Serbian News Network - SNN

By Bruce I. Konviser
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 30, 2006

PODGORICA, Serbia-Montenegro -- A declaration of independence making Montenegro the world's newest nation could come as early as Friday, but lingering objections to the results of a May 21 referendum have spoiled some of the fun for Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic.
    The ballot, in which pro-independence forces narrowly achieved a supermajority threshold demanded by the European Union, was the crowning glory of Mr. Djukanovic's career.
    But the pro-unionist bloc, which favors maintaining the Serbia-Montenegro federation, is refusing to accept the results even after international observers declaring the plebiscite to be free, fair and in accordance with international standards. The bloc claims thousands of ballots were cast illegally by registered voters from neighboring countries.
    "I'm not surprised by such a position," Mr. Djukanovic said in an interview. "This is part of their political tradition. Over the past 10 years or so, there have been only two outcomes for them. Either they will have won, or the vote has been stolen."
    Mr. Djukanovic charged that the pro-unionists, made up largely of ethnic Serbs, are encouraged in their intransigence by the Belgrade government of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.
    "What is happening now in Montenegro is directly inspired by, and from, Mr. Kostunica's office in Belgrade," Mr. Djukanovic said. "Mr. Kostunica, as a through-and-through nationalist, would like to leave to Serb nationalists an open issue that some [territorial issues] are open to dispute for Serbia beyond its border."
    Congratulations on the referendum result have already come in from Mr. Djukanovic's counterparts in neighboring Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. But Mr. Kostunica has been silent.
    Still, the prime minister maintained that opposition challenges couldn't change the results, which he said are indisputable and represent the will of the Montenegrin people.
    Before the referendum, the European Union, skittish about reigniting the ethnic tensions that tore apart the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, mandated that the pro-independence bloc obtain at least a 55 percent majority in order for the EU to accept the desire for independence.
     The pro-independence bloc cleared that threshold by about half a percentage point. The election commission is expected to ratify the results this week and send them to parliament for confirmation. That should be followed by a parliamentary declaration of independence, which the prime minister said could come as soon as Friday.
     That would formally end the Serbia-Montenegro federation that was born three years ago out of the last remnants of the former Yugoslavia. Civil war tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, as Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia all left the federation to form their own separate states.  

 

Objections remain to independence
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20060529-110959-6447r.htm

 

 

 

 

 

May 28- June 3, 2006. Issue Number 679

 

Page 2 – Opinion

 

 

End Balkanization Now!

 

By Aleksandar Mitic

 

An old saying in Montenegro used to say “Crna Gora i Srbija – to je jedna familija†(“Montenegro and Serbia – one familyâ€). Today, pro-independence graffiti in Montenegro read “Crna i Gora i Baskija – to je jedna familija†(“Montenegro and the Basque Country – one familyâ€).

 

Indeed, if the preliminary results of the Montenegrin referendum on independence are confirmed, the process of the balkanization of the Balkans will have scored one more point.

 

Some say it also paved a chance for many independence-hopefuls around Europe, be it in Catalonia, the Basque Country or Scotland, which have sent their observer missions to Podgorica to monitor the mechanics of intra-state divorce.

It might be contrary to the logic of European integration and the equation mark between the European Union and “borderless Europeâ€, but it is real and it is happening in 2006, just a few weeks before the June summit on  “the future of Europeâ€.

 

As far as enlargement is concerned, EU leaders should answer the question: “Does a European future imply further balkanization of the Balkans?†or “Do the Balkans have to choose a nationalistic past in order to pave their way to their European future?â€.

 

If the answer is yes, EU finance ministers should start planning a budget for more crisis management and Balkan nations should start digging out marching songs cds back from the basement.

 

If not, the “balkanization of the Balkans†must end. Now!

 

It must end now, because Montenegrin independence at least had a legal basis. Under the findings of the 1991-92 Badinter Commission on the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, all six Yugoslav republics – and only republics not provinces -- had the legal right to become independent.

 

After Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, Montenegro is the last former Yugoslav republic to seize the opportunity.

 

It means that Kosovo, a province of Serbia, does not have the right to secession. Indeed, an independence of Kosovo – against the will of Serbia – can only be illegal, one-sided and imposed.

 

As such, an independent Kosovo would be the real, universal opener of the Pandora box of separatism.

 

According to the UNDP, there are some 5,000 different ethnic groups living in some 200 countries in the world. According to the figures of the study “Minorities at riskâ€, some 509 ethnic groups in the world consider themselves as politically discriminated and want autonomies or states.

 

All separatist or independence-seeking movements in the world already have their eyes set on the resolution of the Kosovo talks, especially since most of them have suffered much more tragic conflicts and have waited for the solution to their problems much longer than has the southern Serbian province, populated by an Albanian majority.

 

Indeed, a Kosovo precedent would have world ramifications.

 

It could impact on the tense relations between two nuclear powers – India and Pakistan – disputing Kashmir, a region very much like Kosovo in terms of ethnic proportions, violence or religious symbolism.

 

It could have an impact on the world’s largest country – Russia – with Transdniestria in Moldova, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia seeking to integrate it and Chechnya seeking to separate.

 

The world’s most populous country – China – could face separatism in Xinjiang, not forgetting Taiwan and Tibet.

 

Eternal pragmatists should think about the impact of imposed independence on some of the world’s most important pipelines – winding their way through disputed territories around Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh or a Kurdistan.

 

Back to the Balkans, people still do not know whether they will be part of the next wave of EU enlargement due to its “absorption capacityâ€, but they surely are themselves still digesting the last wave of balkanization from the 1990s.

 

In the news today, the High representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina Christian Schwarz-Schilling expressed his worry about the slow progress of reintegration of the southern Bosnian town of Mostar, divided between Croats and Muslims since a conflict which ended 12 years ago.

 

Near Prizren, in Kosovo, an Albanian mob clashed with UN police after attacking and injuring Serb lawyers investigating a war crimes case for the Hague tribunal. A local Albanian leader later explained it was a mistake: they thought they were attacking Serb refugees trying to visit their homes seven years after being brutally expelled.

 

So, what kinds of signals would the pursuit of balkanization send to the Muslims in the Sandzak area, the Albanians in southern Serbia or in western FYROM, the Hungarians in northern Vojvodina, the Serbs in eastern Slavonia, eastern Montenegro or eastern Bosnia?

 

Indeed, if “yes†to an independent Kosovo, why not a “yes†to an independent Republika Srpska for example – which also has a 90-percent majority seeking to break away?

 

I can almost feel some eyebrows raising.

 

But can there be any more “taboos†if there are no more principles?

 

Aleksandar Mitic is the Brussels correspondent of the Tanjug news agency, a Lecturer at the University of Belgrade and analyst at the Institute 4S, Brussels.

 

http://news.scotsman.com/latest_international.cfm?id=795432006


Reuters
May 29, 2006


Calls for Bosnia Serb referendum
By Olga Lola Ninkovic


BANJA LUKA, Bosnia - Long-standing calls by Serb nationalists [sic] for the
Serb Republic to secede from Bosnia grew louder on Monday, following
Montenegro's vote in a referendum earlier this month to split from Serbia.

The Serb National Movement, made up mostly of Serbs forced out of Croatia in
1995, said it had collected nearly 50,000 signatures of Serbs across the
country for a petition to demand an independence referendum.

"The will of the citizens cannot be ignored. The Serb people do not want to
live in a Bosnia imposed on them. The Serb people want a free Republika
Srpska, separated from an imposed Bosnia and Herzegovina,"
said movement president Dane Cankovic.

An apparent endorsement of the referendum demand by Bosnian Serb Prime
Minister Milorad Dodik was sharply rebuked on Monday by the country's
international peace overseer, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, part of whose job
is to keep Bosnia together.

"The international community will not allow the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina to be endangered," his office said in a
statement on Monday.
....
The U.S.-sponsored Dayton accord ended Bosnia's war of secession from
Serb-dominated Yugoslavia in 1995, making Bosnia a single state comprising
two "entities"
- the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat federation.

Although its 18-month initiative for secession has been ignored officially,
the Serb National Movement gained popularity after Montenegro voted for
independence, dissolving its loose union with Serbia.
....
Montenegro was one of Yugoslavia's federal republics with a legal right to
secession which it retained in the looser Serbia-Montenegrin union.

Under Bosnia's peace accord Republika Srpska had no such right. Kosovo is
still nominally a province of Serbia but is under U.N. control.

Dodik proposed Bosnia be organized as a federal unit, giving each ethnic
group the right to self-determination through referendum....

Serb radicals urged Dodik on Monday to put the referendum issue on the
parliamentary agenda to prove he was serious, not simply fishing for votes
ahead of the October general election.

The lingering death of Yugoslavia

Montenegro this week became the latest Balkan region to vote for independence. But what have the trappings of statehood done for the rest of Tito's former empire?

Peter Popham reports

Published: 27 May 2006

Once upon a time there was a plausibly modern, enlightened Communist country called Yugoslavia which manufactured cars called Yugos and staged the Winter Olympics and which for many, including millions of Western holidaymakers, was the acceptable face of Eastern Europe, the bit that worked and that we could do business with - all dominated by the benign Mr Tito.
And today? With the decision for independence last week of tiny Montenegro, Yugoslavia is no more. Instead there is a multiplying proliferation of statelets that belong more to the world of Tintin than to what was once thought of as modern Europe.
Tintin would have felt perfectly at home in Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital. The Belgian boy detective, you will remember, arrived in the Balkan kingdom of Syldavia by aeroplane, dropped through a trap door in the fuselage by the dastardly twin brother of Professor Alembick, and landing in a bale of hay. Once there he encountered a world of revolutionaries, spies, moustachioed bandits and anarchists, all in the shade of the gigantic mountains.
Today the grandson of the last king of Montenegro travels regularly to the nation's tiny former capital, Cetinje, by motorcycle, from Paris. He denies he aims to revive the monarchy, but who could be sure? The leader of the country is a musclebound character in a chalk-stripe suit who has been a Communist and an apostle of Serbian expansionism and is now a Montenegrin nationalist. Today he mutters angrily about Serbian "meddling".
In reality (according to the testimony of an Italian gangster) he is a big-time cigarette smuggler. But he is not the only bad hat in town: the Russians are coming! They have bought the country's only factory and huge strips of the beautiful coastline.
It is a country out of comic opera or a period cartoon, with a population one-tenth the size of London. But in a year or two, if Montenegro's tall, sleek, handsome and wily Prime Minister, Milo Djukanovic, gets his way, his sovereign nation will sit alongside the UK, Germany, France and the rest in the councils of the European Union. And jostling behind him in the queue to join will be several other even more improbable specimens.
Yugoslavia ended, but what came into being? We have no handy term for what has replaced the Union of the South Slavs. We are back to the geographical term, the Balkans - from which derives the verb "to balkanise", which means "to break up into small, mutually hostile political units". We are back at the view of the Balkans immortalised by Herg�: a collection of tiny, exotic countries, racked by violence and intrigue, each with their own proud and ancient traditions but ultimately indistinguishable from one another.
And while the end of the Union of Serbia and Montenegro was inevitable, the Balkans have not achieved steady state. That churning, balkanising momentum is still at work. The break-up proceeds. Next up, heartened by the Montenegrins' example, is Kosovo, where the overwhelming Albanian majority favours independence. The Kosovars are expected to get their wish by the end of this year.
And this will set a precedent, because unlike all the bits of Yugoslavia that have broken off so far, Kosovo is not an autonomous republic within the Yugoslav federation but was merely a province within Serbia. When Kosovo breaks away, other disgruntled minorities in other corners of the Balkans will see their moment and hope that time is on their side.
The most universally execrated is Republika Srpska (aka Bosnian Serb Republic), the Serb mini-state that was fashioned by Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic during the Bosnian war as part of the Milosevic fantasy of a Greater Serbia. That mini-state, partially brought into existence by the massacre in Srebrenica, a town that today is firmly within Republika Srpska territory, may have no serious hope of international recognition, but it remains a thorn in the flesh of the High Representative in Sarajevo. And it remains a semi-spectral presence within the immensely complicated polity of Bosnia. It provides, for example, one of the republic's three presidents.
And there are others waiting in the wings. As Kosovo prepares to go independent, the Serbs who constitute the overwhelming majority of the population of the region of northern Kosovo called Mitrovica dream of getting their own state, too. Serbs clustered in the north of Montenegro who resent the decision to break away from Belgrade have separatist dreams of their own, as do Albanians in the south of that republic, and as do Albanians in Macedonia, where a civil war boiled up in 2001.
No one imagines the balkanisation of the Balkans will go that far. But then 15 years ago no one predicted the independence of Yugoslav republics such as Slovenia and Croatia, which are now on their way to joining the European Union. And what's wrong, after all, with states the size of Elephant and Castle or Maida Vale? Perhaps we should all live in countries that size.
From the cane chairs of the long pavement caf� of the Crna Gora Hotel in the centre of Podgorica, it's hard to disagree. On first blush Montenegro seems an excellent idea, and a very satisfactory little country.
Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, formerly one of Yugoslavia's several Titograds, was bombed flat by the British during the war, though a small Ottoman old town survived. But although the architecture is not up to much (the Communists did their best to vandalise it with tower blocks), it is a bewitching town in the May sunshine, full of parks with mature trees, with two fast-flowing, azure rivers and a caf� life to rival anywhere else in the Mediterranean (and reinforcing the Montenegrins' reputation for idleness).
Rising behind the town are the mountains for which the country is named, and which account for the fact that this was the only corner of the Balkans that the Turks never conquered ("They were lazy, too," explained a Belgrade friend). Go up into the mountains and you find ski slopes, the deepest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon, rivers that are fantastic for rafting; head for the coast and there is a fjord, bizarrely misplaced from Scandinavia, and picturesque islands and inlets reminiscent of Japan's Inland Sea. There is the huge Skadar lake, shared with Albania, that is home to hundreds of exotic varieties of birds.
All this and no Serbia: by severing the link with Big Brother, Montenegro at a stroke removes the taint of war crimes and expansionism (even though both Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic came from Montenegro). But Serbia has hospitals and colleges and universities far more advanced than those in Montenegro. Ambitious and clever Montenegrins head to Belgrade to study. Sick Montenegrins head to Belgrade to get better. Till now they have not paid a bean for the privilege. Negotiations on the future status of clever or sick Montenegrins in Serbia have not yet started, but everyone expects the Montenegrins will henceforth have to pay. Hence at least a proportion of the 45 per cent of votes against independence.
Which brings us to the key question: where is the money coming from? Montenegro has only one productive factory, a belching Soviet-style aluminium manufacturing complex outside Podgorica - recently bought by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The nation's tourism potential is obvious - but long stretches of the coast have been bought up by Russians. There is no guarantee that this bewitching corner of the Adriatic will not be destroyed by hideous hotels within a few years.
During the war, when the Yugoslav economy ground to a halt, Montenegro fell back on what has long been an important standby, smuggling. In particular the large-scale smuggling of cigarettes, very cheap here and expensive everywhere else in Western Europe, became rampant - and according to the testimony of an Italian mafia supergrass, Gerardo Cuomo, the trade involved Milo Djukanovic himself, the formerly Communist politician who has run Montenegro for 16 years.
Mr Djukanovic denied the allegations flatly, and cannot be questioned in court because of parliamentary immunity. But the claimed involvement of the most powerful man in the country in organised crime is only the most glaring irregularity. Of Montenegro's population of 650,000, only 120,000 are formally employed, the rest working in the black market or in smuggling. Hence the spectre of the new mini-states, even the pretty ones like Montenegro, becoming what one diplomat called "sovereign kleptocracies", states run by and for the benefit of wealthy criminals.
Kosovo presents a far starker example. Criminal gangs "operate with impunity," according to Marek Antoni Nowicki, who was the UN's international ombudsman in Kosovo until 2005. "You have a criminal state in real power. It needs underground illegal structures to survive. These networks can rely on the weakness of the public institutions to sanction their operations."
And while in Montenegro the smuggling is counter balanced by the new hotels and resorts, Kosovo has nothing else to fall back on. International aid is complemented by the profits from cigarette, cement and petrol smuggling.
Prostitution is the other core business, catering to the peacekeepers. What happens when they leave is anybody's guess.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article620190.ece

