." Johnstone* pointed out: "NATO's land is a gated community whose armed forces are being prepared to intervene worldwide, at the bidding of Washington, to defend members' interests..." adding: "Clinton has voiced a "new principle of international relations: the destruction or displacement of peoples within states can justify international intervention." Thus Washington excused NATO's brutal destruction of Yugoslavia and Kosovo as "humanitarian intervention."
Americans had hoped that destroying a people to save them from some politician or political system, the so-called My-lai syndrome had been buried with the Viet Nam war. Not so." (* see her book on the Balkan wars: FOOL'S CRUSADE)
In many ways, the Clinton -Kohl war against the Yugoslav Federation was a rehearsal for the Bush Jr. assaults on both Afghanistan and Iraq. Slobovan Milosevic was the Clinton-Kohl sacrificial victim, Saddam is Bush's.
Slobovan Milosevic, a talented businessman, lawyer and politician, during four years in the Hague Court defended himself and his socialist regime skillfully, frustrating both his prosecutors and the judge. He gave his life in defense of his people and their choice of the socialist form of democracy. He deserves our admiration. As for Americans, will we ever learn to recognize these fascist wars, designed by our military-industrial complex, and stop them in their tracks?
April 13, 2006
The Unbearable Smugness of Being , by Nebojsa Malic
www.antiwar.com
April 12, 2006
The Unbearable Smugness of Being
by Nebojsa Malic
Balkans "Endgame" on Schedule – or Is it?
For a region with more history than it can handle, the Balkans is wrought
with anniversaries and commemorations no matter the season. The end of March
brought the seventh anniversary of NATO's attack that ended in the
occupation of Kosovo (March 24, 1999); it was followed by the anniversary of
the 1941 coup that overthrew the Yugoslav Regency over signing a pact with
Hitler (March 27), and the Nazi invasion that followed (April 6); that was
also the date of Bosnia-Herzegovina's recognition by the EU and Washington
in 1992, which plunged the former Yugoslav republic into civil war. April 10
marked 65 years since the establishment of the "Independent State of
Croatia," a creation of Hitler and Mussolini that engaged in ruthless
extermination of Serbs and Jews within its boundaries.
One month ago, Slobodan Milosevic passed away in The Hague. Unable to
convict him alive – as evidence of his presumed guilt has been just about
nonexistent – the Inquisition did its best to convict him in death, in the
court of Imperial public opinion. The media painted Milosevic as the
arch-villain of the Balkans, and incessant political propaganda promised the
people of Serbia they would be free and prosperous once he was out of power;
then after he'd been arrested and delivered to the Inquisition; then after
they "faced his legacy"…. In the end, Milosevic's passing from power and
life made not an ounce of difference in Empire's behavior toward his
country. He's gone, but things remain the same.
No Resting in Peace
Even though Serbian laws entitled him to a state burial, Milosevic did not
receive one. No representative of the Serbian state attended the funeral,
which took place on March 18 in Milosevic's hometown of Pozarevac. Tens of
thousands flocked to the event, which in many respects resembled a political
rally – not so much in support of Milosevic as against the current
government, and most of all against the rabid pro-Imperialist, globalist
movement loudly abusing the Serbian political scene.
That was enough for the supporters of that movement, such as ICG's James
Lyon, to rail against "rising nationalism" in Serbia. Accusing Prime
Minister Kostunica of "providing [Milosevic] with a state funeral in all but
name," Lyon bemoans the absence of "pro-Western democratic forces" from the
government. Though he specifically mentions President Tadic's Democratic
Party, the movement that most vocally declares itself as pro-Western and
"democratic" is that of militant Ceda Jovanovic, a darling of the Imperial
media who thinks a lot like the ICG.
In Lyon's "analysis," very much in sync with the current Imperial policy in
the Balkans, Kostunica's wicked ways will open the road to the Radical Party
to seize power. But no fear – that will enable Washington and Brussels with
an excuse to detach Kosovo and back the secession of Montenegro, as well as
increase funding to "civil society" in Serbia. Both goals are on ICG's
agenda, and the increase in funding would surely not hurt the Brussels-based
organization that promotes Imperial intervention everywhere. And everything
can, once again, be conveniently blamed on the Serbs.
Unwarranted
Indeed, the ICG has a lot to be smug about. Its former board member, Martti
Ahtisaari, is conducting "talks" in Vienna aimed at forcing Belgrade to
accept the secession of Kosovo under the guise of a negotiated agreement. A
month ago, Washington and Brussels forced the resignation of the Albanian
"prime minister" and the appointment of Agim Ceku, former leader of the
terrorist KLA, to replace him.
There was an outstanding warrant for Ceku's arrest in Serbia, on numerous
charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, stemming from his
activities as a Croatian officer (1991-95) and as leader of the KLA.
Interpol, however, claims never to have processed it, and announced it had
no intention of doing so now that Ceku was a head of government. There's
only one problem – at one time, there was an outstanding warrant for Ceku,
as demonstrated by his arrest in Slovenia in 2003. Back then, Imperial
viceroy Harri Holkeri bailed him out and claimed Serbian warrants were no
longer valid for "citizens of Kosovo" (sic!). But why would Slovenian police
execute a Serbian warrant? Interpol's facetious announcement attempts to
cover up the fact that in today's world, political decisions trump
international law. As if that hasn't been obvious for a while…
Viceroy vs. Reality
However, even as Ceku was out of the woods and the Vienna "talks" started
putting new pressure on Belgrade, with Ahtisaari's deputy Albert Rohan
rejecting Serb proposals for autonomy within the Albanian-dominated
province, a report in the British Sunday Times claimed widespread crime and
corruption at the highest levels in Kosovo, and accused viceroy
Jessen-Petersen of deliberately ignoring it. Allegations were first made by
the UN's Office of Internal Oversight.
"You have a criminal state in real power — it needs underground illegal
structures to supply it with everything to survive," the Sunday Times quoted
Marek Antoni Nowicki, former ombudsman in Kosovo.
Jessen-Petersen issued a statement denying any wrongdoing. One must wonder,
however, how bad things in Kosovo must truly be if even the Imperial press
saw it fit to report them – and moreover, how much longer can
Jessen-Petersen stay in the job with this cloud over his head. With his
openly pro-Albanian behavior, the viceroy has long been a most undiplomatic
envoy of his Imperial masters; perhaps he has become sufficiently
embarrassing to warrant removal.
Whither Montenegro?
Separation of Montenegro from Serbia has also been a goal promoted by the
ICG. For the past nine years, ever since the former Milosevic supporter Milo
Djukanovic reinvented himself as a "democrat" – with the help of copious
amounts of cash from U.S. taxpayers – a campaign has been underway to
separate Montenegro from a union with Serbia. Not only has the regime in
Podgorica been determined to sever political and economic ties with
Belgrade, it has tried to invent a separate national identity for some
470,000 inhabitants of the rocky republic who once considered themselves
ethnic Serbs.
Djukanovic and his separatists have been threatening a referendum on
independence for years, but always backed down, aware that they simply did
not have enough votes. They have finally decided to call a vote for May 21,
and even accepted EU's condition that 55 percent of voters would have to
approve secession, even though nothing has substantially changed from before.
On March 24, Djukanovic's pro-union opponents produced a secretly filmed
video of separatist activists offering to buy votes. The separatists have
dismissed the video as staged, and accused their opponents of malicious
propaganda. On the other hand, what else would explain their sudden
confidence in winning the independence vote?
Empire-funded IWPR (in its latest Balkans iteration, BIRN) offers a possible
clue: Albanians and Muslims, who have thrown their support behind the
separatists. KLA ideologue Adem Demaci, recently interviewed by a Podgorica
daily, supported secession and even said he could see an independent
Montenegro in union with Kosovo some day.
The extent to which the Montenegrin separatists are trying to poison the
well with Serbia became apparent during the Eurosong selection contest in
March. Exactly as they did last year, Montenegrin TV judges gave no votes to
Serb performers, favoring instead a pro-separatist boy band. The live
concert-hall audience rioted. Serbian television refused to endorse the
result, which though technically valid was absolutely against the spirit of
the competition. "It is better not to have a common representative at all
than to accept, for the second time, the manipulations, pressure,
blackmailing, and tribal voting," said RTS director Aleksandar Tijanic.
One thing is certain. As May 21 approaches, there will be more tensions,
provocations, and hatred, as the separatists will pull out all the stops to
win, and the unionists will try to stop them.
Misguided Confidence
It may seem that events in the Balkans are following Empire's plan for a
victorious "endgame" to crown its interventionist efforts. Milosevic,
convicted by propaganda, is safely dead and unable to defend himself. Rabid
Empire supporters are promoting chaos in Serbian politics. Preparations for
the separation of Montenegro and Kosovo are proceeding well, it appears. But
they should not be so confident.