 

Kosovo Serb convoy stoned; UN troops fire tear gas

PRISTINA (Reuters) - United Nations police in Kosovo fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of ethnic Albanians who stoned a convoy of Serbs in the west of the UN-run province yesterday, police said. A Kosovo Albanian police spokesman said two UN personnel were lightly wounded in the incident in the ethnic Albanian village of Mala Krusa, near Prizren. «A UN police convoy taking Serbs there was stopped and stoned. Police fired tear gas,» said spokesman Fatmir Gjurgjeala. Two UN vehicles were also damaged. Witnesses said the main Prizren-Djakovica road was closed and several villagers had been taken to hospital for treatment for the effects of tear gas. The stoning of Serb convoys in Kosovo is not uncommon.

                              "The stoning of Serb convoys in Kosovo is not uncommon" .

                   If the so called "oppression"of Albanians in the  nineties was  not "uncommon "and was punished by the NATO bombing of Serbia,

                               today for the stoning and the mistreatment of Serbs,which is not "uncommon", ,the reward is the independence .

                Like we say in France: "Les voies du Seigneur sont impĂ©nĂ©trables", but the question is who gives wh o the right to act like Allmighty.

 

                             Dragan RAKIC

                     F-Strasbourg      

          

                   

 

 

 

 

 

Balkan ghosts awakened

William Pfaff

 

THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2006

 

PARIS Milovan Djilas was one of Tito's closest associates in the Yugoslav partisan resistance to the Nazis in World War II. He became a major figure in the postwar Communist government and was considered the likely successor to Tito, but he actually became Yugoslavia's first and most important dissident.

He published a critique - essentially a moral critique - of what he called the "new class" of privilege and indulgence formed by the Communist officials ruling Yugoslavia and the Warsaw Pact countries during the early postwar period.

This was the most important early critical examination of Marxist rule from inside the system, which was to culminate four decades later in Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika and the collapse of the Communist system from its "internal contradictions."

Djilas was a Montenegrin, which is why I am writing about him here. In another book ("Land Without Justice," 1958), he recounted his early life and the cruel historical burden of Montenegrin existence, saying that his family was "typical in one respect, the men of several generations have died at the hands of Montenegrins, men of the same faith and name.

"My father's grandfather, my own two grandfathers, my father, and my uncle, were killed as if a dread curse lay on them. ... It seems to me that I was born with blood on my eyes. Generation after generation, and the bloody chain was not broken. My first sight was of blood, my first words were blood and bathed in blood."

In the 14th century Montenegro was a semi-independent principality of Serbia, and it continued to resist the expansion of the Ottoman Turk empire after Serbia itself was conquered. Montenegro was never itself subdued, although parts of it were held by the Turks and others by Venice.

In modern times, Montenegro, incorporating part of Albania, was recognized as an independent state, and in 1918 its national assembly voted for union with Serbia. The two together became the core of a new Yugoslavia - reconstituted after World War II as a Communist people's republic.

Now the Montenegrins have voted for independence from Serbia. As always, their independence is entangled with history, which in the Balkans possesses an intensity and power that warrants William Faulkner's remark on the history of his own American South, that here the past is never past.

Last Sunday, more than 55 percent of the Montenegrin voters - including an estimated 16,000 Montenegrins living abroad, who returned for the election - chose independence. Since the terrible wars and ethnic cleansing that destroyed the old six-nation Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Serbia and Montenegro had survived in a union largely without substance. The Serbians today appear grudgingly willing to sacrifice their link to Montenegro.

Whether the Serbians inside Montenegro will agree is not entirely sure. They form the largest part of the Albanian-Serb national minority that together makes up nearly half the total Montenegrin population of less than 700,000. The Albanian minority consists of about 50,000 people.

The consequences of Montenegrin independence for the neighboring and largely ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo are also unclear. Kosovo is now under interim UN administration, but its majority wants independence, while Serbia, for powerful historical reasons, is resolved to keep Kosovo.

The Kosovo conflict has already seen much violence by both sides, leading up to the NATO intervention in 1999 that produced 78 days' bombing of Serbia.

The new Montenegro naturally wants early EU membership. It will not get it. The EU leadership does not rejoice in Montenegro's independence: It will encourage Serb separatism in Bosnia, and Hungarian autonomists in the Serbian province of Vojvodina, and it may exacerbate Slav-Albanian tensions in Macedonia.

History lives on in the Balkans, ready to break out in more bloodshed, given a provocation. The international effort to deal with the Balkan situation has involved enormous good will as well as material resources and human commitment. But there are no ultimate resolutions to problems so tortured, where memories are so long.

The Balkans slipped off the main Washington agenda more than a decade ago. The region is unlikely to reappear there at least until a new American administration is elected. This is too bad: Balkan historical and political reality teaches a lesson that Washington should heed as it deepens its commitments in another region, the Middle East.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel has been in Washington hoping for unspoken burial of the road map that was supposed to lead toward a negotiated two-state agreement with the Palestinians, with Jerusalem as capital for both. He did not get it, but may. He still seeks American support for an eventual unilateral declaration of Israel's borders. That would invite a Balkan-like future for the two countries, in which the past will never be put behind - by either.

---

Copyright © 2006 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

 

 

 

http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=26058&cat_id=1

 

Cyprus Mail

 

The Yugoslav jigsaw is not quite over yet

LAST SUNDAY'S independence referendum in Montenegro passed with barely a whimper, a majority voting to break away from the union with Serbia in what has been widely described as the final act in the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Few today dispute Montenegro's right to secession. Even in Belgrade, there is a relief that the will-they-won't-they charade of recent years is finally over. In recent years, Montenegro had in any case been independent in all but name, the remaining link a mere fig leaf to mask a de facto separation.

What's more, coming at the tail end of a 15-year disintegration that saw a decade of savage wars of succession, there is widespread congratulation that the last piece of the Yugoslav jigsaw has been plucked away without bloodshed.

And yet it isn't the last piece of the jigsaw, because in advocating the absolute right of self-determination when it first recognised the secession of Slovenia and Croatia all those year ago, the international community deployed reflecting mirrors of ethnic conflict that cannot be tidily sealed within tidy state borders.

While saying that multi-ethnic Yugoslavia was untenable, the international community created a mini-Yugoslavia in Bosnia. In freeing Bosnia's Muslims from the tutelage of Belgrade, it placed Bosnia's Serbs under the tutelage of Sarajevo.

Today, Bosnia-Hercegovina is a failed state, still run by a foreign governor appointed by the international community. As indeed is Kosovo, whose final status remains undecided. And why should Kosovo's Albanians – a majority in the province but a small minority in Serbia – be allowed self-determination, but not their ethnic brethren in the neighbouring Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia? Or the Serbs or Croats of Bosnia who want to unite with their motherlands? And so the list goes on…

Few today fear a resurgence of the wars that tore apart the Balkans in the 1990s. The region is simply worn out. What is important now is not to allow seeds of resentment to mature to a stage where they might give rise to future conflict. And the best guarantee for that is to ensure that the Western Balkans are integrated into the European Union as soon as realistically possible.

Just as the Greeks of Cyprus feel more comfortable belonging to the same club as Greece, so the Serbs now spread out over half a dozen micro states will feel more comfortable if those are all united in the greater European family.

More practically, the access to European funds and the improvement of people's living standards that has accompanied every European enlargement so far is the greatest promise of future stability in the region. Prosperous countries do not take rash decisions; they have too much to lose. But those that are poor, that feel isolated, unfairly treated, backed into a corner, they wind up with nothing to lose.

Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2006

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=10032

American Chronicle

The European and American factor in Serbia's future
Dr. George Voskopoulos



May 22, 2006

The recent referendum in Serbia-Montenegro and the marginal victory of those who support an independent Montenegro seems to be defining the future of the country. Yet, a number of parameters need to be clarified before evaluating today's signals as expressed by the Montenegrin people.

First, the referendum constitutes a part of a series of a policy clearly aiming at punishing Serbia for its policy vis-Å•-vis American policy in the Balkans. Serbia's international behaviour and more particularly its policy in Bosnia and Kosovo, did not constitute simply or just a deviation from democratic practices and the need to respect human rights. This goes without saying and may be considered the overt cause of its international isolation.

To those who scrutinize world politics through the spectrum of Political Realism and power politics the real motive for Serbia's territorial mutilation was the perceived arrogance of its senseless leadership (S. Milosevic) to challenge American policy in south-eastern Europe. Actually this led to Serbia's bombing in 1999 without the clear consent of the United Nations Security Council.

Serbia was the first European country bombed after the end of the Second World War, that is on the grounds of protecting human rights. Undeniably the reason was a noble and justified one but those who are aware of world politics realities and the perplexed ethnological map in the Balkans may realize why it may be regarded as an excuse to realize a particular strategic plan.

Serbia defied the macrostrategic plan of powerful intrusive actors to impose a new model of governance, a new local not just world order and had to be punished. The existence of S. Milosevic regime and its defiance of international law simply provided an ethical excuse to dissolve once again a country with inherent power in south-eastern Europe.


Moreover, the establishment of the International Criminal Court meant to realize one specific aim, that is to punish those responsible for the atrocities against individuals by the Serbian militia. Yet, Carla Del Ponte's (the prosecutor in charge) biased attitude and institutional arrogance turned the quest into witch hunting thus delegitimising the whole process.

The problem with Milosevic himself was that he was probably guilty of conceptualizing a plan to institutionally or/and physically eliminate what he saw as a threat to his country's territorial integrity but at the same time he operated as a legitimate leader defending the [mis]perceived interests of his country. Under this spectrum, his trial could also be seen as a blow to state sovereignty and a selective application of a human rights regime. The international community rightfully intervened to put an end to the atrocities against individuals, yet it did not do the same in other blatant cases such as Cyprus.

The Court became one of the political weapons in the hands of those who wished to terminally "deal with" Serbian arrogance. A second powerful weapon, this time devised by Europeans, used to punish the country through the negative conceptual model Serbia has been viewed all these years was the EU's "give-and-take" policy vis-Å•-vis the so wanted for war crimes Serbian leaders Karazic and Mladic.

Serbia's failure to deliver them to the International Criminal Court led to a European policy that eventually punished the average Serb not those considered guilty for genocide. European policy leveled with Washington's wishes to drastically weaken the country by rendering it a politically and economically problematic state in the most backward region of Europe.

To many in Europe this was part of the wider American strategy in the region and the establishment of weak neophyte states or protectorates operating as pockets of instability to remind Europeanists (those who challenge American dominant role in Europe) that European security could only be guaranteed through NATO.