The thing about the Balkans is that it is always full of surprises. Anyone
who has sought to bend the world to their will, and had the peculiar
misfortune to step into the Balkans, quickly found that out – always to
their great detriment.
Uncle Sam's genie
Latest news:
http://news.google.be/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Kosovo0
Top List of the Corrupted
http://www.eciks.org/english/lajme.php?action=total_news&main_id=364
Highlights of the joint weekly Press Briefings
http://www.unmikonline.org/DPI/Transcripts.nsf/0/7723603406BE3382C125714E0054AE72/$FILE/tr120406.pdf
"Internal Security Sector Review is the most important process to determine Kosovo's future internal security structures"
http://www.unmikonline.org/DPI/PressRelease.nsf/0/E3B0395E95FF6D42C125714D00508DF6/$FILE/pr1532.pdf
Guaranteed protection within the borders of (independent)Kosovo
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/unmik-says-no-extraterritorial-entity.html
"Whatever we do is based on principals and in accordance with international laws"
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/4/BBDD2991-451C-40E2-9A2C-BAB8AA18B796.html
AFP: "Be ready to face reality, to move forward"
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/ACIO-6NSJJF?OpenDocument&rc=4&cc=scm
"EU support is convincing"
http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/News/200604/1fbe413b-4c77-4b56-8e27-bf70a8fe780b.htm
"Kosovo status should be determined as soon as possible"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/kosovo-status-should-be-determined-as.html
"We are not anticipating the outcome of those talks"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/eu-prospect-vital-for-kosovo-success.html
"A 'genie of recognition' let out by the United States and EU could cause a domino effect"
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav041206a.shtml
April 11, 2006
Tribunal had a motive for murder of Milosevic
Read this article about the death of Milosevic, bringing pieces together. Use it, edit it, forward it !
Comments, remarks, additions and other viewpoints, which may contribute to establish that homicide was committed againt Milosevic are warmly welcome !
regards,
Nico Steijnen
Article, published, partly, in the leading Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad on 16 March 2006, free for futher publication.
Please use it, edit it, forward it!
Mr. N.M.P. Steijnen
Couwenhoven 52-05
3703 ER Zeist
030-6956867
mailto:sagitar@hetnet.nl
-----------------------------------------
TRIBUNAL HAD A MOTIVE FOR MURDER
Even when it ever would be evidenced beyond doubt that Milosevic was not murdered as a result of direct action, this still doesn't mean that there was not committed homicide against him.
Milosevic was, from the beginning in his cell in the Hague, a person affected by severe health problems. So it was, for malignant forces, easy to forecast that, in order to get rid of him, no direct attempts on his life, which always may bring about the risk of leaving traces, were necesssary. And that a succession of secret actions, direcly aimed at further undermining of his health were sufficient to make sure that he, sooner or later, was bound to succumb. Certainly if such secret actions against his health were conducted in combination with malicious medical negligence and the extreme stress put upon him by the working conditions and the expediciency the tribunal forced him to.
Therefore, such a more sophisticated course of action would be far preferable to blunt direct liquidation.
Convincing evidence of deliberately undermining Milosevic's health
And there are, though there is no clue to direct murder, already at the moment quite a lot of convincing indications that Milosevic was killed in this indirect way.
The specific element of his, from the beginning, medical negligence is a already a well-document story, just like the enormous pressure put upon him by the tribunal by its devasteting claims for expeciency.
These subjects require a separate description.
This article limits itself to some serious indications that Milosevic's health was deliberately undermined by covert direct actions. At least during a number of crucial episodes of his process. Episodes in which there have been persistent efforts to 'switch him of', to silence him.
Unfortunately for the tribunal, periods of increased attempts to 'switch him of' turn out, viewed more closely, to coincide with a number of very suspect events discussed here below.
A failure for NATO was threatening
But first the following must be said.
In a climate where loyal friends of the tribunal have been given the monopoly over reporting in western countries, it is no wonder that an image has been created of the Milosevic trial that is completely alien to the reality.
In the discussions I have had with different people
about Milosevic's death, the prevalent opinion was that no matter how valiant this man´s resistance was, or alternatively, how impudent, the evidence against him was growing in a trial that went on for years and that he was a man who felt the ground sinking under his feet, now that the trial was drawing to a close. And who was thus ripe for some desperate act.
This cherished image thus elicits its own psychologisms.
So this image is dominant in western public opinion, resulting from persistent biased information, portrayed by bootlickers of the tribunal, passing themselves disguised as ´reporters´.
The reality concerning the Milosevic trial was diametrically opposite. A reality which can also be verified by everyone.
All one needs is to take the trouble of reading the trial transcripts.
It is nothing short of an objective and hard fact that it was not Milosevic who was under attack in his trial but the tribunal. And not only ´today´.
When the prosecutors had to conclude their evidence after years, prominent Dutch newspapers, like the Volkskrant titled its article ´No conclusive evidence against Slobodan Milosevic´ (VK 26 February 2004), and the NRC even chose the title: ´Case against Milosevic 'falls apart’´ (NRC 28 February 2004).
This, already at that moment, matter of fact is, through the last years, clearly deeply sunk in collective subconsciousness, apparently as a result of the stereotyping, increasingly hammered by the tribunal protagonists that the tribunal was mercilessly busy nailing down the rogue Milosevic.
For years the prosecutors called hundreds of witnesses against him and rained tons of documents on him, but still a 'sound case' against him was missing.
Things got only worse for the tribunal when Milosevic finally started his defense. What the flatterers of the tribunal, passing themselves as reporters, hid from the general public in Western countries is that with the help of his witnesses Milosevic, more and more, wreaked havoc on what was still left from the accusations.
What he was able to show over the past 16 months, to a great extent with the help of Western witnesses, was not only catastrophic for his prosecutors but it was also so disastrous to NATO that it must have sent an alarm.
Just as the Western public opinion, misled and manipulated by a common front of politicians and media had to be reversed as regards the myth of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction after the war of aggression against Iraq, in the same way Milosevic exposed at the tribunal systematically the Western misconceptions about the NATO´s war of 1999 against Yugoslavia.
Charge of chasing 'a Greater Serbia' no longer persued
In August 2005 prosecutor Nice felt compelled to announce that Milosevic would no longer be prosecuted on the central indictment that he tried to create a Greater Serbia with violence.
This brought down the whole construction of the complaints raised against him, which was based on, and kept together by, the central charge that Milosevic, as the leader of a criminal organization, did everything to create a Greater Serbia.
During the tribunal´s session on 29 November 2005, according to the transcripts of the proceedings, Milosevic reacted to this as follows:
'On the 25th of August this year, Mr. Nice, after three
and a half year of trial, said that he was not prosecuting
me on account of a Greater Serbia, and he ascribed that
idea to me from the very outset, from his introductory
remarks and then through the testimonies of almost half of
even more than half of his witnesses who - his witnesses, who spoke of a Greater Serbia as my objective and answered questions put by him to them in that context. (...) What is the fate of these proceedings that have been going on for over three years where you and I, and problably the other side, thougth that I was being tried for a Greater Serbia, which was the objective of some kind of alleged joint criminal enterprise? So what was what we tried to deal with when putting questions to the witnesses and in dealing with all the evidence, because that is what Mr. Nice was alleging through his witnesses? So then, what is the legal validity of that part of the proceedings, when we are all being deluded into believing that this was the main objective of the Prosecution? So what´s the point of all these witnesses who talked about a Greater Serbia as my primary goal here? Are you going to take that out of the evidence, or are you going to let me examine them further?
Also what about this joint criminal enterprise? And what would its objective be after this change? And what is this phantom of a joint criminal enterprise that is being discussed here? And what is it that is exactly being alleged? People who are sitting here, including you, on the one hand, simply cannot know all the things that are referred to in all these documents that Mr. Nice served - a million pages, no less - and no one knows what the Prosecutor is prosecuting, including the Prosecutor herself. She doesn´t know either.
I think even Franz Kafka would feel that he did not have great imagination compared to this.´
Further havoc to NATO's carefully spinned positions
But the damage, caused by Milosevic to the Tribunal, was getting even bigger. And it turned against the Western accusers themselves like a boomerang.
Milosevic presented, again with mostly Western witnesses, forceful evidence that there was no humanitarian emergency in Kosovo on the eve of the NATO war of 1999 against Yugoslavia, that the KLA was conducting a large-scale terrorist campaign at the time, that international terrorism had secure positions in Bosnia while it was being supported by the West throughout the 1990’s, that the Twin Towers suicide terrorist Hatta resided there for a number of years in the 1990’s and that Osama Bin Laden was received by the Bosnian president Izetbegovic in November 1995.
It became a reflex for the tribunal judges to immediately dismiss these last testimonies as 'irrelevant'. Obviously, they attempted to keep a lid on such explosive announcements.
As if this had not been bad enough for the tribunal's case, Milosevic's witnesses gave also evidence that the Albanians were not driven out by the activities of the Serbian army in Kosovo but mostly as a result of the intensive NATO bombings and the intimidation by the KLA. For that reason there were also relatively more Kosovo Serbs among the refugees than Kosovo Albanians during the 1999 war.
When Alice Mahon, who was a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly at that time, finally gave evidence that the civil population was openly terrorized by the NATO bombings in the 1999 war, Milosevic was found dead a few days later.
Motives on NATO's side
Milosevic thus did not have a motive for suicide but the tribunal-entourage working for NATO did have a motive for murder. And let there be no misunderstanding that the tribunal is swarming with officials who have close connections with NATO.When the former vice-prosecutor Hewitt stepped back, he already stressed in an interview with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad that countless tribunal officials spent at least as much time at the US Embassy in the Hague as at the tribunal's office.
The case was getting completely out of hand for NATO(countries), the instigators and the financers of the tribunal. Earlier attempts to silence Milosevic by assigning him a lawyer and to reduce him to silent ‘attendance’ in his own trial failed. Then there was the unexpected factor which the tribunal could not control, namely the massive refusal of the witnesses to appear as witnesses under such conditions in the first place. Under this massive boycott the trial was on the verge of disintegrating.
It is obvious that enormous interests are at stake. After Abu Graïb and Guantanamo Bay, people, also in the West, are less gullible regarding the Western scruples in matters concerning human rights.
Milosevic's determination
I am one of the few Dutchmen who has had candid discussions with Milosevic. That way, I have had the opportunity to get to know him personally, as well as his standpoints and motives, in an informal setting. I can say that as a lawyer I have seldom met anybody who was so convinced of his case. And of his possibilities to prove it. If something escaped him, that was commonplace intrigues. He had a mission and he stood behind it, without reservations.
Also his assigned counsel Steven Kay declared 11 March 2006 on BBC World that he spoke with Milosevic just some weeks ago about suicide. Kay stated that he could not imagine that Milosevic had undertaken any suicidal action, that Milosevic, to his opinion, was determined to bring this fight before the tribunal to an end and that Milosevic told him that he had not waged this legal battle with an intention finally to bring at stake his own life.
This opinion is shared by everyone who was in close contact with Milosevic. He was firmly determined to finish his job.
The next witness, scheduled to testify, the former Montenegrin president Momir Bulatovic, told a news conference that Milosevic, during the last months of his life and imprisonment, was 'strongly and deeply' convinced that he was being poisoned by the tribunal.
Bulatovic stipulated:
"The crown proof that Milosevic was poisoned is the Hague tribunal's indifference - the tribunal did nothing - although the medication was found in his bloodstream on 12 january, while the results of tests were given to Milosevic only on 9 March."
He also stated:
"On 9 march, Milosevic spoke to the assistant of the imposed defence lawyer, Gillian Higgins and asked her to refer to the court council his request that an independant medical commission establish whether he was being poisoned."
And H.E. James Bissett, the former Canada's Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1990 to 1992, who testified as a witness on February 23-24 said in an interview with CKUK's 'Monday's Encounter':
"When I went te see him in penitentiary in the Hague, Milosevic was dressed very casually. (..) He looked good. He had good color. He was relaxed. He had a sense of humor. He was obviously busy trying to prepare for my testomony and he struck me as being reasonable content with the way the trial was going on."
And:
"The following day, however, it was in the afternoon around five o'clock after two or three hours with him, he suddenly became flushed in the face and clasped his hands to his head. I was startled and asked if he was all right. He answered that he was O.K. and explained that he suffered from a loud ringing sound in his ears that seemed as though he was speaking in an empty pail. He told me that although his blood pressure was under control he had this constant ringing and echoing sounds in his head."
And, finally, Socialist Party aide of Milosevic, Milorad Vucelic, recounting a phone conversation the day before Milosevic's death, declared that the ex-president was very defiant:
"He told me, Don't worry, they will not destroy me or break me; I shall defeat them all".
More than 200 pages appeals to the tribunal to stop it to endanger his life
If “they” did not kill Milosevic, for which they had every power and opportunity in a setting like the prison, then they drove him to death. The warnings, appeals and supplications by organizations that were sympathetic to him to stop compromising his life and health, consists of more than 200 pages accumulated over the years.
Not only medical negligence
But, as already stipulated, also strong indications remain that there was not only a matter of medical negligence but there are also strong indications that his health deliberately and directly was undermined during, certainly, at least some crucial periods of his process.
The final piece is constituted by the very suspect events during the first period of 2006. After it became clear that it would be impossible to stop Milosevic to continue, through his witnesses, to establish facts which are for NATO and its usual tales about the recent Yugoslav history higly compromising.
In January 2006 a drug used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis, and interfering with medicines Milosevic was taking for high bood pressure and vascular disease was found in his blood samples, but this was never made public untill shortly before his death.
According to an official statement after Milosevic´s death by the tribunal's registrar Holthuis, the tribunal would not have not been informed about this medical report before March 7, 2006. Neither Milosevic himself was informed before this date about this medical report.
This state of affairs raises the more suspicion since, normally, Milosevic received all medical reports concerning himself shortly after his examinations and so did the tribunal, when it was the commissioner of the medical reporting.
Urgent questions
So the question raises: why this report was kept secret for such a long time? And who decided to keep this report secret for such a prolonged period of time?
This are the more urgent questions because there is no doubt that this drug in his blood was extremely dangerous for him and made him to be in acute mortual danger.
So who decided to keep him for such a prolonged period in mortual danger?
Those who decided to keep this highly explosive and alarming medical report secret for two months must also have been well informed about the content, and, as a consequence, they must must have been fully aware that Milosevic's life was at stake by the drugs found in his blood.
Were it the same forces which applied these drugs to him?
These drugs must have had a further devastating effect to his health and everybody could see this further deterioration of his health reflected in his his whole appearance. Despite this clear signal, the trial chamber didn't take any measure in favour of him, which might have shown any feeling of responsibility for his obviously further declining health.
Finally Milosevic felt forced to file a request at the tribunal to seek medical relief and treatment in Russia.
Those malicious forces responsible for the fact that this highly alarming medical report remained secret for such a prologed period also succeeeded in keeping it secret till after the tribunal had decided upon this request. On February 24, 2006, this request was denied bij the trial chamber.
If the trial chamber knew, at the moment of its ruling, about the content of this report, then there can be no other conclusion then that the tribunal's judges were part of a plot hatched against Milosevic, or even the insprirators of that plot.
Because then it would be sure that, despite that they were aware that Milosevic's life was seriously endangered by extremely harmful drugs in his blood, they deliberate would have ignored and concealed that.
If the judges of the trial chamber really would not have been familiar with the content of the report before it was given to Milosevic, nevertheless a number of questions remain.
The most urgent questions which, then, will remain are: why the judges refrained from insisting on getting acqainted with the content of this report as soon as possible an why they accepted that the release of this report remained forthcoming ?
Was this simply because the judges of the trial chamber were not interested in the health of Milosevic at all ?
Or was there something more behind it ?
Was it, maybe, more convenient to the tribunal's judges 'to be not wiser' and was it, consequently, a matter of tactics for the trail chamber's judges to abstain from insisting upon the release of the report?
So that they could hold a free hand to dismiss Milosevic's request for medical treatment in Moscow ?
Or were they even secretely tipped about the tendency the report and and was this enough knowledge for them to abstain from further insistence upon a full release ?
Bad faith by the trial chamber anyhow
Anyhow, it is a matter of fact that the trial chamber's judges have not taken any action in order to be able to take into account the content of this pending medical report in their pending decision upon Milosevic's request for medical treatment in Moscow.
This alone is already giving evidence of their bad faith with respect to Milosevic.
Refusal to allow treatment in Moscow
Further evidence of their bad faith with respect to Milosevic follows from the reasoning of their ruling, which states:
"The Chamber notes that the the Accused is currently in the latter stages of a very lengthy trial, in which he is charges with many serious crimes, and at the end of which, if convicted, he may face the possibility of life inprisonment. In these circumstances, and notwithstanding the guarantees of the Russian Federation and the personal undertaking of the Accused, the Trial Chamber is not satisfied that the first prong of the test has been met - that is , that it is the more likely than not that the Accused, if released, would return for continuation of his trial."
As already stated by Andy Wilcoxson, member of the Slobodan Milosevic Freedom Centre The Hague on the February 24, 2006 edition of his site www.slobodan-milosevic.org/hague.htm:
"What the tribunal is saying here is that the Russian Government can not be trusted to apprehend a 64-year-old man with a hart condition if he tried to escape. For all its empty rethoric about human rights, what the Hague Tribunal has shown by its decision is that it is perfectly happy to imperil a man's life just for the sake of politics."