As a result, Kosovo is on its way to independence, while Montenegro's referendum assists directly and indirectly this policy. The problem is that the process results in producing problematic states, epicenters of illegal activities in the region. In both Kosovo and Montenegro drug and weapons trafficking are transnational activities affecting the security of the whole region not to mention human slavery.

American and European policies have to this day failed to impose the rule of law and order allowing local leaders to operate unrestrained. Their initiatives focused exclusively on punishing Serbia, yet, in a way this practice turned certain Serbian leaders to national heroes. What is needed is a new plan for rehabilitating the country, without prejudice and above all without the application of double standards. For as long as the international community pretends to be upholding the law in one only direction south-eastern Europe will have black holes in its security structure.

George Voskopoulos holds a BA from Brock University (Canada), a BA from Ionian University (Greece). He received his MA from Lancaster University (UK) and his Ph.D from Exeter University (UK), Centre for European Studies. He is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies and Assistant Professor at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece. His latest publication is James Mitchell & G. Voskopoulos (eds.), American Government and Politics in Focus, Whittier publishers, NY, 2005.

seeiia@yahoo.gr





 

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Balkanized, again

Mirjana Tomic International Herald Tribune

TUESDAY, MAY 23, 2006

MADRID I heard the news about Montenegro's independence in Spain, where I currently live. I felt neither joy nor sadness. My first thoughts, in fact, were of a purely practical nature: What will happen to my passport? Will it be recognized abroad?The cover of my passport still reads Yugoslavia. The country changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro several years ago, but the authorities had no money to change passports.A week ago, a policeman at the Madrid airport asked me: "Where is this passport from?" "It is from Yugoslavia," I said, "but the country changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro. In a few weeks it will have a different name." The policeman smiled. "In a few years Spain will be in the same situation," he said. "I shall be from Andalusia."The disintegration of a country implies many practical problems. The solution to these problems, those that people care about, depends on political negotiations. So far, Balkan politicians have not negotiated in good faith.What will happen to pensions, social security, properties and divided families? In my case, I do not even know who will inherit my country's (sorry, my former, former country's) embassy in Spain. Will I have to go to France or elsewhere to solve a simple issue or get a paper? Who knows if any of my Yugoslav/Serbian documents will be recognized abroad, anyway.Even the answers to some simple questions become complicated. When asked "Where are you from?" I have several answers. When speaking to Europeans, I usually say that I am from Belgrade, the city where I was born and got my education. When speaking to other people, I say that I come from the former Yugoslavia. It is too complicated to explain that the country no longer exists.In my country of birth, there were three official languages: Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian. Serbo-Croatian was spoken in four republics, each now an independent state (or about to be one): Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro. Now, each independent state has its own language, that is, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.Slovenian and Macedonian are, in fact, different languages, but most people in all the republics spoke or understood the language previously called Serbo- Croatian. Now, when I speak with my friends from different parts of former Yugoslavia, we still communicate in the same tongue, but we each call it, "our language." That way, all misunderstanding is avoided.Professional and business people from the former Yugoslavia still meet and keep in contact. Now, however, their meetings have an international character. The favorite meeting place is Vienna. The reason is pragmatic: The Austrian capital has direct flights to all the regional capitals. There are no plane connections between Zagreb and Belgrade, for example. In addition, one can buy newspapers and magazines from the entire region at Viennese newsstands. Not so in Skopje or Sarajevo.The organizers of international conferences, as well as the various multilateral and nongovernmental organizations active in the region, usually deal with all the countries in the area. But it is no longer acceptable to say the former Yugoslavia, so a new concept has been forged: Southeastern Europe.When organizing international forums, institutions play to local sensitivities (nobody wants to be associated with the extinct country) and usually include participants from neighboring countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and even Greece. Thus a new problem emerges: language barriers. People from the former Yugoslavia do not understand Romanian, Bulgarian or Albanian. So, international dialogue is held in English.In early May, I participated in an international conference of media professionals from Southeastern Europe held in Vienna. The presence of Austrian, Italian, Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian and Moldovan journalists obliged everyone to speak English during the official sessions.During coffee breaks and official dinners, however, all the journalists from former Yugoslavia stuck together, speaking Serbo-Croatian, or, rather, "our language." Even the Albanians from Kosovo preferred the former Yugoslav crowd.Journalists talked about their respective countries, asked about mutual friends and compared whose economic situation was more favorable and which country was closer to joining the European Union. Nonetheless, the aspiration to join the EU did not translate into any interest in Europe. I tried, without success, to comment on the media situation in Spain. Nobody was interested. "I live in the Balkans, not in Europe," commented a colleague from Macedonia. Mirjana Tomic, a freelance media consultant, lives in Madrid.


Copyright � 2006 The International Herald Tribune www.iht.com
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/23/opinion/edtomic.phpThe independence of Montenegro- the further disintegration of a country- implies many practical problems.

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=9026
May 24, 2006

Claiming the Black Mountain
by Nebojsa Malic

Montenegro's Separatists WinAfter seven years of frustrated attempts, the separatist regime inMontenegro celebrated victory Sunday night, as it managed to drum up 55.5percent of the votes necessary to win the independence referendum. Whatwould be a landslide in any Western election was actually the narrowest ofmargins in Montenegro, as the acceptable threshold set by the Brusselsbureaucrats was 55 percent. It took weeks of pro-independence propaganda in government-monopolized media, multi-million-euro public works timed for thereferendum, shady political deals with ethnic minorities, and votershenanigans to secure that .5 percent margin between victory and defeat. And though the unionist parties are demanding a recount and complaining aboutirregularities, Milo Djukanovic and his separatists have already declaredvictory ? and more importantly, just about everyone, including Belgrade, has accepted it as fact.The outcome caused outpourings of joy at the International Crisis Group,among the Kosovo Albanians, and in the ranks of Serbophobic media. Theireagerness to celebrate the "demise of Greater Serbia" suggests that external support for Montenegrin separatism was never about Montenegro at all. Whathappens to the rocky republic next will be of little interest to itserstwhile partisans, as they continue to redraw Balkans maps to match those of 1941.Democracy in ActionIt has been said that it doesn't matter who votes as much as who counts thevotes. In Montenegro this weekend, what mattered was who counted the voters.In the run-up to the referendum, tens of thousands of "Montenegrins" living abroad were registered to vote, while hundreds of thousands who lived inSerbia were denied that right. While separatists complained that because ofthe 55 percent rule, their vote was worth only 0.82 percent of "a Serb's" (meaning a unionist's), it was people like Began Cekic, "a demolition expertfrom Brooklyn," who decided the outcome of the plebiscite.Writes Nicholas Wood of the New York Times:"Figures from the border police suggest that Montenegro's diaspora had a decisive role in passing the referendum. Some 16,000 Montenegrins fromabroad returned in the three days before the election, a number equal to 3percent of the total voter turnout."While people like Cekic, "an ethnic Albanian," flew in to support the separatists, none of the 350,000-plus Montenegrins living in Serbia wereallowed to vote. Most of them consider themselves ethnic Serbs, much asthose in Montenegro who voted against secession. But the Djukanovic regime has systematically denied Montenegro's Serb identity, establishing aseparate "Academy of sciences," a separate church, a separate language, eveninventing a separate history.Alexis de Tocqueville once warned that a democracy can easily become a mere "tyranny of the majority." The great irony of Montenegro's May 21 plebisciteis that the "majority" that won was actually an alliance of minorities ? theideological and pragmatic separatists among the Montenegrin Serbs, ethnic Albanians, Croats, and Muslims, who together outnumbered the plurality ofSerb unionists.The Gloating BeginsWhile news of Montenegro's secession generally merited a short wire reportin most American papers, the media establishment with vested interests in the "Bank of Collective Serbian Guilt" (Deliso) reacted to the outcome withebullience and gloating.The staff correspondent of New York's Newsday told his readers how Sundaynight's referendum was a defeat for "every Serb who ever yearned to expand Serbia's territory" and "a dream of a land called Greater Serbia." Insistingthat the 1990s wars were motivated by this mythical conspiracy ? somethingeven the Hague Inquisition has abandoned, due to complete inability to fabricate even halfway credible evidence ? the Newsday correspondentexplains that:"The hope of the United States, the European Union, and the internationalcommunity at large is that Serbia will accept its modest new status as a landlocked country of under 10 million people, give up its expansionist,nationalist impulses, and embrace the West."This sort of rhetoric is parroted by The Guardian's Ian Traynor, who opinedthat the loss of Montenegro, and the likely loss of Kosovo to follow, "may be just the tonic Serbia needs to divest itself of a disastrous 15 years anda nationalism that has brought nothing but grief." Continues Traynor,"[C]ertainly, the cream of Belgrade's liberal and democratic class is happy that an independent Montenegro also means, finally, an independent Serbiathat can get on with rebuilding itself."The "cream" he is referring to are people like Sonja Biserko, who told theLA Times that Montenegro's secession "marked the end of Serbia's 'imperialambitions.'" There's something incongruous about Biserko, the leadingsupporter of the Empire, talking about some supposed Serbian imperialism. In her Serbophobic crusade, she has supported the NATO bombing and advocatedthe occupation and forced "reeducation" of Serbia. That's some "humanrights" record, indeed.One of Biserko's detractors once asked the rhetorical question: How small would Serbia have to be for them to no longer consider it "imperialist" and"aggressive"? The answer he postulated, based on the Jacobin language ofBiserko and the rest of the "liberal and democratic class," was, "Never small enough."Taking a CueAlbanian separatists in the occupied province of Kosovo have cheeredSunday's results the loudest.Alex Anderson of the International Crisis Group, which has championed Montenegrin and Albanian separatism, did not hide his pleasure at theoutcome of Sunday's plebiscite, commenting that "there's an expectation ofdomino-effect" in Kosovo now."Before the end of the year, Kosovo, too, will join Montenegro as a new state, and these new countries will be an important factor for stability ofthe whole region," said the Albanian "prime minister" of Kosovo, Agim Ceku.A commentator named Dukagjin Gorani distilled the Albanian argument thus: if 650,000 residents of Montenegro have the right to independence, why wouldn'tthe 2 million Albanians in Kosovo? One could respond that Montenegro was a"republic" in the old Yugoslavia, and that according to the EU's own ruling from 1991 only "republics" had the right to self-determination andsecession, not provinces or peoples. That was certainly the argument usedagainst the separatist movements of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. But the Abramowitz Doctrine clearly rejects the application of principles tothe Balkans. Arguments rejected out of hand when they came from 2 millionSerbs are now widely recognized as valid when coming from 2 million Albanians. It's all in who does the rejecting and the recognizing, you see.AcceptanceReactions in Belgrade have been a mixture of shock, disbelief, sorrow, andsatisfaction. The expression most wire services used was "grudging acceptance." By Tuesday afternoon, Serbian President Boris Tadic ? now defacto a full head of state ? publicly announced Serbia's acceptance of theplebiscite results. It isn't quite clear whether he had the authority to do so, but the notoriously blurry lines of authority in Serbia have just becomeeven more fluid.To many in Serbia, Montenegro's separation comes as a relief, after almostnine years of incessant provocations and tension-building by the separatists. Admittedly, the sundering will abolish the costly and uselessunion government, for years almost entirely funded by Serbian taxpayers.According to the charter negotiated in 2002, Serbia will automatically succeed to all international memberships, treaties, and charters, whileMontenegro will have to start from scratch. Abolition of the Union will haveanother consequence ? the independence of Serbia from Javier Solana, the man who presided over Serbia's 1999 bombing, and who was instrumental increating the Union charter.And yet, Montenegro's departure comes as a body blow to the Serb nationalconscience. Quite the contrary from Imperial claims of "Greater Serbia," the prevailing view in Serbia itself has for decades been the Communist-inducedprovincialism, which regarded their close relatives in Croatia, Bosnia, andMacedonia as somehow different and alien. Montenegro, however, had always been regarded as more quintessentially Serb than Serbia itself. Throughoutthe 19th century, Austria-Hungary did its best to keep Serbia and Montenegroapart, finally failing in 1913. After the Great War, Montenegro was annexed by the Kingdom of Serbia, something the tactless Serbian monarch handledabout as gracefully as the creation of Yugoslavia.Even so, it was not until the Italian occupation of 1941-45 and thesubsequent Communist creation of the "People's Republic of Montenegro" that the idea emerged of a "Montenegrin" ethnic identity as distinctly separatefrom Serb. Djukanovic's brand of separatism did not appeal to freedom from"Milosevic's tyranny" or notions of regional autonomy ? it rooted itself firmly in this anti-Serb concept of Montenegrin nationality. When even theproudest Serbs go as far to deny their Serb heritage? what does it meananymore? This is the sort of question the foreign backers of Montenegrin independence wanted asked, for the explicit purpose of forcing Serbia to"accept its modest new status" and "embrace the West." (Newsday)The loss of compass in Belgrade is perhaps best described by Monday's call from Vuk Draskovic, soon-to-be-former foreign minister of the now defunctUnion, to reestablish monarchy in Serbia. While a great idea in principle,Draskovic chose to justify it as "a shortcut to full membership in EU and NATO." What's Next?The true consequences of Montenegro's separation remain to be seen. Serbiaobviously has a lot of soul-searching to do, even as it is facing enormouspressure to surrender Kosovo. In the rocky republic itself, life after secession does not look to be all milk and honey, as the separatistspromised their electorate. For years, Montenegro has lived on U.S. foreignaid, while Serbia subsidized its share of government expenses and foreign debt. Now that it can no longer be used as a leverage against Belgrade,Podgorica may find its American sugar daddy inexplicably AWOL. Moreover, itsrulers now owe favors to Croats, Albanians, and Muslims from the north ? favors they may have to repay with special privileges, maybe even territory.For years, Milo Djukanovic wanted to be president of an independent state.Now he has his wish, and may well live to regret it, as flags, marches, and hymns give way to grim realities he can no longer blame on Belgrade.