This was written by Andy Wilcoxson, not realizing that he really forecasted by this Milosevic's death only two weeks later.
Earlier the tribunal allowed people accused to go back to Kosovo and Montenegro. Like, for instance, Pavle Strugar for a hip replacement surgery. Why it has more trust in the government of Montenegro or the 'interim administration' of Kosovo than the Russian Federation, which has given its word to return Milosevic, is not explained, but the insult to a permanent momber of the Security Council is inescapable.
The day after his death a report posted on the official website of the Russia Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated:
"Russian doctors were ready to offer him due assistance and the Russian authorities guaranteed the fulfillment of all related ICTY requirements. Unfortunately, despite our guarantees the tribunal refused to give Milosevic a chance to get treatment in Russia."
On March 15, 2006, the head of the Russian medical team, which had been prepared to treat him in Moscow, Leo Bokeria, member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, declared at a press conference in the Hague:
"Ãf Milosevic was taken to any specialised Russian hospital, the more so to such a stationary medical institution as ours, he would have been subjected to coronographic examination, two stents would be made, and he would have lived for many long years to come. A person has died in our contemparary epoch, when all the methods to treat him were available and the proposals of our country and the reputation of our medicine were ignored."
And:
"Ãt's a great regret that they did not heed our numerous appeals during examination. The point is that a man who had suffered from a complex illness and the heart and vascular system was not examined adequately, and thus naturally he could not be cured. If he had had a coronary arteriography...then of course he would have undergone surgery or a bypass and he would be alive".
Finally top Russian heart specialist Bokeria said he believed the right medical examinations of Milosevic could have prevented his death.
Deliberate delay of the release of the medical reporting - more questions
If the trial chamber's judges really didn't know anything about the content of the medical report which revealed the drugs in his blood, it must be concluded that those malicious forces who were after Milosevic's physical destruction must have deliberately delayed the release of this report. In order to prevent that their positive knowledge that Milosevic's life was seriously endangered would became common.
After all, there is no denying the fact that the release of this ominous report was delayed for two months. And, considering the highly alarming content and the fact that the report even had to deal with a life-threatening situation for Milosevic, it must be held for sure, unless still the opposite would be evidenced, that this was done deliberately.
So if it were not the trial chamber's judges who spearheaded this final conspiracy against Milosevic's life, than other tribunal official must have been responsible for that.
According to Holthuis, the tribunal's registrar in his above-mentioned official statement, the trial chamber of the tribunal also received the report only March 7, 2006, but without taking any action.
So why not ?
If the trial chamber's judges would have been trustful, they of course would have taken action immediately.
The more because their daily experience with Milosevic and the fact that they simply must have been aware that he was in a growing bad health.
But no alarm, no action from the trial chamber's judges after they got familiar with the content of this report.
Instead, they did nothing at all.
They only silenced the very existence of this report, and its very alarming content.
Milosevic pointed out the existence of the report to the outside world, not the tribunal
For it also should be stressed that it was not the tribunal which finally released the existence of this highly disturbing medical report, and, consequently, the existence of these highly worrying medical facts, but Milosevic.
Through a letter, a cry for help to the Russian government, which become public only after his death.
So the existence of this medical report became only public after the text of a handwritten letter emerged, dated March 8, send by Milosevic to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs and asking for active steps by the Russians in order to bring about a medical treatment for him in Russia.
This letter stated, as far as relevant:
“I think that the persistence, with which the medical treatment in Russia was denied, in the first place is motivated by the fear that through careful examination it would be discovered that there were active, wilful steps taken, to destroy my health throughout the proceedings of the trial, which could not be hidden from Russian specialists.
In order to verify my allegations, I´m presenting you a simple example which you can find in the attachment. This document, which I received on March 7, shows, that on January 12th (i.e. two months ago), an extreme strong drug was found in my blood, which is used, as they themselves say, for the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy, although I never used any kind of antibiotic during this 5 years that I´m in their prison.
(..)Also the fact that doctors needed 2 MONTHS (to report to me) can´t have any other explanation than we are facing manupulation. (emphasis added by the author). In any case, those who foist on me a drug against leprosy can´t treat my illness; likewise those from which I defended my country in times of war and who have an interest to silence me.”
Not directly being poisoned doesn't mean that Milosevic was not deliberately killed
At the autopsy performed by the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) it was established that Milosevic died as a result of a cardiac arrest and that there were no traces of drugs in his blood.
However, as far as the results of this autopsy are considered reliable, this only proves that he was not directly poisoned at the eve of his death.
But this outcome, in no way, establishes that there were not, in an earlier stage, deliberate efforts to undermine his health.
In order to imperil, step by step, his life.
Alarming signals in November 2002
Already in 2002 there had been alarming signals that Milosevic deliberately received drugs which were damaging his fragile health.
On 23 November 2002 the leading Dutch Newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported, titled “Milosevic got wrong medicine”, as far as relevant here:
“In the Scheveningen prison Slobodan Milosevic was given the wrong medicine, causing his blood pressure to rise very quickly. This was why at the beginning of this month the trial against the former president of Yugoslavia was supended. Sources within the tribunal have confirmed this. However a spokesman for the Tribunal denies that mistakes were made. He refuses to discuss the issue further on grounds that “This is about the privacy of the defendant.”
On 18 November 2002 a cardiological report was handed over to Milosevic, resulting from a medical examination on November 15th, which stated inter alia:
“PATIENT HISTORY
In recent weeks during trial again steep blood pressure up
to around 220/120 to 130 mmHg. The patient had no other
complains related to this. I am now asked to make a
prognosis regarding Mr. MILOSEVIC´s blood pressure and
determine whether the patient is still fit to stand
trial.”
And further, under the paragraph “Discussion”:
“During the trial again strong increase in blood pressure.
Most likely a combination of an existing tendency to
hypertension and the mental pressure of the trial.”
This all was going on exactly in a time period that the prosecutor was vehemently making fresh attempts to convince the trial chamber that it was urgently needed to force Milosevic to accept counsel and to usurp his right to defend himself.
In order to silence him.
So in view of this purpose there were, at that very moment, good reasons to deteriorate his health and to cause a situation that his blood pressure got persistently out of hand.
In order to bring him into a state of health which would it make impossible to him to conduct his own defence.
Alarming signals in August 2004
Two years later, the prosecutor did again her utmost to drive Milosevic out of his own defence. And, instead, to make Kay his spokesman in court, while Milosevic again furiously opposed this attempt to move him out.
During his inspired plea against these renewed infamous attempts in the court session of September 1, 2004, Milosevic stipulated that he was fit enough to continue his own defence and, subsequently, stressed the incident mentioned hereafter:
“Therefore I wish to reiterate: My right to defend myself
is something that I will neither accept having diminished
nor will I ever waive it. Please bear that in mind.
And you can reach your own decisions, but I receive the
medicaments given to by your people, your employees.
What is happening here, I don´t know, but I can bring the
whole floor of the Detention Unit here to testify what
happened when the food I had was exchanged with the food
of the person across the passageway, and there was a big
to-do about setting things right, although the food
apparently was the same. It appeared to be the same. And I
did not raise the issue. I don´t know what was going on.
But please be kind enough to bear in mind that when, for
three years, they have been saying one thing and now
suddenly they turn around and say something else, I am
right in having suspicions. My suspicions may or may not
be justified, but they are well grounded.”
(Trial transcripts September 1, 2004 - pages 32351 to
32351)
The last remark was regarding his doctors, who had always stated, untill that very moment, that he was enough fit to defend himself, but now had taken the opposite position.
And again, also that specific period of this incident was a crucial one in the attempts of the prosecutor to topple Milosevic´s own defence.
And this time the Prosecutor succeeded: Kay has been installed as counsel.
But even this attempt finally failed, because, as already pointed out, the process threatened to fizzle out since the witnesses refused to show up.
And so the tribunal and the prosecutor were forced again to back down.
And, grinding their teeth, they were forced to re-establish Milosevic's right to conduct his own defence.
So there was only one way left to silence Milosevic.
An ultimate and definitive one.
Legal steps against the tribunal's officials
Over the recent years I have acted repeatedly on Milosevic’s behalf. In trials to defend his fundamental human rights within the Dutch legal order. In that context, he has empowered me to take whatever steps were necessary at a given moment. That was the case with the trials against the Dutch State after his kidnapping to The Hague, the proceedings against the then 'amicus curiae' Wladimiroff, against Kay, who threatened to usurp his right of defense, etc. Similarly, legal steps will be taken against the relevant tribunal officers, judges as well as prosecutors, on account of the cruel and inhuman treatment in the context of the Anti-Torture Treaty, a cruel and inhuman treatment by, at least, denying Milosevic, a sick man whose life was in danger for years, the necessary medical care. And by not giving him the support that was necessary, as was evident by the state of his health for years.
The tribunal's officials have protected themselves with a broad immunity from prosecution. But acts contrary to the Convention against Torture are excluded.
Mr. N.M.P. Steijnen
April 08, 2006
Trifkovic on Islam - Radio interview transcript
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi/Islam/Islam_as_the_Agent_.html?seemore=y
ChroniclesExtra! Friday, April 07, 2006
ISLAM AS THE AGENT OF REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE
The following is from an interview with Srdja Trifkovic broadcast live on April 7, 2006, on The Right Balance http://www.therightbalance.org/ (abbreviated transcript)
* The show’s presenter Greg Allen first asked Dr. Trifkovic to draw a distinction between Islamic terrorism and other varieties of the same problem: What makes Jihadist terrorism different? *
TRIFKOVIC: All other forms of terrorism use it as an instrument in pursuit of some wider objective. The Bolsheviks were blowing up banks in 1905 and assassinating political leaders, and their purpose was to undermine the structure of the system so that when the revolutionary moment comes, as it did in 1917, you go a stage further. With ETA in Spain, the IRA, Sendero Luminoso, Tamil Tigers, or the Sighs in India, you have terrorist outrages but they are not an integral part of the mindset, the world outlook of the given group. With Islam, terrorism is not only an instrument, a tool, it is also the core of policy itself. Terrorist violence is not only divinely sanctioned, it is divinely ordained. We don’t have time for the details, but suffice to say that the condoning and overt advocacy of violence both in the primary texts of Islam, such as the Kuran and the Hadith, the traditions and sayings of the “prophet,” and in more than 13 centuries of Islam’s historic practice, make that record pretty straightforward. For people to still debate the allegedly peaceful nature of Islam, its “true character,” is plainly absurd. The truth is out there and those who want to deny it are the same ones who, 50 years ago, would have been the apologists for Uncle Joe, or 30 years ago would have claimed that the bold experiment of Chairman Mao was paving the way for the future. [...]
The mindset of appeasement, even after Munich 1938, is at work. It’s not only that those who had claimed that Mein Kampf was a pacifist tract, or that Uncle Joe’s Moscow trials were an exercise in impeccable legality, are now acting as the apologists for Islam. They are actively importing the jihadist fifth column! It is the particular emphasis of my book that we need an absolute moratorium on the immigration of Muslims into both Western Europe and North America, coupled with the denial of citizenship to all practicing Muslims, the denial of security clearances, and the policy of systematic deportation of all jihadists activists. Once we realize that jihad is a political mindset and that jihadist activities—which are inherently discriminatory against women, against Jews, against so-called infidels—are a political, subversive and radically seditious activity with a revolutionary objective, i.e. turning the World of War into the World of Faith, Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam, then we’ll realize that the First Amendment no longer applies. To all intents and purposes Islam ought to be regarded as a violent political ideology rather than just a religious cult.
* The next question concerned the curious tendency of the Left to overlook, ignore, or even deny Islam’s mistreatment of women, homosexuals, and other “protected minorities.” *
TRIFKOVIC: The explanation is fairly simple, and we see the same syndrome all over the place. For instance in Scandinavia you have literally a rape epidemic, perpetrated by Muslim immigrants against Swedish, Norwegian and Danish women. And yet, very active, very well organized and financed feminist movements in those countries are keeping quiet—both about the epidemic itself, and about the identity of its perpetrators.
The reason is that the Left sees Islam as a de facto ally—as Marxists would say, an “objective ally”—in the destruction of the vestiges of the traditional society based upon Christianity and its moral code, and traditional cultural patterns. So what they are doing is using Islam as the battering ram and as a would-be fellow-traveler, in their grand anti-Christian, Christophobic design. They hope that once they create their brave, new multiculturalist Utopia, Islam can be tamed, that soft porn and state education will convert the Muslims’ offspring to the general multiculturalist melange.
We know they’re wrong because we know that second and third-generation Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in France and Britain, are far more radical and far more Islamic-minded than their parents and grandparents. The explanation is very simple: the tepid, non-descript multiculturalist pap that is being offered by the dominant elites cannot inspire these young men and women. They need something that gives meaning to their lives, and so they fall back upon the religion of their forefathers—and once they do that, they cannot do otherwise but turn against the multiculturalist host-society. So the Leftists are making a colossal miscalculation. Far from being the clients of their future global welfare state, the Muslims—in the Western world in particular—will be the agents of revolutionary change not only against the remnants of Christianity today, but also against the secularist, multicultural Utopia of tomorrow.
* Greg Allen’s next question concerned the difference between Islam’s basic tenets and the teaching of other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity: do we all worship the same God, as some claim? *
One of the clichés that are endlessly repeated by those who seek to conceal the true nature of Islam is that Muslims “believe in the same God” as Christians and Jews. This is a severe distortion of the truth. What Muslims believe is that they know the true nature of God that Judaism and Christianity tell lies about, and have a distorted picture. The fact that Muslims share a Levantine monotheism of sorts with Judaism and Christianity only makes them more, not less antagonistic to us… The concept of an utterly transcendent Allah that cannot be “known” and doesn’t “reach out” to man or man to him. There is no “contact” with God that is essential to the Judaic and Christian tradition. In fact, the forlorn call, repeated five times a day from every minaret in the world, sounds more like the cry of an abandoned child for an absentee father.
At the practical level, the notion that Muslims award Christians and Jews some level of respect as “the people of the book” is also greatly distorted. In practice it only means that for as long as they accept the status of second-class citizens, and pay the poll tax with “the hand of humility,” their security will be guaranteed—but not their equality of rights.
At the theological level, the fundamental difference is the absence of love. It needs to be understood that Islam’s denial of the Trinity creates a completely different world outlook. “Allah begets not,” i.e. he is no Father, and “is not begotten,” i.e. he is no Son, and no one is like him, i.e. no Holy Spirit. The utterly . . . not only “monotheistic” but monistic image of the world under an unreachable, unknowable god, creates the kind of spiritual uniformity that ultimately results in both cultural and social-economic wasteland that is the Muslim world today. [ . . . ]
What is known as Islam’s “golden age” happened largely in spite of Islam, rather than thanks to it. Connecting the brief blossoming of arts and sciences in Baghdad and Cordoba with the “benevolent” influence of Islam is the same as saying that the high level of scholarship on Pushkin or Tolstoy in Moscow in the 1950s was the result of Stalinism and dialectical materialism, or that the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwaengler was as good as it was in the late 1930s thanks to Nazism. But the true causes of squalor and corruption in the Muslim world are indeed moral and cultural, rather than economic. After that brief period of flowering its had very little to offer to the world, either in the sphere of ideas or in the sphere of material production—even though it had that unique geographic position at the crossroads of civilizations . . . The problem cannot be resolved by seeking to import Western technology and Western know-how, while retaining the old mindset. We’ve already seen it with the Ottoman Turkey in the 19th century. They’d brought in Western engineers and military officers, and doctors, to train their Muslim students, but the latter never managed to produce more than what was imparted to them.
The problem remains insoluble to this day. The Christian world’s discipline, cohesion, ingenuity and prosperity are rooted in certain aspects of the Western psyche that cannot be easily transplanted. It has a lot to do with the notion of delayed gratification as opposed to instant gratification and sensuality that is the hallmark of the Muslim world.
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Dr. S. Trifkovic, Foreign Affairs Editor
CHRONICLES, 928 N Main Street, Rockford, IL 61103, USA
voice (815) 964-5054 fax (815) 964-9403 cell (312) 375-4044
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi
Notes From Belgrade by Boba Borojevic
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/borojevic/029.shtml
Notes From Belgrade
By Boba Borojevic
April 8, 2006 - My last three visits to Belgrade happened to be at the time
of major events there. Massive demonstrations of some half a million people
took to the streets of Belgrade on October 5th 2000. It marked the downfall
of Milosevic’s regime and take over by Democratic Opposition of Serbia. I
believed as much as the rest of protestors who spent days and nights in the
streets of Belgrade protesting at that time, that the "October Revolution"
was going to radically transform the country for the better. The results
have been disappointing and the rest is history.
My next visit to Belgrade happened to be on September 11, 2001. The moment
I landed to Belgrade airport, I heard the news about the first terrorist
attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The Serbs' reactions to
9-11-01? Almost everyone said it was a terrible tragedy, and they meant it.
But then a lot of people would move on to a more delicate issue: What had
Americans expected, after all? Yugoslavia was one of many countries bombed
by the United States contrary to international law, with no sanction from
the United Nations. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon will subsequently lead to ‘War on terror” and Islamic extremism in
the World, Europe, Bosnia and Kosovo.