From: Dragan Rakic

Subject: RE: Montenegrin Independence
The, now, former member of the Serbian and Montenegrin Union, Montenegro became the newest European state two days ago, by expressing its will on the referendum for independence.

The international observers stated that the vote was regular and that some 83% of voters were present at the poles. But there is something that disturbs that "regularity", which seemed to be perfect. The Montenegrin Prime minister Mr. Milo Djukanovic who organized the vote, invited "all the Montenegrins
from all around the World to come to vote". That is what happened. People from USA, UK, Germany and other continents were interviewed at some European TV channels, and to those who understand the language it was quite strange to hear instead of Serbian, the Albanian language. One might come to conclusion that Albanians came to vote for the independence. It would not be that important if one knows that the Montenegrins living in Serbia were not allowed to vote at this referendum. Knowing that Montenegrins make some 30% of the Serbian population, one could ask what could have happened if they voted. In the other hand, Mr. Djukanovic, the Montenegrin Prime minister, expressed his worries about what would become 30 % of them after the independence is declared. With a little tour of " humanitarian problem", " The non respect of minorities" etc, he may easily create the situation we knew in Bosnia or in Kosovo. Nevertheless it should be noted that he did not allow the Montenegrins from Serbia to vote.

Is it regular or not � ?

Dragan RAKIC
Strasbourg
France

Question: After all, the Albanians outnumber Serbs in Kosovo (largely through illegal crossing of Albanians into Kosovo from Albania but only make up 19% of Serbia as a whole. When legal and illegal Mexicans -- while still a minority in the United states as a whole -- become the "majority in California, Arizona or Texas, which is fast approach if the President's non-admitted amnesty bill goes through, will their "majority" be able to vote for separation from the United States without the vote opened to all America?" This is what the Serbs are facing.

Stella

MONTENEGRO - ANOTHER GERMAN PUPPET STATE? Report by the German Journalists of www.german-foreign-policy.com 19/5/06Translated by Edward Spalton 20/5/06 forhttp://www.freenations.freeuk.com/gc-61.html
Germany calling

http://www.balkanpeace.org/rs/archive/july00/rs57.shtml

Decline of The West, Playing the Montenegro Card by George Szamuely Playing the Montenegro Card

"It looks like NATO will soon be renewing its war against Serbia. Montenegro will provide the justification. NATO is playing the same game in Montenegro that it played in Kosovo."

http://www.balkanpeace.org/rs/archive/apr01/rs141.shtml

Chronicles Online, April 25, 2001Montenegro Elections: Djukanovic�s crushing defeat Srdja Trifkovic

He [Milo Djukanovic] is Milosevic�s disciple, his creation. He may parade as a democrat now, but his instincts have always been authoritarian and remain so today." The leading daily newspaper, Pobjeda, is controlled by the government and accordingly looks and reads like a party organ from the pre-1989 Eastern Europe. The second-largest circulation daily, Vijesti, and the leading weekly, Monitor, while theoretically "independent," are both outspoken in their support of separatism and effectively pro-government. They enjoy lavish financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy and from George Soros , among others.

Jared Israel's (www.tenc.net) Letter to the Jerusalem Post Respondingto Shlomo Avineri's "Next - independence for Kosovo"Avineri Embraces Germany's Dream: A Splintered Balkans It is remarkable to see Prof. Avineri call for empathy for the Serbseven as he repeats every anti-Serb falsehood. Is this black humor?Examples:First, there is no "Bosnian" ethnic group. Bosnia includes: descendents of Serbs who survived Jasenovac, Croatia's Nazi deathcamp; Slavic Muslims; and Croats. The Slavic Muslims are mainly Serbswho converted to Islam under Ottoman rule/coercion. They areindistinguishable from Orthodox Slavs ('Bosnian Serbs') except by religion. The 'Bosnian ethnic group' is a propaganda creation, tohide reality: Alija Izetbegovic's drive for "Bosnian nationhood" wasreally a drive to create an Islamist-dominated outpost in thatterritory, which required defeating Serbian and pro-Yugoslav Muslimresistance.Second, Yugoslavia did not break up during World War II due to Serbianhegemony. That was the line of Hitler's favorites, the Croatian Ustashi, who created the Nazi-propped 'Independent State of Croatia.'Yugoslavia broke up due to a massive Nazi invasion after Serbianofficers overthrew the government, which had made a deal with Hitler.The subsequent resistance - overwhelmingly Serbs - fought the armies of Nazi Germany and its ally, the Ustashi-run Independent State ofCroatia. The Ustashi were motivated by fanatical Catholicism,antisemitism, and Serbophobia, and they mobilized Muslim fanatics, whosigned up for the Waffen SS organized by the Mufti of Jerusalem. In Kosovo, the predecessors of today's Kosovo Liberation Army warmlywelcomed the Italian Fascists, and helped deport almost all Kosovo'sJews to Nazi death camps.The Comintern's 'Serbian-nationalism-is-the-great-problem' line, embraced by Tito in part because it was a politically correct way ofappealing to Croatian anti-Serb racism, helped make possibleYugoslavia's post-war failure to campaign seriously against theanti-Serb racism that underlay Ustashi Croatia's mass slaughter of Serbs � they butchered about 750,000 Serbs alongside most Jews.Prior to the late-1980s launch of the US-German campaign to, onceagain, destroy Yugoslavia, the media widely reported that in Kosovo amass-based Albanian racist movement was conducting a war of terror against Serbs. Those racists, heir to the WWII Kosovo AlbanianFascists, wanted to resurrect the Fascists' Greater Albania. In 1999NATO went to war for these born-again Nazis, who would dominate any'independent' Kosovo. Such a statelet would be a springboard for attacks on Macedonia and Greece, aiming to annex parts of thosecountries to Kosovo and Albania, thus resurrecting Greater Albania.This violent splintering of the Balkans is the dream of German foreignpolicy which, for a hundred years, has advocated "Serbia must die," because Serbia, with its passionate opposition to foreign domination,has always been the driving force uniting Balkan peoples into a statecapable of resisting Germany. Thus "Serbia must die" has been the racist battle-cry of the German drive of preventing the creation ofand then destroying Yugoslavia. (The Comintern's old line that"Serbian hegemony is the problem" is in essence a polite rephrasing of the German slogan.) An independent Kosovo, acting as a base for anation-destroying campaign to create a Greater Albania, would be agiant step closer to realizing this German dream, grotesquely embracedby Mr. Avineri, of a Yugoslavia broken into increasingly tiny parts, helpless to resist German hegemony.
Jared Israel
Newton Mass
www.tenc.net

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1781039,00.html

The Guardian Tuesday May 23, 2006

Comment is free

Never mind the Balkans

Montenegro had more independence as part of Yugoslavia than it will as an
EU-Nato protectorate
Neil Clark

'Montenegro votes for independence", the headlines declared at the result of the
referendum in the Balkan republic. But is independence really what lies in
store? My dictionary has independence as: "completely self-governing; not
subject to or showing the influence of others". By this definition, independence
is not what they will be getting.
The most important political and economic decisions, which will affect the
everyday lives of citizens in the republic, will not be made in its capital,
Podgorica, but in Brussels, Geneva and Washington and the boardrooms of the
multinational companies which now dominate the country's economy.
It is ironic that EU and WTO membership has been most enthusiastically supported
by the prime minister, Milo Djukanovic, and the pro-independence faction - for
it's hard to think of an easier way for a small country to lose national
independence than by surrendering control of trade and economic policy to
unelected bureaucrats miles away.
Nato membership, which Montenegro is also expected to pursue enthusiastically,
has similar consequences: the commanders of Montenegro's new army and navy will
have to get used to taking orders from those who planned the 78-day bombing of
Yugoslavia in 1999.
Then there is the role of the IMF and the World Bank. These two unelected bodies
have, with the EU, sought to impose Thatcherite neo-liberal solutions on
Serbia-Montenegro, ever since the fall of Yugoslavia's Socialist-led government
in 2000. Thousands of socially owned enterprises have already been privatised,
but the west is still not satisfied - the IMF has made further economic help
dependent on Belgrade selling off the valuable NIS oil company.
Montenegro's tiny economy is even more dominated by foreign capital than
Serbia's, with the privatisation process having started much earlier. The
selling off of nationally owned assets will have serious implications for the
country's future economic viability and even with the tourist potential of its
attractive coastline, it is difficult to see how Montenegro can afford to pay
its way, without further surrender to western financial institutions. In doing
so, it will be following the path of its neighbours.
For all the novelties of statehood, the brutal truth is that today's
"independent" Balkan republics had, if anything, more independence when they
were autonomous republics inside the Yugoslav Federation. In place of one
militarily strong, internationally respected, non-aligned nation, there now
exists a number of weak, economically unviable EU/IMF/Nato protectorates.
The dismantling of Yugoslavia, with its alternative economic and social model,
has suited western capitalism fine. But for the people of the region, the
benefits have been harder to discern. Little wonder then that nostalgia for
Tito's Yugoslavia is on the rise. The website "Titoville" has received over 1m
visitors and in Rakovice, a suburb of Sarajevo, an anti-nationalist Serb named
Jezdimir Milosevic (no relation) has proclaimed "The Republic of Titoslavia", a
state "without territory, without international recognition, destined to live in
the hearts of its citizens". Passports are available for EUR10.
Over 65 years ago, on the eve of the attack on Yugoslavia by the Axis powers,
the Serbian jurist Slobodan Jovanovic argued that a single, south Slav state was
the best way the people of the Balkans could guarantee their independence and
protection. It still is - and that logic seems likely to make itself felt in the
years to come. When the victory parades are over, the only real difference
Sunday's narrow vote will make is that Montenegro will be able enter Eurovision.
www.neilclark66.blogspot.com
neilclark6@hotmail.com
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006.

SRNA: Albanians growing more nervous
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2006/May_16/16.html

WND: Kosovo anti-Christian violence continues
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2006/May_16/18.html

RTS: Raskovic-Ivic asks Petersen to rescind UNMIK decision
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2006/May_16/14.html

EU envoy says necessary to continue technical talks on Kosovo
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-05/17/content_4555494.htm"

It is obvious that the process of Kosovo becoming independent has already gone very far"
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php?&nav_category=19&nav_id=34924&order=priority&style=headlines

Danke Deutschlandhttp://english.pravda.ru/news/world/16-05-2006/80385-Serbia-0

Kosovo status should be solved through essential autonomy and preservation of existing borders
http://www.srbija.sr.gov.yu/vesti/vest.php?id=23462

http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2006/May_16/4.html

Interview - Scott Taylor on the Balkans (pt. 2)
www.espritdecorps.ca


May 16, 2006

This article first appeared in the April 2006 issue of the "Canadian-Macedonian News" in Toronto


CMN: A number of events have transpired since our last interview and I believe there is a need to understand what is happening with regards to Balkan politics. Agim Cheku was elected Prime Minister in Kosovo, and we know who Agim Cheku is, Milosevic died a short time later which affected the political climate in Serbia and the Albanian foreign minister made comments regarding Kosovo becoming independent. What next: the creation of Illyrida in western Macedonia? What is your opinion on all this? Are the Balkans boiling over again?

Scott Taylor: It's a very dangerous time right now in the Balkans especially when you've got Agim Cheku accepted by the West and praised as good for the future of Kosovo. Some from the West admit, kind of on the edges, that there may be some issues with Cheku, some critics may accuse him of war crimes but those of us who have followed his career very well know he is guilty of wrongdoing in Meduk and in the shelling of Knin.  Cheku did things as a Croatian officer that are fully documented and recorded particularly by Canadians. These things are known to NATO and to the UN yet he was never brought to justice.

       This is something which flies in the face of the whole Milosevic thing where we jump to the conclusion of his guilt. He was indicted, brought to the Hague, all the things that he was accused of, now that he is dead, simply presumes that he is guilty of everything and it's a tremendous effort on the part of the West to put all the blame for all that happened into his casket. They're trying to bury all of the responsibility with Milosevic to say we can move forward. You can't do that. You can't now build the future of an independent Kosova, as they say, on a guy like Agim Cheku who is a murderous thug. I mean this guy is a real war criminal not someone removed in an office like Milosevic might have been, making policy. He was on the ground in command of his troops. He actually got wounded in action at Meduc because his guys were there. He was right on the ground. This is a war criminal and the West knows it yet is willing to turn a blind eye to keep the Albanians on side.

       The fact that the Albanian government is now saying the border will not be recognized is a very dangerous situation. It is something which anywhere else in the world would be sparking all kinds of controversy. Any country saying anything about a border that's not being recognized is almost a declaration of an undeclared war. This is pushing the future of Kosovo further towards the flame. It's like a barrel of gunpowder being pushed further towards the flame and of course all eyes are on Iraq and Afghanistan. The Balkans is a backwater right now, everyone's trying to put it behind them, trying to convince themselves that this was a victory, this was a success story. We're seven years into the occupation of Kosovo by NATO. They've not stopped the violence; they've not solved the problems. We've seen the violence spread into Macedonia and it will again. I mean all these names being raised, the fact that western Macedonia is now on the target list. They're [Albanians] not hiding their intentions, the fact that the West is blindly ignoring them is a dangerous sign because I don't think Macedonians can accept the situation the way it is. Also, what is going to happen to the Serbs in Kosovo; what is there for them to accept an independent Kosovo under the rule of an indicted war criminal?