On my third visit, I arrived in Belgrade on March 15 2006 only a couple of
minutes after the plane carrying the body of the former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic from the Netherlands touched down at the city's airport.
No government representative stood on the tarmac to meet it, only dozens of
Milosevic’s supporters and party members. The coffin, wrapped in plastic,
slid down a conveyor belt from the belly of the jet and sat untouched for a
few minutes under light snow. Milosevic’s associates approached the casket.
They placed a Serbian flag and roses over the casket of the man who once
was a popularly elected president, and quietly carried it to a commercial
hearse. Several hundred mourners lined part of the road and tossed
carnations at the hearse. Slobodan Milosevic was buried in a quiet ceremony
at his family estate in his hometown of Pozarevac on a cold winter day, on
Saturday, March 18. The funeral followed an emotional farewell in Belgrade
that drew about 150,000 followers who packed a square in front of the
federal parliament to pay their respects. They gave the former leader, a
hero's farewell and pronounced him a victim of the U.N. war crimes
tribunal, in whose custody he died on March 11.
Scott Taylor, Boba Borojevic and H.E. James Bissett at SANU
The funeral of the former president Slobodan Milosevic completely
overshadowed news of a major three day conference, which carried the title
Kosovo and Metohija: past, present and future, organized by the Serbian
Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) from 16 – 18th March. Excellent
speakers from eleven countries gave their speeches at the conference. We
heard many respected professors, diplomats, historians and journalists
speak on the theme of Kosovo, such as James Bissett, Scott Taylor, Diana
Johnston, Peter Maher, Sir Alfred Sherman, Srdja Trifkovic, academician
Kosta Mihajlovic and Stevan Karamata, Slavenko Terzic, Raju Thomas, Caslav
Ocic, Smilja Avramov, Kosta Cavoski, and many more. Their arguments as to
why Kosovo should remain part of Serbia can be categorized into four
groups:
Historical and cultural: Kosovo and Metohia historically and culturally
belong to the Serbs. Kosovo was part of Serbia as early as the Nemanjic
dynasty (12th-14th c.). Kosovo and Metohia are considered the key to the
identity of the Serbs. Kosovo is a place where the first Serbian kings were
crowned and where there are Orthodox Christian monasteries with precious
icons, listed by UNESCO as world cultural monuments. The seat of the
independent Serbian Orthodox Church was in Pec, in Kosovo. Serbs call
Kosovo and Metohia the heart of Serbia and the cradle of the Serbian state
and nation.
Economical: Serbia has poured a good deal of money into Kosovo and
Metohia. “For decades, significant federal resources have been set aside
for the development of Kosovo and Metohia, the reason being that all the
previous Yugoslav constitutions stipulated "more rapid development for
under-developed regions, and the most rapid for Kosovo and Metohia" as the
federation's obligation. Data for the period 1981-1988 on total
contributions and funds received by republics and autonomous provinces
according to federal regulations shows that Central Serbia (meaning
Republic of Serbia without its autonomous provinces - Vojvodina and Kosovo
and Metohja) had the largest outflow (212 billion dinars), and Kosovo and
Metohia the largest inflow (113 billion dinars). Kosovo and Metohia was
also the largest relative "winner" - receiving 12 times more of these funds
than it gave,” said Caslav Ocic in his speech. For instance, Kosovo
received 30-50% of the total investments made by the Federation's Fund for
Under-Developed Regions and the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development. The rate of investments was always noticeably higher in Kosovo
than in Serbia or Yugoslavia, from 30 to 200%. Despite Albanian demands for
independence, Belgrade is still paying the Kosovo's international debt to
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The bill amounts to a
total of $1.4 billion and Serbia puts aside 250 million dollars every year
in order to pay these debts back. A number of speakers at the conference
concluded that an independent Kosovo would be economically unsustainable.
Legal and Political: The aerial attacks launched by NATO against Yugoslavia
in 1999 establish the truth of the axiom: “Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely”. There is no legal sanction
whatsoever for this unilateral action by NATO, carried out at the behest of
the US. The NATO action can only be described as an arbitrary and blatant
violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a member state of
the UN, which has no legal sanction under international law.
The independence of Kosovo, which was expected by many western observers as
the most logical solution after the war in 1999 is in fact an option, which
would seriously destabilize the entire Balkans. An independent Kosovo would
not only be economically unsustainable but would generate serious security
problems for the neighboring countries. Hardly any Serb would be able to
live in an independent Kosovo. In fact, a new ethnically clean Albanian
state of Kosovo, based on Islamic law will continue to provide the breeding
ground for international terrorist groups in the Balkans. A “failed state”
of Kosovo showed to be incapable of protecting minorities and preventing
horrible atrocities to take place against the Serbian civilian population
and other minorities. ”Failed states are”, according to James Bissett
“defined as those countries whose governments have weakened to the point
where they can no longer provide adequate public services, physical
security or economic livelihood to their inhabitants. They become
attractive to terrorist organizations as safe havens and as staging grounds
for attacks on other targets.” It remains to be seen if the Kosovo
precedent of a selective use of unilateralism and even pre-emptive military
action will be applied in the other conflict areas of the world in the
event Kosovo becomes independent.
Ideological and Civilizational: Defending Kosovo means defending Christian
civilization. An independent Albanian Kosovo will succumb to the cause of
global jihad. Kosovo’s current leaders (members of KLA) have obtained
significant aid from Islamic countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan. Kosovo has become a predominantly Muslim society with the obvious
intention to wipe out any trace of Christianity there. In his speech Sir
Alfred Sherman noted that: “Governments seem helpless or unwilling to stem
the tide. Spokesmen for the EU laud this Muslim colonization as Europe and
the Muslim world as coming together, ignoring its utter one-sidedness.
Criticism of these trends is stifled as “racism”, ignoring consideration of
patriotism, national consciousness and social order. The undermining of
national homogeneity based on common values is leading to a visible social
breakdown.”
“After almost two decades of Yugoslavia’s crisis and disintegration,”
explained Srdja Trifkovic in his speech, “too many Serbs still cherish too
many illusions about the nature of the Western beast, its hostility to
Christianity and to any form of ethnic coherence of European nations. To
the promoters of such Western pathology, those who argue that they should
be entitled to keep a territory because they feel a strong, centuries-long
historical bond to it, or because they had built lovely Christian churches
in it, or because it underpins their moral code and spirituality based on
Christian martyrdom, or because they are defending themselves against an
aggressive and resurgent Islam… are only proving the necessity of having
that territory taken away from them! The arguments advanced by Belgrade’s
distinguished professors only confirm to the luminaries of the
International Community that Kosovo should be detached from Serbia in order
to cure her from such retrograde atavisms. An ideological commitment to
neoliberal globalization has turned multiculturalism and open-ended,
predominantly Muslim immigration into two inviolable dogmas of the elite
class. Its members reject the suggestion that the shared legacy of the
European family and its common historical experiences are worthy of
preserving as such. That is why they will do their utmost to detach Kosovo
from Serbia… This important lesson is yet to be absorbed in Belgrade.”
My congratulations go to SANU for putting together a conference such as
this one. Advertisement of the conference was the only thing that was
poorly executed. We were told, however, that SANU intends to publish a book
with the materials presented at the conference, which will in a sense
represent a testimony of the time for some future generations.
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Western peace prevention continues in former Yugoslavia
Latest news:
http://news.google.be/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Kosovo
Serbs still not ready to return to Kosovo politics
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2006/04/07/feature-02
EU prepares for police mission in Kosovo
http://euobserver.com/15/21349
"Kosovo still needs U.S. to help keep peace"
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1144399569186100.xml&coll=2
"The referendum bears great significance to the Albanians in Montenegro"
http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/agencija/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=19645&NrIssue=430&NrSection=20
Independence by Minority?
http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=161&NrSection=4&NrArticle=16459
The role of the Ohrid Framework Agreement and
the peace process in Macedonia - A reality check
http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/2006/Vankovska_Macedonia_Check.pdf
'''''''''''''''''''''
http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/2006/pi234_PeacePrevention.html
The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF)
Western peace prevention continues in former Yugoslavia*
PressInfo # 234
March 9, 2006
By Jan Oberg, TFF director
If you believe that Western politics should serve as a model of decency, fairness and principled policies, consider these topical news from ex-Yugoslavia:
. Kofi Annan's envoy on Kosovo, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, tells Der Spiegel that Kosovo is heading for independence. In a tone that can only be characterized as arrogant, he tells the Serb side that they should know the rules of the game and know their own best interests. This simply means he is no mediator who listens to and respects all sides with a view to find a fair solution. He is an agent for powers who can dictate their solution. Is Kofi Annan concerned?
. Kosovo which was bombed off from Serbia and occupied by NATO's illegal war in 1999 thus seems lost for Serbia. Will the remaining Serbs in Kosovo run away, start a guerrilla movement, try to join Serbia? Will there be a border war at some point? While all experts agree that Kosovo's leaders have not lived up to minimum standards for human rights, tolerance and refugee returns over the last seven years, the status will now come before standards; it is the exactly opposite of what the West decided a few years ago.
. Kofi Annan's Representative, Danish diplomat Søren Jessen Petersen, running UNMIK in the province, for a second time praises a suspected war criminal. Is Kofi Annan concerned that top-level UN staff does that? Earlier it was Ramush Haradinaj, the former Prime Minister indicted in the Hague. Now it is Agim Ceku, the new PM. Denmark has enough of scandals on its desk right now, so Jessen Petersen's flirtation with ethnic cleansers perhaps doesn't add much.
. Ceku was a leading officer in the Croatian Army when - in 1995 with the help of CIA and mercenary companies - it ethnically cleansed about 200.000 legitimate Croatian Serb citizens out of Croatia. 90% of them are still refugees in Serbia, no one supporting their return. Thus, all Yugoslavia's minorities were not and are not protected by Western human rights; Serbs are not worthy victims.
From 1993, Ceku went down and helped the most extremist people in his native Kosovo to build the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army behind the back of Dr. Rugova, the only pacifist leader in the now chopped-up country. (I know what Ceku did because I have had him tell me the story himself). KLA and Ceku was generously assisted by the German Intelligence Service, BND and - after the US took KLA off its list of terrorist organizations - by CIA. The moderate, pragmatically non-violent Kosovo-Albanian leader Dr. Rugova, who recently passed away, was dangerous; imagine he had achieved an independent Kosovo by non-violent means: what a catastrophe for those who believe in violent intervention, bombings and occupations as roads to peace.
. Immediately after the West's UN-NATO-EU-OSCE occupation of Serbia's province, we were told that they disarmed the KLA. They didn't, and everybody knew. KLA was a leading agency in effecting about 200.000 Serbs to leave Kosovo; proportionately it was the largest ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. But it was ours, so the Western free press turned a blind eye. KLA people also orchestrated the warfare across the border in Southern Serbia, and the 8-months war in Macedonia. It's all conveniently forgotten today; it has to be since Western interests are heading for an independent Kosovo/a. It's the logical consequence of NATO's bombing in 1999. And it does not seem to bother too many that this whole process is also a violation of UN Security Council resolution 1244. With Mr. Ceku entering the scene as the West's preferred statesman, Dr. Rugova is dead in more than one sense.
. The West, NATO, the UN and lobby groups like the International Crisis Group (of which Ahtisaari has been a leading member) argued that Kosovo-Albanians should not be criticised for forcing another good 200.000 Serbs out of Kosovo in the months after NATO's KLA-assisted destruction of both Kosovo and Serbia proper. The reason? They had suffered so much under Milosevic. While there is no doubt that Albanians suffered heavily under Milosevic police-state repression in Kosovo, there is also no doubt that a) Serbia is the only country to have wiped out their old leader by non-violent means and that b) reverse ethnic cleansing is disgusting and unacceptable. Together with Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia, these Kosovo-Serbs are still living as virtually non-noticed and forgotten refugees in Serbia, there are about 500.000 of them.
. Former Kosovo PM, Ramush Haradinaj - accused of serious war crimes - has been permitted by the Tribunal in the Hague to live in Kosovo. In contrast, Milosevic's request to be granted permission to go to Russia for urgent medical treatment in Russia has been turned down.
. The West requires Serbia to deliver Karadzic and Mladic to the Hague. The problem is that both CIA and FBI have been granted access to Serbia long ago and they have not been able to locate them. What game do Western powers play when they pretend that they have not been able to arrest these two people in Bosnia or elsewhere since 1995?
. Just a few days ago, the EU decided that Montenegro, the smaller partner in today's Serbia and Montenegro, may hold a referendum on independence. Remember, EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, was S-G of NATO at the time, the highest civilian person behind the destruction of Yugoslavia.
The International Herald Tribune writes that the EU suggests "that Montenegro be allowed to secede from the two-state federation if 50 percent of the electorate takes part in the vote and 55 percent of voters opt for independence." Amazing indeed; a new European state can be created with only 27.5% or less that 200.000 voters behind it. And, remember, there are more Montenegrins living in Serbia than in Montenegro. So, the EU here uses a recipe for a) deep divisions or civil war inside, and b) population exchanges - Montenegrins in Serbia to Montenegro, Serbs in Montenegro to Serbia.
Furthermore, an independent Montenegro and an independent Kosovo will make the Serbs in Bosnia ask why on earth they should keep on being loyal with the independent "Dayton" Bosnia that 99% of them never voted for and which they - like all other citizens in Bosnia - was never asked to accept in a referendum.
The international "community's" peace prevention continues
Today few remember or know what happened 15-25 years ago in the Balkans. Few if any bother to see patterns and underlying structures. Few dare be politically incorrect and challenge the basic interpretations and the conflict (mis)management by the "international community" or the Balkanization of the EU and the U.S. Peace-making has become interventionism and occupation in disguise. The free Western media feel free to turn the blind eye to the absurdities and lack of principle that has become the brand of Western politics. If they did, there would be some who could point out the complete moral bankruptcy on which the above-mentioned policy initiatives are based.
Imagine that Serbia - the predictable net loser par excellence in the Yugoslav dissolution process since the 1980s - reacts to all the above by stalling, dragging its feet as they say, seeming to be uncooperative and even embittered. Imagine that these developments will make life impossible for moderates and Western-oriented actors in Serbia and play into the hands of the nationalist hardliners such as the Radical Party and that, together with other Chetnik sentiments, it wins the next election. Imagine that Serbia and its citizens turn inward, feel humiliated and become nationalist again.
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Then all those who have understood absolutely nothing of Yugoslavia the last 15 years will ask oh-so-innocently: How come these Serbs are so stubborn? Why don't they modernize themselves and become good European like the rest? Why don't they see their own best interest which is what we offer them? How strange that they won't just give up everything they cherished - Yugoslavia, autonomy for Croatian Serbs, Republika Srpska, Kosovo, Montenegro and - who knows when in the future - Voivodina and Sandjak in exchange for - exactly, you're right - nothing!
After 15 years of conflict mismanagement the West still seems to understand none of the complexities, psychology or history here. So be sure of two things: the U.S. and various EU members have their interests and when the next Balkan crisis erupts, they will stand united with two arguments: 1) we did nothing wrong and 2) the Serbs remain the problem! Remember Ahtisaari - the UN and State Department in one - says it bluntly: it is in Serbia's best interest to play according to our rules and forget whatever interests it may have.
We have not seen the end of the suffering in former Yugoslavia. Whether sooner or in a few decades ahead, we are likely to see violence erupt again.
The Holbrookes, Ahtisaaris and Jessen-Petersens as well as those whose puppets they are will know to blame one or more local parties and never ask: did we, the international community, perpetuate the Balkan tragedy?
Perhaps with the exception of Slovenia, genuine peace is found nowhere in former Yugoslavia. If Western actors were able to learn any lessons, we would see some change in the conflict "management" policies in the region. But that won't happen, because that would amount to a recognition of the counterproductive policies pursued the last 15 years. Thus, predictably, Western peace prevention continues, and -how cruel! - innocent Balkan citizens, not the conflict mismanagers, will pay the prize.
* The PressInfo is purely critical. The constructive, principled alternatives concerning Kosovo have been presented earlier in the Kosovo Solution Series and in PressInfo 228.
April 07, 2006
Mladic's wife accuses Serb officials of harassment to force surrender]
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site,
go to http://www.guardian.co.uk
Mladic's wife accuses Serb officials of harassment to force surrender
· Family of wanted general complain of intimidation · EU talks
in jeopardy if suspect not handed over
Ian Traynor in Zagreb
Friday April 07 2006
The Guardian
The wife of Europe's most wanted man, the Serbian genocide suspect Ratko
Mladic, said yesterday that her family was being hounded by the Serbian
security services and that several family members had been arrested to
encourage Mladic's surrender.
The European Union has given Serbia until the end of the month to arrest
and extradite Mladic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. A tribunal
spokesman said yesterday that the Serbian prime minister, Vojislav
Kostunica, had promised to deliver Mladic by the deadline.
Bosa Mladic, the general's wife, said two of her brothers and another two
relatives had been arrested, and her son's company had been raided by the
Serbian tax police in what she alleged was a campaign of intimidation
aimed at securing her husband's arrest.
Mladic was a Bosnian Serb commander and is wanted mainly on genocide
charges for the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim males in Srebrenica in July
1995.