 CMN:  Interpol has been looking for Cheku for some years now, because of his war crimes, trying to negotiate with him in Vienna, Austria, Serbia and with the Kosovo delegation. What's going to happen with these negotiations now that Cheku is a Prime Minister? Do you think that they should refuse to negotiate with him?

 Scott Taylor:  They should refuse. Canada should make its objection clear regarding Cheku as a choice of Prime Minister. He's the Prime Minister elect, he's not been sworn in as far as I know at this point but Canada played a key role in documenting his war crimes both in the Meduc and in Knin during Operation Storm, as a Croatian officer. He's an Albanian Kosovar.

        In 1995 he was the artillery commander who shelled Knin. He was the Croatian artillery commander. Very few people understand that as an Albanian Kosovar he was committing war crimes wearing a Croatian uniform. So there's a dual guilt. The Croatian army has some responsibility but he as an individual, as an Albanian serving in Croatian uniform, has to be accountable at some point. He ordered those killings. Now he's serving potentially as the Prime Minister of a country. What message does that send to the Serbs in Kosovo? They know what he did. I mean he fought for the Croatians not because he loved Croatia but because he hates Serbs. That was why he killed those people,  that is why the US MPRI groomed him, trained him and then when you look back on this they were grooming him in '93 to eventually become the commander in "99. So who is behind all of this? That's what's protecting him now is that he didn't act alone. He's the puppet, not the puppeteer. So the puppeteer is still saying that this guy is okay we'll accept him.  That's the problem, we need to look at who is behind Agim Cheku, not just Agim Cheku. Who's been grooming him, taking him, positioning him? Who created Frankenstein's monster? We see the monster, that's Cheku. Who is the doctor that created him?

 CMN: Who is the doctor?

 Scott Taylor:  The Americans. The MPRI, this Pentagon training cadre brought him, selected him from day one, saw in him the potential not just to serve as a Croatian. As soon as it blew up in Croatia he took off his Croatian epaulettes and became head of the Kosovo Liberation Army with NATO's blessing. The timing was all so orchestrated. It was planned and when you look at it as forensic looking back on how things developed it's very clear that even Kosovo in '98 '99 was planned as early as '93. It was all stepping stones and Cheku was one of the characters being manipulated. A brutal war criminal was being manipulated to get where he is now. But the fact that they still won't hold him accountable is because he knows who created him and if there is ever to be a trial of Agim Cheku at the Hague, in his own defense he's going to of course bring in all the evidence as to who really was behind all this in the Balkans.

 CMN:  So basically, is that why he never went to the Hague?

 Scott Taylor:  If he goes to the Hague he can bring some very key people with him and that's the problem. And that's why everyone is accepting him as the Prime Minister despite all the evidence that exists on what he did, collected by Canadian soldiers, horrific crimes. Yet he's being distanced from that, accepted as a political leader as a figurehead for the new Kosova.

 CMN: Were you surprised when you heard that Agim Cheku was the new Prime Minister of Kosovo?

 Scott Taylor:  I still can't believe he is still serving as the head of the TMK, the Kosovo Protection Corps. I can't believe every day that goes by that he's not indicted for what he did. It's a crime and then to find out that he's moving up and going to become a world leader.

 CMN: For you it was shocking news...

 Scott Taylor:  Yes it's incremental in its shock. The fact that he's not been brought to justice is one shock and then the fact that they're going to ignore that and move him to another level, it's unbelievable when everybody, Louise Arbour, Madeleine Albright, these people know what he did. It's not been hidden from them but they never indicted him. He by his very existence and his promotion, every time he gets put up it makes the Hague tribunal that much more of a joke. It's just incredible that they would turn a blind eye to what he did and allow him to proceed up. He wasn't a President or a Prime Minister. He started off as a very junior Colonel in the Croatian Army committing atrocities. Then they trained him again and he became a General and committed bigger atrocities. Then he became the commander of the KLA, committed more atrocities. He released his commanders to fight in Macedonia, connected with the TMK. All of that he is responsible for. All of that, the quest for a greater Albania. I don't think Agim Cheku has ever been on the sidelines.

       They held the Prizren meeting in 2001 or 2002 about the future of Albanian speaking people in the region of the Balkans, inside Kosovo, and NATO protected them. The meeting was held there and Cheku went to that. Rugova did not go. I mean politically it was seen as unwise, he didn't go but Cheku did. So this man, his nationalism, at least he's honest about that. He's not hiding this. He's not a hypocrite. For that I respect him because he's never played under false colours. NATO, the international community, the Hague: all of them turn a blind eye to what he's done. It's like rubbing it in their face. He's never denied what he is, never pretended to be anything but a man in a quest of, if military means are necessary, a Greater Albania.

 CMN: You were just recently in the Balkans. What was the reason for your visit and when did you come back?

 Scott Taylor:  I was giving a speech at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. I was a part of a conference to scientifically prove that Kosovo belongs to Serbia. There were a number of international delegates, mostly of course Serbian. For me I'm not an academic, my contribution to the whole thing was my eyewitness accounts. So I took the opportunity to drive down to Kosovo, made a quick trip and met some refugees, spoke to UN police, spoke to NATO soldiers and stayed at a monastery in Grachanica. There was a ceremony, a memorial of the second anniversary of the 17th March pogrom against the Serbs. I attended this and then I drove back and brought a report of what I had just done, to the conference. So again seeing people who have been displaced now for two years since the pogrom, some have been displaced for seven years, but this last wave of people displaced from '04 are still living in absolute squalor, unseen by the world. We saw the conditions that they lived in. They're forgotten by the Serbian government and by the world. They're just tucked away unable to return to their houses, living in Mitrovica basically as pawns in this game.

       It's something which most of these politicians that are making the decisions in Kosovo or for the future of Kosovo don't ever see; the real lives that are being affected. They lost their age old family farm and now they're living in some tiny office with all these people with no privacy, eating donated food which is the basic minimum, just beans. They are simply existing, waiting for something to happen but knowing that it never will. They're in limbo.

 CMN:  Were you there when Milosevic died?

 Scott Taylor:  I got back from Kosovo in time for Milosevic's funeral.

 CMN: Did you attend the funeral?

 Scott Taylor:  I went to the Belgrade memorial. There were 80,000 people out there in front of the Parliament buildings. Seeing how the international media was playing it you could almost predict how it was going to go. They portrayed it as a rejuvenation of Serbian nationalism, as a celebration of a war criminal etc. The Western media has already proclaimed guilt not just on Milosevic but on all the Serbian people. And that again extends to Macedonians because they're Slavs, ergo if oppressing Albanians is bad then the Macedonians are equally guilty of it.

       So you've got to look at the way it's being played out. Just the whole international media's take, you could pull back and see it through that prism. It wasn't good. I mean they were seeing the crowds out there and the statements that were being made about how the West was doing this to us and then the belief that Milosevic was poisoned etc: most of it being portrayed with some sort of derision by the Western media.  And yet if you look at the facts it's not outlandish that the Hague killed him. I mean those that were there, James Bisset, other witnesses that were at the same conference, many of us that were at the conference were ready to testify at the Hague.

 CMN: Did you see any familiar faces from here?

 Scott Taylor:  James Bisset was there.

 CMN:  Former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia...

 Scott Taylor: And he had met Slobodan Milosevic as the President when he was Ambassador. He met him again as a prisoner in the Hague and he testified just days before he died. He was aware, because you get to meet Milosevic when you go to these things, of his health conditions, of his concerns. He knew that he wanted to go to Moscow because he didn't trust the Hague doctors. They'd found this anti leprosy drug in his body that frightened him because he knew that he wasn't taking that drug. He had never taken that drug. He didn't know where that came from and of course he was concerned. His visit to Moscow was denied and subsequently he was found dead. There were other witnesses. There were Americans and others at the conference who again had agreed to testify, were about to and knew that there was still a lot of fight in Milosevic. He wasn't "suicidal" as they claimed. He had a whole bunch more points he was going to make. If I testified, Agim Cheku would have been first and foremost, the main thrust of my testimony was to take it from Kosovo back to Croatia and focus on this individual. That was what I was to bring to the tribunal. Now we won't get the chance.

 CMN: It looks like the tribunal has nothing to do anymore.

 Scott Taylor:  Well they're going to keep trying other Serbian Generals. There are other trials going on and I've been asked as a potential witness for other Generals. I'll go if I can. There's some talk being floated by those witnesses who didn't testify, maybe they can set up some sort of parallel tribunal to at least put it somewhere on the record what we've been prepared to testify.

 CMN: It looks like the tribunal in the Hague was solely created for certain people; Serbs and Macedonians.

 Scott Taylor:  I think it's a historical precedent that anytime there is a war like this that the victor establishes the guilt of the vanquished. So in this case the Serbs have to be guilty of everything and Milosevic in particular. Now it's all buried in his casket and the Western media again was very complicit in going along with that. It was stunning to see how everything that was ever done in the Balkans, unquestioned. Christine Amanpour was unbelievable, reiterating things that were said and since then have been disproved; death camps and all making it look like the Holocaust. I mean the guy had tuberculosis, all this has been disproved, all of it resurfaced untouched and was put back out for the general consumption. I've likened it to all of us who know better, have built a sand castle of trying to get the truth, checking on things in Srebrenica, Rachak, exposing all the lies and deception etc.

       We were making headway, we were building up the sandcastle and then after Milosevic's death this flood came and swamped everything. And the average person now is probably even more anti-Serb, anti-Milosevic. He was equivalent to Stalin, Hitler whatever. I mean when you know the circumstances it wasn't like that. The Serbian people didn't like Milosevic for different reasons, because he caved in not because he stood firm.  To have such a huge disconnect between reality and Western media is very discouraging to see that again. I should point out that the CBC that was on the ground did not want, they were advised by an American journalist, that James Bisset was there and available for comment and they declined. Bisset who knew Milosevic as a president, as a prisoner and spoke to him just days before he died and testified was not considered a primary source. If he's not who is? They had their own agenda and it all came back very, very distressing and discouraging for me.

 CMN:  Regarding Macedonia. The Albanian minister of foreign affairs just recently said that if Kosovo is divided into an Albanian and a Serbian sector then Illyrida may be the next step.

 Scott Taylor: I think that statement is another indicator that the idea of a greater Albania is alive and well. They want south Serbia and they want Preshevo.

       The Macedonian Government is basically whistling past the graveyard as we say. They're trying to bolster their own spirits when they know better. I'm sure they're frightened by that statement. The fact that the international community didn't react to it and doesn't understand its importance, is kind of frightening and it indicates that they want Kosovo finished. They don't care what it takes, they want it somehow solved and all over with.

 CMN: They want an independent state?

 Scott Taylor:  It's the final solution. The comments that the media and I were getting from people, from American soldiers and from a Lieutenant Colonel who had just arrived from Texas and who spent all these months training and getting indoctrinated is that the sooner they have a resolution the better for the future. Then they can all start to build together no matter what happens in Kosovo, no matter whether it's independent as long, as it's solid then they can all stop their fighting and work together. This is some Utopian belief that the minute it becomes Kosova and the Serbs realize there's no going back, the ones living in the enclaves will somehow emerge into a rainbow world.

 CMN: They probably want a border with Bulgaria. This is what they were striving for during the Second World War. 

 Scott Taylor:  The map that they have, Greater Albania so by saying that this is still on the table we saw the fighting in 2001 it's a reality. They're stirring up trouble and it won't be so easily resolved. Even if they give Kosovo, Kosova its independence they will still want more. That's what we're hearing. Under existing boundaries, altered boundaries they're looking at pieces of land anywhere that there's a majority of ethnic Albanians, they want to include that in a greater Albania. So the border with Serbia would need to be redrawn even if it's not in the immediate plan. They will not accept things the way they are in the short term or in the long term.

 CMN: Macedonian President Crvenkovski wants the border between Kosovo and Macedonia resolved before the "Kosova issue" is resolved. Any comments?

 Scott Taylor:  It's one of the rare sensible statements I've heard from a Macedonian government official. It makes a lot of sense and that needs to be reinforced by the international community if that's agreed to, whatever the border happens to be.  I think they need to call in international monitors for that because of course still as Macedonians you need to protect your own borders. But in this case I think given the declarations made in the Kosovo Parliament they won't recognize certain borders. It needs to be declared, determined, made final and then it becomes inviolate. They have to bring in international monitors to make sure that this will not change. Then whatever happens inside Kosovo, it happens inside Kosovo, but it remains outside of Macedonia.



Liljana Ristova
Risto Stefov

By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

[Published in Z Magazine (May, 2006), in a slightly abridged version and without footnotes. Posted here in full with the kind permission of the authors.]