"I am in shock. I can't believe the pressure being put on us," Mrs Mladic
told the Belgrade newspaper, Kurir.
On Wednesday, leaders of the extreme nationalist and popular Radical party
in Belgrade accused the Serbian authorities of being responsible for
"brutal beatings and arrests" of members of the Mladic family. Yesterday,
the party leader, Tomislav Nikolic, called on Mladic to kill himself
rather than surrender.
The allegations of a concerted campaign of intimidation of the Mladic
family suggest that the Serbian government may be getting serious about
arresting the general, a hero to Serbian nationalists and a mass murderer
to the Muslims of Bosnia.
The allegations echo events in the run-up to last year's arrest of
Croatia's most-wanted war crimes suspect, Ante Gotovina, who was held in
the Canary Islands and is awaiting trial in The Hague. Before his capture,
the Croatian security services also employed dirty tricks against his
family to secure his arrest, according to informed diplomats. The tactics
worked, they said.
Gotovina had been protected by the Croatian government and security
services for years until he became a liability and the biggest impediment
to Croatia's integration with the EU. Serbia has the same predicament with
Mladic.
Last summer, the wife of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political
leader also wanted on genocide charges, called on her husband to give
himself up because of the pressure on his family. "Our family is under
constant pressure from all over. Our life and existence is jeopardised,"
said Ljiljana Karadzic. "I'm begging you to make this decision ... It will
be your sacrifice for us, for the sake of your family."
Last October, after a recommendation from Carla del Ponte, the chief
prosecutor at The Hague tribunal, the EU agreed to membership talks with
Croatia. Gotovina was arrested a few weeks later. Last week Ms Del Ponte
gave a positive verdict on Serbia's cooperation with the tribunal which
enabled the EU to go ahead with talks with Belgrade on closer ties. The
Serbs are said to have promised Ms Del Ponte access to security files that
it has denied for years. The EU has extended a deadline for Mladic's
arrest until the end of the month and has threatened to break off
negotiations if the deadline is missed.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
April 05, 2006
Speaker Wrong on Kosovo
Speaker Wrong on Kosovo
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
To the Editor:
I am responding to the item “Former Ambassador Calls for Kosovo’s Independence†(THE HOYA, March 24, 2006, A5).
Apparently, Ambassador Morton Abramowitz has never changed his view that “Kosovo must be independent.†One has to wonder what brought about that gem of wisdom by the esteemed ambassador. The degree of disinformation that is out there vis-a-vis Kosovo is unbelievable. According to Mr. Abramowitz’s logic, the criteria for Kosovo’s independence are murder, mayhem and barbarism. Is Europe ready and willing to embrace an intolerant, ethnically cleansed and terrorist-supported Islamic state in its underbelly?
Canada’s retired Maj. Gen. Lewis MacKenzie said it best in an op-ed piece published by the National Post in 2004:
“The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius [violin],†he wrote. “We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early ’90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary.â€Â
Mr. Abramowitz, be careful what you wish for.
Liz Milanovich
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
March 25, 2006
Kosovo The real test of U.S. foreign policy
WorldNetDaily:
Kosovo: The real test of U.S. foreign policy
http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49604
Kosovo: The real test of U.S. foreign policy
Posted: April 5, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Aleksandar Pavic
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
If you want to see a place where Christians are outside of the law on their own ancestral land – come to Kosovo.
If you want to see American troops committed to establishing a narco-Islamic state on Christian land – come to Kosovo.
If you want to see Christian churches, monasteries and cemeteries desecrated on an almost daily basis, under the noses of thousands of Western soldiers – look no further than Kosovo.
Seven years after William Jefferson Clinton launched a bombing campaign against a European Christian land in support of the Islamic terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army, it's as though the bombs have never stopped falling on the Christian remnant in Kosovo. Whether Clinton did it to divert attention from a burgeoning sex scandal, or whether it was part of a global anti-Christian campaign by Western liberals with a cultural death-wish, the results for the Kosovo Christians – and all non-Albanians in Kosovo – are the same.
And the U.S. State Department is doing everything to make sure it stays that way, with a strong supporting role of the United Nations, Britain and Germany.
That's right, the might and the resources of U.S. diplomacy are being used to tear away a Christian European nation's spiritual and historical cradle and hand it over to a terrorist-breeding, white-slavery peddling, heroin-pushing narco-Islamic camarilla in Kosovo, which has, by all accounts, made the province into "Afghanistan in Europe." During the current U.N.-brokered talks on Kosovo's "final status," U.S. diplomats are tirelessly promoting the "necessity" and "inevitability" of Kosovo's independence.
There are well over 1,000 Christian churches and monasteries in Kosovo, many filled with priceless medieval frescoes from the Byzantine era, in which Italian art historians have spotted the beginnings of the Renaissance about a century before it appeared in Western Europe. At least 150 have been destroyed by Muslim Albanian mobs since Clinton's post-bombing deployment of NATO "peacekeepers" in 1999. The rest are menaced on a daily basis. Those that are lucky enough to be protected have armed NATO troops and barbed wire around them.
In its drive to secure Kosovo's independence from Serbia, preferably by the end of 2006, U.S. (and U.N.) diplomacy has helped install Islamic hardliners to top Kosovo political posts – people with gallons of Christian (and Roma, and moderate Albanian) blood on their hands. It has supported the revocation of international arrest warrants against them, as in the case of new Kosovo "Prime Minister," Agim Ceku, a man whom Canadian U.N. troops wounded in Croatia in 1995 to stop a killing spree against unarmed Serbian villagers in another "U.N. protected area." Ceku had an Interpol warrant against him lifted in March "in line with his new duties of prime minister." And U.S.
diplomacy brings other terrorists, such as Hashim Tachi, aka "the Snake," to Washington, D.C., as it did this January, to promote the cause of narco-Islam on Christian soil in the highest forums of American foreign policy.
Why?
It is said that more than 600 years ago, when the first news of the Battle of Kosovo came to Western Europe, telling of a victory of the Christian Serb army against the Ottoman Turks, the bells of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris rang out joyously in celebration.
Actually, this fierce battle on the Field of Blackbirds (the meaning of the name of Kosovo) ended in a draw, with both the Serbian Prince Lazar and the Turkish Sultan Murat being killed in battle. But the weakened Serbia, pressed from the north by the rival Hungarian kingdom, never recovered. It is then, as the story goes, that the bright red peonies that bloom by the millions each year on Kosovo's plains made their appearance, growing out of
the soil consecrated by the spilt Christian blood. And it wasn't only Serbian blood that would be shed in the coming centuries. It was not until combined Slavic and German forces threw back the huge army commanded by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha at the walls of Vienna in 1683 that the tide against Ottoman Turkey began to be turned back and the Christian West could finally breathe easier.
Now, 323 years later, the West's secularized elites are doing everything to help Islam – an especially aggressive and corrupt variety of it – make a big comeback in Europe, with the United States taking the leading role.
Why?
Some say that it is because the State Department, at least the part dealing with the Balkans, is still staffed with Clinton-era secular globalists pursuing their own agenda. But this cannot be an excuse for an administration that sees itself as Christian. We know what the Bible says about pragmatism when moral issues are at hand: Better that you are hot or cold than lukewarm, for you shall be spewed out like salt that has lost its flavor. And that's the present U.S. policy in Kosovo.
To what end this "pragmatism" (if that's what it is) except straight to Hell? There is no getting around it. Jesus said, "Whoever is not with me is against me." So, what of those who actively or passively give aid to the burning of His churches on Kosovo? What sayest thou, Christian soldiers?
Where were you when Christian Kosovo burned? Did you cry real tears and help, or give aid and comfort to His enemies? Take heed, Christian
Americans: A great anti-Christian crime is currently being committed in your name on Christian Kosovo. You cannot say that you haven't been warned. Now it is up to you to do something.
You cannot in good conscience support Kosovo's independence. For that shall mean its final destruction as a Christian land. What can you do? What is the only consequent Kosovo policy for American Christian policy makers? Demand that the destruction of churches, monasteries and cemeteries stop, that anti-Christian persecution stop, that Christian Serbs and other non-Albanians be allowed to return to their ancestral homes protected by their own armed forces. Help them renew their houses of worship, which were destroyed under the "protection" of U.S.-led international troops.
You can support Kosovo's autonomy within Serbia, with equal rights for all.
But not independence for the Islamic narco-bosses running the place and their brand of anti-civilization. That's the current State Department agenda, the same as the agenda of the United Nations and European secularized, suicidal elites. That would be abomination. And, make no mistake, that would, ultimately, be the end of Christian America. For this crime will not be forgiven in the only place that counts.
Aleksandar Pavic covers the Balkans for WorldNetDaily.com.
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