The March 11 death of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in his prison cell in The Hague was greeted by Western political circles and media alike with an outpouring of venom that reflected the demon role assigned to him in the myth-making of the past 15 years. Milosevic was a "monster," a "sociopath," and a "war criminal who wrecked southeastern Europe in the latter part of the 20th century," former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a chief architect of Clinton era policy toward the region, Richard Holbrooke, told the Cable News Network the very first morning. "Milosevic started four wars. He lost them all. The biggest of them all was the one in Bosnia, where over 300,000 people died, two-and-a-half million homeless. And we bombed him in August and September of 1995. We should have done this much earlier."[1] During this and the ten days following his death terms such as "Butcher of the Balkans" and "Butcher of Belgrade" were used dozens and perhaps hundreds of times in the U.S. media alone (and widely used abroad as well).[2]

CONTINUED: http://www.electricpolitics.com/2006/05/milosevics_death_in_the_propag.html

AntiWar.com

May 13, 2006

Tactics for More Balkan Mischief The West's media machine swings into high gear over Kosovo

by Christopher Deliso

balkanalysis.com

When it comes to the Balkans, there are some interventionist truths that will never die. Take the 1999 war in Kosovo. In starting it, former President Bill Clinton failed to seek congressional approval in bombing Yugoslavia. The bombing also went on without UN approval. And NATO violated its own self-defensive charter in attacking a country that threatened none of its members. In short, the war was illegal in every respect. Operationally, NATO enlisted a group (the Kosovo Liberation Army) that had until very recently before been classified a terrorist organization, its funding derived partially from organized crime, its numbers bolstered by Islamist fanatics. The war effort also meant turning a blind eye to the machinations of people like Florin Krasniqi, an Albanian who snuck into the U.S. illegally and then proceeded to make illegal shipments of arms to Kosovo. (In 2004, this double felon chipped in at a fundraiser for John Kerry.) Tactically, the U.S. also enlisted groups like the OSCE to fabricate stories of an alleged Serbian massacre of Albanians at Racak, something subsequently discredited in an official forensics report. German intelligence pitched in with a bogus report of an alleged "Operation Horseshoe," Milosevic's supposed diabolical plan to ethnically cleanse Kosovo's almost 2 million Albanians. The lies spouted by the Clinton administration included such canards as 100,000 Albanian dead (postwar tallies put the numbers killed on both sides at around 4,000). The propaganda was assisted by the military's working relationship with CNN and the network's Christiane Amanpour, the wife of then-State Department spokesman James Rubin. Media-government complicity does not get any more intimate than that. Most unforgivably, NATO won its war not through military valor but through bombing civilian targets in Serbia, including hospitals, schools, bridges, and refineries – thus creating toxic, cancerous clouds that in effect made America guilty of using weapons of mass destruction. Vicious cluster bombs that maimed and killed civilians were also used, and, worst of all, copious amounts of depleted uranium were dropped over Kosovo – thus providing the Kosovar Albanians NATO had allegedly been there to protect with a generation of cancer and birth defects. Indeed, NATO's own soldiers have already suffered this fate, one the U.S. knew about full well in light of the "Gulf War Syndrome" of the first Gulf War less than a decade earlier. And so, NATO's war was illegal and immoral in every way. The subsequent UN occupation of Kosovo has proved to be a colossal failure. Over 200,000 minority members were expelled by Albanians, and those that remain often do not enjoy basic human rights. The UN has not stopped but actually encouraged ethnic cleansing. The remaining Serbs in Kosovo live in constant fear and still come under regular attacks and intimidation from Albanians, whose militant leadership has been coddled and promoted to positions of high political power by the UN – regardless of their indictments for war crimes – even as the West continues its hypocritical demands for Serbia to export war crimes suspects to the Hague. Meanwhile, the UN continues to allow Islamic terrorist groups to set up shop in Kosovo, and has promoted a one-sided clash of civilizations in which over 150 churches have been destroyed or damaged and over 200 Arab-funded mosques have risen in their place. UN staffers, from the lowest to highest levels, have also been implicated in everything from white-collar corruption to human trafficking and murder while at the same time contributing – after seven years of administration – shoddy infrastructure and sporadic electricity and water. Ladies and gentlemen, it does not get much more disgusting than this. The Final Drama These irrefutable truths constitute the tip of the iceberg. But this overwhelming mass of evidence, this enormity of collective karma, if you will, needs to be mentioned so that the reader can understand just why the West is being forced to such hysterics in the media to defend its own indefensible policies and the disastrous fruits of its intervention in Kosovo. The best offense is a strong defense, and so the West attempts to divert attention from its own failures by sending the public down false trails. This could be called the Serbian smokescreen. Now that endgame is near and Kosovo's final status is being negotiated in Vienna by a bevy of foreign diplomats and lobbyists, the West is employing a tried and tested policy of distracting the world from the very real illegalities, failures, and hypocrisies of its actions in Kosovo, by shifting the blame for everything that ever went wrong to Serbia, and especially to the late Slobodan Milosevic, who after all can no longer defend himself. A Fortuitous Pattern of Events The great lengths the interventionists have been going to – through the usual diplomatic broadsides, media bombardments, and damning think-tank pronouncements – attest to the scope of the effort necessary to conceal the facts of their complete failure in Kosovo. Perhaps through a brief recap of media focus on the region since January it will become clear how the stage is being set for both further violence and the self-exoneration of those who caused it. As the year began and Kosovo's final status talks loomed, several wonderful coincidences occurred that served to marginalize Serbia's position and enhance that of the militant Albanian wing in the Kosovar leadership. All this suited the Western powers just fine, and was in fact driven by them. The remarkably rapid succession of events guaranteed that mass media coverage of Kosovo would be focused, not on the West's many failures, but on satisfying Albanian wishes at the expense of the still-demonized Serbs. Rugova's Demise to the Mladic Media Frenzy First, on Jan. 22, came the long-anticipated death of Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova. Rugova was the veteran, relatively pacifist Albanian politician who had long represented a stabilizing presence in comparison to the militant wing, people like Ramush Haradinaj, Agim Ceku, and Hashim Thaci. For this orientation he was allegedly supported by the British and opposed by the Americans in the first elections following the UN occupation, in October 2000. When Rugova died of lung cancer, an American plan that had been decided "long in advance" (according to UN sources) was realized. It involved replacing the weak prime minister, Bajram Kosumi, with war hero Agim Ceku – though it was necessary to have this alleged war criminal's name removed first from the Interpol list. In the interests of Albanian "unity," Rugova the peacenik was given the burial of a "martyr," in a ceremony reserved for the "war heroes" of the KLA – ironically, a group which he had often opposed at his own risk. Such is the grip of militant Albanian nationalism, which their leaders cannot escape even in death. Media coverage in January and February was thus devoted to the past greatness of Rugova and the future promise of Ceku, with little attention given to the latter's murderous record. Then, the last week of February saw a dramatic development that kept the media from addressing this topic: an inexplicable, rumor-fed media feeding frenzy allegedly begun in Sarajevo, which saw the pundits breathlessly speculating that war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic was on the verge of capture. The effect of this "bombshell" (in the end, it turned out to be another dead end) was to proliferate the number of news articles and editorials demanding the fugitive's capture, and in general denigrating the Serbs, taking the reader back to the Bosnian war of the 1990s and the alleged genocide at Srebrenica of 1995. And then, just a few days later – wouldn't you know it? – the encore arrived with massive coverage of the Bosnian government's genocide lawsuit against Serbia in the World Court, first announced in 1993. However, as Nebojsa Malic pointed out, this is not correct: "[T]his isn't a 'Bosnian' lawsuit, but a private undertaking of the Bosnian Muslim ruling party (SDA), from a time when it claimed itself to be the only legitimate government of the country. Bosnia's Serbs and Croats are adamantly against it and have denied it government approval and funding." Nevertheless, the bogus suit resulted in an outpouring of editorials worldwide condemning the Serbs, and thus requisitioning scarce newspaper column space that might have been used on the current sordid reality. At the same time, Kosovo status negotiations that had been postponed by the death of Rugova began. With the negative press already snowballing, Serbia entered the process in a decidedly bad light; as usual, issues pertinent to Kosovo and what has resulted there after seven years of disastrous UN occupation were ignored. It was clear that Serbia was, through a complicit media, being tried in the court of moral opinion over matters that had nothing to do with the real events on the ground. This trend would be dramatically increased in the days to come with two high-profile deaths. The Death of Milosevic Milan Babic, one-time president of the short-lived Republic of Serbian Krajina in Croatia, was the first to go. He died in his cell at the Hague on March 5, allegedly having committed suicide. However, the fact that he had been described beforehand as being in good spirits and eager to provide further testimony against Serb war crimes suspects made the death somewhat suspicious. A source with close ties to the Hague told me that there was "much more" to the story than suicide, and that it would "dangerous for one's health to dig too deep into the affair." Six days later, the Hague's highest-value prisoner, Slobodan Milosevic, also died suddenly in his jail cell. The effect of his passing was like a seismic shift that could have toppled the Hague's entire flimsy edifice – thus necessitating a massive media campaign to uphold the sanctity of this illegal and now potentially homicidal institution. Despite the testimony of many people close to Milosevic, who all stated that he was in good spirits and determined to see his trial through to the end, top prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and the tribunal's many media backers started floating rumors that Milosevic had been playing with his medication in order to get the treatment in Russia he had been demanding. Del Ponte even went so far as to speculate that Milosevic committed suicide. Of course, no one took too seriously Milosevic's own alarm at finding he had been given strange drugs for months, and no one cared that he was demonstrably very ill. His death at that precise moment was without a doubt the greatest gift the Tribunal could have received; for it meant that they would never have to issue an official verdict – one that probably would have fallen far, far short of their vicious expectations. It also meant that Milosevic never got the opportunity to call certain high-ranking Western officials to the witness stand. This would have been a lose-lose proposition for the Hague: an appearance by Western officials involved with the Bosnia and Kosovo wars would have potentially disastrous and embarrassing consequences for the prosecution as well as the Official Truth of the wars; but were they to refuse to appear, the trial would be robbed of any shred of legitimacy it might have had. Milosevic's death was thus played up to the hilt in the media to cement his public image as a Class-A dictator, regardless of the facts. A flood of editorials damning the "Butcher of the Balkans" appeared in newspapers worldwide, digging up disproved statistics and interventionist blowhards such as Richard Holbrooke to make the case that Milosevic – and Milosevic alone – was responsible for everything that has gone wrong in the Balkans over the past 15 years. And so in the space of a week, with one untimely death, the entire history of the modern Balkans was carved in stone, never to be challenged again. Finally, the fact that over 100,000 people turned out to mourn his death in Serbia, at a protest rally where crowds cheered for the Radical and Socialist parties, was just icing on the cake; it was the final damning proof that the Serbs were little more than a nation of bloodthirsty supporters of war criminals. Needless to say, the media obsession with Milosevic succeeded in keeping developments in Kosovo out of the headlines yet again at a very crucial moment. And so the question of whether the UN had acted wisely in promoting Ceku, a suspected Albanian war criminal, to the top job there would not be brought up. Ongoing attacks against the Serbian minority in Kosovo, or the plight of their refugees were also to be ignored, as they had always been, in one way or another. The important trend of Albanian rioters targeting the UN administration violently in Kosovo was also glossed over. In short, never was there a more useful and fortunate death for the West than that of Slobodan Milosevic. Of course, foul play cannot be proved – primarily because the powers-that-be were never interested in proving it, and because when Milosevic's supporters and the Russian government raised the issue they were dismissed in the media as biased propagandists. Yet considering the many benefits that his death has had for the Hague, the diplomats, the media, and their cumulative legacy, as well as the opportunities it provided for covering up the UN's failure in Kosovo and paving the way for it to become an independent, ethnically clean Albanian country, one has to admit that the motive was there. These suspicions were not allayed by an eyebrow-raising recent comment from ICG President Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister whose ambitions of succeeding then-UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali led his countrymen to lampoon him by the name Gareth-Gareth Evans. In another oration/fundraising speech for a lobby group whose moral credit is very heavily deposited in the bank of Collective Serbian Guilt, Evans came out of nowhere with a completely unprovoked disclaimer regarding Milosevic: "[N]o one can be blamed for his death in custody before it [the trial] was complete." Well that settles that! April: On to Montenegro, and More Looming Catastrophe on the Horizon In April, media attention turned to the referendum for independence in Montenegro that will come on May 21. Yet having been contextualized in advance by the lobbyists, nobody asked the right questions about the referendum and its aftermath. The reasons why the tiny republic of 690,000 would benefit from independence were not really given; the media chose to echo the views of smuggler-in-chief Milo Djukanovic, the only Balkan leader still empowered after 15 years, an autocratic part-time cigarette salesman who really just seeks to expand his personal fiefdom through independence. The president in Podgorica has continually made the disingenuous argument that Serbia is a heavy weight around the neck of Montenegrins yearning to breath free, and that the Serbian legacy of alleged war crimes and Belgrade's failure to catch war criminals is holding the republic back from its "European" course. Ironically, however, if Mladic and Karadzic are anywhere to be found, the mountains of Montenegro are a much more likely place to look than the Serbian plain. Indeed, in a BBC report of Feb. 21 the allegation is repeated again: "[M]ost recent intelligence reports put Mr. Karadzic living in the remote mountains of northwest Montenegro, not far from his home town of Niksic." So why is all the international pressure to catch him levied against Belgrade, and not Podgorica? Why, if Mr. Djukanovic wants to enjoy all the rights and privileges of a sovereign state, is he not obliged to take international responsibilities? It is simply because by not catching the fugitives, he can continue to blame Serbia for holding Montenegro back. Indeed, now that EU accession talks have been stalled by the failure to catch the fugitives, the cynical truth becomes obvious: "[S]lowing down EU partnership talks would be strengthening the cause of Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic." Harsh Realities The Balkans is full of ethnic stereotypes. Sometimes they are supported by events. I recall a few years ago when a farm owner put an ad in the paper asking for 500 grape-pickers. He only got one call – and the caller had dialed the wrong number. It would be harsh to say that Montenegrins are naturally lazy, but it is a fact that there are little economic opportunities for the country save tourism, which is not going to be enough. Montenegro depends on Serbia for trade and benefits from Serbian health care and (until recently) military power. This last is the major reason why an independent Montenegro will not be long for this life. After having led the push for Montenegrin independence, the EU, in another schizophrenic and hapless act of opaque interventionism, has demanded a voter turnout rate – 50 percent – for the May referendum to be valid, a number even higher than is required in EU states. A 55 percent majority of this number will be required for the EU to give its bureaucratic blessings to the winner. With voters divided fairly evenly, it is still possible the referendum will fail. And so Djukanovic is courting, at his own peril, the ethnic vote of Bosniak Muslims and Albanians, who comprise roughly 20 percent of the population. 19th Century Scenarios for a 21st Century World There are several scenarios arising from this morass. Should the referendum succeed, the Muslim bloc will seek to cash in its political capital by bringing up all sorts of old bellyaches and demands. The Montenegrin side will not be eager to appease them. Muted charges of racism and ethnic oppression will become a roar, with the eager assistance of the Albanian-American lobby, and a boiling point will be reached for separatists already keen to break away. Without the help of the Serbian army, it will be Macedonian redux – another war against a helpless state begun by an Albanian paramilitary force commanded from Kosovo and the diaspora. And Montenegro will be partitioned. Should the referendum be defeated outright, simmering resentment will bubble along until it is either held again or independence is gained through violence. At which point the aforementioned Muslim bloc will make the same claims, war will follow, and Montenegro will be partitioned. Finally, should the referendum be narrowly defeated, some interventionists conjecture, the EU will call for a "union of independent states" as some sort of consolation. Although the article doesn't say so, such an unwieldy grouping would elevate the Sanjak Muslim area straddling the Serb-Montenegrin border to autonomous status and could even include Kosovo, or at least the Serbian part in the north. It could even include all of Kosovo as well. Otherwise, to avoid a war Kosovo will be given to Albania. If this seems just so 19th century, that is because it is. The secessionist genie has been deliberately let out of the bottle by Western powers in order to accelerate their economic colonization of the region. So much money has been made, so many intellectually fraudulent careers have been enabled, and so much potential economic competition to the West has been eliminated by the breakup of Yugoslavia. Of course, the West can't be blamed for all of the causes that led up to this disintegration, but they also could have stopped it, had they really been interested to do so. But that would have been self-defeating. It is obvious to the point of boredom: failed intervention has the Balkans headed ineluctably for further war, which is good news for German bankers and the American arms industry, among others. As a friend of mine with long experience of American administrations and secret services recently quipped, "This [Western political interference] has nothing to do with the people in Serbia, Kosovo, Albania. This has everything to do with the industry that supplies to wars." The only hope the world has when its masters are so bent on evil is an independent and fearless media, willing to get to the heart of the matter and to bring the hypocrisies, lies, and hidden motives of the powers-that-be to light. Sadly, this is still not the case today. The last few months in the Balkans have shown, yet again, that an obsequious media devoted to its powerful political patrons in the West has continued to disgrace itself by asking all the wrong questions, setting out from all the wrong precedents, thus arriving at all the wrong conclusions. In its wake it has left a sound and fury signifying nothing – nothing positive, anyway.

 

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi/The%20Balkans/Kosovo/Kosovo_The_Plot_Thi.html?seemore=y


12 May 2006

Kosovo: The Plot Thickens
by Srdja Trifkovic


For a long time the proponents of Kosovo's independence have acted as if the game was up, that all that remained was for the "international community" to settle on the formula for independence-and for Serbia to sign on the dotted line under pressure. Until recently, many old Balkan hands in the world's capitals that matter expected that by the end of 2006 it would be all over. There are recent signs, however, that "it" won't be over that soon, and that the outcome is by no means preordained.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It did not look that way when the United Nations abandoned its own policy of "standards before status" last fall. The achievment of "standards"-measured in terms of non-Albanians' personal security and the return of non-Albanian refugees, which number a quarter of a million-only required a pretense of ethnic and religious tolerance on part of the Kosovo Albanians, but they refused to offer even that much. In addition, the political leadership in the province passed into the hands of three notorious war criminals with jihad-terrorist and organized crime connections, Agim Ceku, Ramush Haradinaj, and Hashim Thaci.

The negotiations in Vienna opened in late February, but they have not been going well and are doomed to fail: the province's Albanians will settle for nothing less than independence, and that is the only issue on which Belgrade will not budge. Serbia entered the talks in spite of the fact that the UN envoy presiding over them is Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland who was instrumental in deceiving the Milosevic government into surrendering Kosovo to NATO in 1999, and who has since served on the Board of the International Crisis Group (ICG), together with Wesley Clark, Morton Abramowitz, and other notorious pro-Albanian interventionists.

Over the past week, however, there have been signs of significant counter-movement. Articles critical of the proposed independence scenario have started appearing with surprising regularity. In a Baltimore Sun op-ed on May 10, Christopher Deliso reminded us that "[a]verting a humanitarian catastrophe was NATO's stated justification for bombing Serbia" but then came "ethnic cleansing of more than 200,000 Serbs and other minorities by Albanian militants." "Behind their façade of optimism, Western leaders negotiating Kosovo's future status are panicking," Deliso says. If Kosovo becomes independent, the remaining Serbs will flee-and the UN already dismayed them by making Agim Ceku, "a man who once terrorized them, prime minister":

Such privileged treatment reveals the fatal flaw of the U.N. mission. Canadian police Detective Stu Kellock, who headed the U.N. Regional Serious Crimes Unit in 2000 and 2001, says investigations implicating Albanian politicians or their associates were routinely blocked. The orders came directly from Washington, London and Brussels. Mr. Ceku and Mr. Haradinaj control Kosovo's militant factions and are considered heroes by Albanians. An anxious United Nations continually has sought to stay on their good side through appeasement.
Alarmingly, Deliso concludes, the West has no Plan B for ensuring Balkan peace:

In early 1999, Kosovo was a brutal but contained local conflict, relegated to villages. Botched Western intervention has made it a potential precedent for multiregional warfare.
A day earlier, on May 9, Admiral James "Ace" Lyons warned in the Washington Times that "the drug, sex slave, weapons, money-laundering, and other illicit trades" are flourishing in Kosovo, but none of this should come as any surprise:

Even in 1999, when the Clinton administration decided to take military action in support of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), there were numerous and credible intelligence and news reports of the KLA's criminal and terrorist inclinations. Predictably, KLA veterans found even more opportunity to ply their illicit trades when, ostensibly demobilized, they were recruited by the UN into Kosovo's police, civil administration, and quasi-military 'Kosovo Protection Corps.' The foxes were asked to guard the chicken coop-another U.N. fiasco.
If Kosovo becomes independent, Adm. Lyons concludes, even the minimal interference in the Kosovo-based gangs' operations will be removed:

A criminal state not seen since the defunct Taliban regime in Afghanistan will be set up with easy proximity to the rest of Europe. Such an outcome would make a mockery of some of the United States' most important global security priorities. While the international community desires some sort of "closure" to the ongoing mess in Kosovo (and this is understandable), it is hard to think of a supposed solution worse than independence. Seven years after the 1999 war, this is one Clinton legacy that demands urgent reconsideration.
The name of the former commander of America's Pacific Fleet was noted, only days earlier, on the list of distinguished writers, policy analysts, diplomats, clerics, and military men who have joined the Board of Advisors of the newly-launched American Council for Kosovo, a Washington-based nonprofit organization "dedicated to promoting a better American understanding of the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija and of the critical American stake in the province's future." The Council's stated mission is to "generate a heightened American awareness that an independent Kosovo-forcibly and illegally detached from Serbia, as is now being contemplated by the international community-would be harmful to U.S. national interests and to European and global security."

Seven years after the 1999 war, the Council's introductory statement goes on, criminal and jihad terrorist elements of the supposedly disbanded "Kosovo Liberation Army" dominate the province's administration and maintain a reign of terror over Kosovo's still-dwindling Christian Serb population. Churches and monasteries that have not already been desecrated, blown up, or burned by mobs of Muslim Albanians exist under tenuous protection from NATO. And yet,

Incredibly, elements of the international community-including some sectors of the U.S. government and important voices in Congress-have accepted the idea that the only 'solution' for Kosovo is to detach it formally from Serbia and to make it an independent state. This would mean officially handing power to the criminal and jihad terrorist KLA leadership, who would then be empowered as a 'sovereign' government. The terrorist and organized crime menace emanating from Kosovo would increase. The last Christian Serb elements (and all other non-Albanians, such as the Roma) would be eradicated. Kosovo independence also would violate every principle of the international system by forcibly and illegally detaching Kosovo from a recognized state, Serbia, to which the government of that country justifiably insists it will not agree.
But how does an organization created so late in the day intend to go about it? One of the officers of the American Council for Kosovo is an occasional "Chronicles" contributor, James Jatras, who says that the task of educating the American public and policymakers of the inadvisability of the inertial course of supporting Kosovo's independence is by no means impossible:

When the Vienna talks inevitably stall, the 'gameplan' is for the Western powers to announce the 'solution' they have already decided upon. Aside from the futility of their trying to assuage global Islamic sensibilities by such a course, detaching Kosovo from Serbia without her consent breaks every principle of international law. Sir Thomas More famously quipped about giving the devil himself benefit of law-and Serbia is no devil, but Ceku, Haradinaj, and Thaci are indeed the devil. The simple fact it that they are terrorists and criminals. Whatever the bona fides of the late Mr. Rugova, the mask is off.
Despite the pretense of "guarantees" for Serbs, Roma, etc. (there are no Jews left, and even Catholic Albanians are almost gone), their fate in a future "KosovA" is clear: there is none. The American Council for Kosovo-and the lobbying and public relations actitivites working in parallel with it-are predicated on the belief that it is necessary to break this issue out of the Balkan policy specialist ghetto where it currently residesThe Council will seek to focus on Kosovo the concerns of a broader range of opinion with respect to jihad terrorism, persecution of Christians in Muslim-dominated areas, anti-drug, anti-slavery, etc. Even this early into the effort, says Jatras,

I am sensing that people here are surprising ready to rethink Kosovo if the issue is framed right. I am confident that a change of course can and will be effected as this unfolds. The absurdity and immorality of cold-bloodedly consigning tens of thousands of people to extinction-not by inaction (Darfur) but by a 'positive' decision of 'democratic' governments of mainly Christian countries-ostensibly because of a man who's been out of power for six years and is dead anyway, is inescapable.
The Council's twin themes are jihad terrorism and crime. Its position is that the United States must not support detaching Kosovo from Serbia to create an independent Muslim Albanian state because doing so would lead to the elimination of the remaining Christian Serb population, strengthen global jihad terrorism and organized crime, and fatally undermine the rule of law in international affairs. Not only would this be bad for Serbia (which is not a primary American concern), it would be bad for the United States, which should be our concern.

The American Council for Kosovo is "an American effort," its founders say. While it is undertaken on behalf of the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija, it will seek to show why the current drift of policy is harmful to American interests. They vehemently deny that it is too late in the day to reverse what is often described as an irreversible process:

It absolutely is not too late! In fact, the false sense of inevitability is one of the means by which the pro-independence lobby hopes to stampede western policy (and even Russian policy) into a bad outcome, and even to box Belgrade into accepting the unacceptable. The Serbian government must remain unyielding on this matter. Any number of reasonable arrangements are possible-but only if Kosovo remains within Serbia. Any number of Muslims live inside majority non-Muslim countries which, with no exception I can think of, better protect their interests than is the case of any Christian minority in any Muslim country. Muslim Albanians in Kosovo are being offered anything and everything they could possibly want (and indeed, had enjoyed even before launching their initially political, and then terrorist, efforts for independence), showing that what is at issue is not how they will live as human beings but whether they will wield state power-in effect, to have the 'right' to persecute and eradicate, as their behavior has shown.
What ultimately lies behind the Kosovo Albanian movement is violence, they warn: "give us what we want, or there will be trouble. (And if you do-even more trouble!" At the same time, many voices in the West suggest that we should give the jihadists what they want, or there will be violence. That would be self-defeating: among the many jihads in the world-Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Kashmir, southern Philippines, etc.-appeasing the jihad has never worked. Moreover, Jatras adds, if the international community, especially the United States, try to appease the jihadists in Kosovo, that would only whet the appetite of the terrorists for new victories. It would establish the principle that once a militant Muslim minority resorts to violence in a majority non-Muslim country, they are "entitled" to detach the area where they are concentrated and create a new state where they can persecute and uproot the non-Muslims.

Jatras also rejects suggestions that Russia may agree to Kosovo's independence because it stands to gain by invoking that precedent for its own purposes in S. Ossetia, Abkhasia, Transdnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, and other unrecognized ethnic statelets in the former Soviet Unin. There had been suggestions of that sort from Moscow, but that notion seems to be weakening:

My sense is that Moscow's willingness to go along with independence in the UNSC and the Contract Group is falling fast. Also, as we thrown sand into the pro-independence machinery here in Washington, I hope that will also add to Moscow's reluctance to go along. Certainly, not long ago, some in the Putin administration had suggested that if Kosovo is detached from Serbia, the same principle should apply to places Russia cares about. Moscow's gambit as least had the virtue of unapologetic self-interest: if we look the other way at your bit of larceny, we'll expect you to return the favor. But as becoming ever more evident to Moscow, the favor wouldn't be returned, as western capitals have made very clear. Kosovo, they say, is 'unique.' Indeed it is. It would be hard to find another example of a place where governments professing the war on international terrorism as their first priority are helping a Muslim terrorist movement with a strong jihadist element to detach what is universally recognized as a part of another sovereign state and consigning the remaining Christian element to extinction. Indeed, if we're looking for Kosovo to become a 'universal' precedent with application to Russia, a more plausible future candidate would be Chechnya.
It appears that Moscow has realized that it could never expect any credit from its western partners on breakaway regions of other former Soviet republics. Even the prospect of a Russian union with Belarus-a recognized sovereign state, presumably entitled to do what it wants-will remain on the verboten list. Finally, given the kind of anti-Russian rhetoric coming out of Washington these days, there is no reason for Mr. Putin to offer any favors.

****

In conclusion, it is worth remembering that the U.S. policy in the Balkans is not cast in stone. The dominant modalities of the "resolution" in Kosovo have acquired an explicitly Clintonesque flavor only in the second half of 2005, most notably with the return of Nicholas Burns to the center stage. Never a paragon of original thought or principled consistency, his nominal boss Dr. Rice has internalized the views of Mr. Burns, and other Albright proteges like him, on what needs to be done on Kosovo and Bosnia. She has come to favor a Balkan strategy that is hardly different from that advocated by candidate John Kerry in 2004, but that strategy has never been subjected to serious scrutiny within an Administration that has far bigger fish to fry further east. As recent developments indicate, not all is lost. On Kosovo in particular, things are not nearly as bleak for the opponents of independence as that strain of the "international community" embodied in the ICG and Mr. Burns wants them to believe, or as the decision-makers in Belgrade are often cajoled into believing.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2005, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060511-082822-8868r_page2.htm

The Washington Times

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
May 12, 2006

 

  Just plain wrong

    Adm. James "Ace" Lyons Jr. has provided us with an honest assessment of the realities in Kosovo ("Kosovo consternation," Commentary, Tuesday). These conditions preceded the breakup of Yugoslavia. The federal government in Belgrade was faced not only with such criminal activities in Kosovo, but also with provocations against its Serb minority, causing a steady exodus of Serbs into Serbia proper. This movement, together with higher Albanian birth rates and illegal immigration into Kosovo from Albania, reduced the Serbian population to an insignificant minority. The provocations were conducted by the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA also was responsible for the illicit drug and prostitution racketeering operating out of Kosovo. For these activities, the KLA and its leaders are about to be rewarded with an ethnically pure independent state from a province that is legally a part of Serbia and the religious and cultural cradle of the Serbian nation.
    
    GEORGE C. THOMAS
    Visiting U.S. Fulbright Professor
    Faculty of the Political Sciences
    Belgrade University
    Serbia Montenegro

 

http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060508-091537-7458r.htm

THE WASHINGTON TIMES (USA)

COMMENTARY

Kosovo consternation
By James "Ace" Lyons Jr.

Published May 9, 2006

Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the
international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women
and children forced into prostitution).

Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and
organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral
part of the war on terror.

Fighting organized criminal activities is difficult even in countries
with a functioning legal system, honest police and the rule of law. Think
how much harder that would be when dealing with an independent country where
the authorities are an integral part of the criminal enterprise.

Amazingly, that's what the international community seems to want to help
establish in the Serbian province of Kosovo. When Kosovo was placed under
United Nations administration and NATO military control at the end of the
1999 war, some hoped the province soon would meet at least minimum
qualifications for some kind of independence, as demanded by Muslim
Albanians who greatly outnumber the remaining Christian Serbs.

That hasn't happened. Instead the drug, sex slave, weapons,
money-laundering, and other illicit trades that helped fuel the conflicts of
the 1990s have continued to grow. Just this month Marek Antoni Nowicki,
Poland's leading human-rights lawyer and the U.N.'s international ombudsman
for Kosovo until last year, denounced the "real criminal state in power" in
Kosovo, working right under the nose of the U.N. and NATO. "Crime groups
have been able to operate with impunity," said Mr. Nowicki. "These networks
can rely on the weakness of the public institutions to sanction their
operations." Mr. Nowicki's charges came on the heels of a March 2006 report
by the U.N.'s internal watchdog agency, the Office of Internal Oversight,
which found the head of U.N. Mission -- who holds virtually dictatorial
powers -- derelict for ignoring fraud and other abuses at the airport in
Kosovo's capital, Pristina.

None of this should come as any surprise. Even in 1999, when the Clinton
administration decided to take military action in support of the so-called
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), there were numerous and credible intelligence
and news reports of the KLA's criminal and terrorist inclinations.
Predictably, KLA veterans found even more opportunity to ply their illicit
trades when, ostensibly demobilized, they were recruited by the UN into
Kosovo's police, civil administration, and quasi-military "Kosovo Protection
Corps." The foxes were asked to guard the chicken coop -- another U.N.
fiasco.

As described in reports issued by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly,
criminal activity in Kosovo continues to be closely tied to operations of
the Albanian mafia across Europe, from home bases in Kosovo and adjacent
areas of Albania and Macedonia. For example (from 2003): "According to the
International Organization for Migration and EUROPOL, the principal supplier
countries [i.e., for trafficked women] today are Moldova (up to 80 percent:
many Moldovan villages do not have any more women), Bulgaria, Romania and
Ukraine. The networks used various routes, including the route that passes
through Kosovo, Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (see the
village of Veledze, the regional centre of prostitution) and Montenegro,
then through Italy. The Albanian mafia has set up a real cartel on
prostitution. It handles more than 65 percent of the trafficking in women in
the Balkans." From 2004: "In Kosovo, as many as 80 percent of internally
trafficked victims are children."

The response of international bureaucrats to this disgrace is
predictable: ignore it and hope nobody notices. Or even better, pretend all
is going well, declare the mission a success -- and hand power over to the
criminals as the new sovereign "government."

If that happens, even the minimal interference in the Kosovo-based
gangs' operations will be removed. A criminal state not seen since the
defunct Taliban regime in Afghanistan will be set up with easy proximity to
the rest of Europe.

Such an outcome would make a mockery of some of the United States' most
important global security priorities. While the international community
desires some sort of "closure" to the ongoing mess in Kosovo (and this is
understandable), it is hard to think of a supposed solution worse than
independence. Seven years after the 1999 war, this is one Clinton legacy
that demands urgent reconsideration.

James "Ace" Lyons Jr. is a retired admiral in the U.S. Navy. He is a
former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (the largest single
military command in the world), senior U.S. military representative to the
United Nations and as deputy chief of Naval operations and was principal
adviser on all Joint Chiefs of Staff matters.

letters@washingtontimes.com

 

The question of all questions is not whether Kosovo will gain independence, since it is already independent, but when it will gain sovereignty



http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/mostert/060511

Renew America

Why opposite Policies for Christian Serbs and Kosovo Albanians?

Mary Mostert

Mary Mostert
May 11, 2006

On May 5 the Washington Times published an editorial entitled "Bullying Belgrade" which made the point that those same Europeans that were opposed to and terrified of Saddam Hussein, who used chemical warfare on both the Kurds in Iraq and invaded both Iran and Kuwait, have taken a very strong on "the much less threatening and mostly supplicant government of Serbia."

The Washington Times then repeats, as if true, the so far totally unproven charge that the man the European Union wants Serbia to hand over to the Hague to be tried for "genocide," Ratko Mladic, has not been handed over to them to take the place of the trial farce of the now dead Slobodan Milosevic.

Mladic is charged with "the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 and other wartime horrors." Since that time, over 3000 of those supposed slaughtered Muslims in Srebrenica have voted in Bosnia. On the other hand, Europeans generally condemn President George W. Bush for removing dictator Saddam Hussein as leader of Iraq even though he used poison gas on the Kurds in 40 Iraqi towns in 1988, which caused over 5000 deaths within hours, and blinded, maimed, disfigured and caused lingering deaths to another 10,000 and invaded both Iran and Iraq.

Serbia has NEVER invaded another country. An elected Serbian president of Yugoslavia back in the 1990s did try to stop the disintegration of the country. However, it was, after all, the European Union siding with several of the six ethnic "nations" that made up Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro that made the disintegration possible. While the European Union ignored the ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia in 1995 and continues to ignore it more than 10 years later, it is still the largest forced displacement of a population since World War II. Serbs are the largest number of refugees in Europe, according to the United Nations, still today.

Alex, a reader who lives in Belgrade, pointed out the amazing contradictions between what the West CLAIMS to believe about freedom and independence and what our ACTIONS have been in denying self-determination to Serbs while militarily implementing self-determination for the Bosnian Muslims, who announced in 1983 their intention of creating Europe's first "Islamic state."

While the rest of the world seems to have either never known that, or forgotten it, the Serbs in Bosnia-Hercegovina have not forgotten it and are watching that plan being implemented. The Dayton Peace Agreement guaranteed to the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina sovereignty as the Republic of Srpska. That sovereignty, Alex wrote, is being "reduced on a daily basis, little by little. License plates and currency have already become the same for the entire Bosnia-Herzegovina. The so-called Bosnian state bodies which function on the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina, are given more and more power. Soon, the international community plans to create a "unified" army for the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina (after so much bloodshed, is that even possible?). Some international circles are already demanding the revision of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which guarantees the existence of the Republic of Srpska."

The Serbs are not newcomers to Bosnia-Herzegovina. They have lived there for centuries. The Republic of Srpska was created as a direct answer to Bosnia's independence from Yugoslavia and is based on past experience of the Serbs who, Alex says "remember what they have been through in WW 2 only too well, and they did not want that genocide to be repeated, thus, the RS was created solely for the protection and survival of the Serbian people in Bosnia."

The Serbs are bit the only uneasy minority in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Croat population also wants the right of self-determination to vote to attack their area to Croatia. The Serbs was to join with Serbia. This is illogically opposed by the Western nations, even the United States, probably because it would make Serbia a stronger nation.

Based on past Serb experience, "The Republic of Srpska was created simply as a reaction to Islamic separatism, and it was the only way to protect the Serbian people in Bosnia. If the RS had not been created, not a single Serb would be left alive in Bosnia today. We see that in places that are no longer under Serbian control, such as in Mostar, Tuzla, Sarajevo... Very few Serbs live there now, as opposed to the situation before the war. Bosnian Muslims, who accuse Serbia proper as being an "aggressor," fail to mention the regular army troops of the Republic of Croatia, which were active in Bosnia. They also fail to mention the Mujahedins from Arab countries, who have strong ties with the Al Qaeda network, many of whom have received Bosnian citizenships, passports etc."

According to Yugoslavia's last census in 1991, its population was 23,528,230, with 35% or 8.5 million of that population being Serbs. In Serbia and Montenegro today, there is a population of 10,832,545, 62% of which are Serbian, 16.5% are Albania and only 5.5% are Montenegrin, Hungarians 3.3% and other ethnicities making up the other 15+ % being other nationalities.

Alex observes that both Bosnia and Kosovo remain "de facto protectorates of the international community," with the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia, and the UNMIK chief in Kosovo, having basically dictatorial power to veto any decision made by parliament. While 95% of the 1.4 million people in

"While, in the RS, 95% of the people (1,391,593 ) are Bosnian Serbs, in Kosovo 95% of the people are Kosovo Albanians." Both hahave elements of a state, yet the international community uses opposite standards for the two entities.

While, in the RS, 95% of the people of the Republic of Srpska are Bosnian Serbs, in Kosovo 95% of its approximately 2 million people are Kosovo Albanians. Yet, the international community takes exactly opposite positions in the right of each group to hold a referendum on independence. The Albanian Muslims will have that right while the Serbian Christians will be denied that there IS such a right,.

The world has heard much of "Serb atrocities" but almost no mention has been made of "the crimes of Muslims against Serbs," observes Alex. During the mid-1990s, the Arab mujahedins beheaded Serbs, roasted Serbs on fire, created Muslim prison camps "such as Tarcin, Silos, Viktor Bubanj barracks, Zenica Youth Correction Facility, Zenica Music School and other places where many Serbs were tortured and killed" ... In fact, there very first victims of the Bosnian war were members of a Serbian family at an Orthodox wedding procession.

I believe the only reason why fair-minded Americans are taking theseremarkably opposite positions on these two almost identical situations is because they have not been told the truth. Become informed  and contact your members of Congress. To contact your member of Congress: Click Here.

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Latest news:
http://news.google.be/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Kosovo+


"Work on cultural heritage intensifies"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/05/kosovo-group-drafts-proposals-for.html

"Religious freedom and protection of monasteries and churches is one of the basic values of any democratic and multi-ethnic society"
http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2006/May_11/6.html


UN and NATO streamline Kosovo presence
http://www.euractiv.com/en/enlargement/un-nato-streamline-kosovo-presence/article-155172

"We have a very extensive monitoring and liaison network set up"
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=37116


"It's more like an act of classic terrorism"
http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2006/May_12/1.html


"Kosovo has made real progress on standards, giving a boost to the Albanian majority's bid for independence from Serbia this year"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/05/exclusive-un-report-to-commend-kosovo.html

"Compromise solution" on Kosovo
http://www.osce.org/item/18987.html

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2174664,00.html

The Times (UK)

May 11, 2006

Comment

Two months after his death, Slobo still finds a way to stir up trouble

Arts Notebook by Rachel Campbell-Johnston


THERE HAS BEEN quite a drama at the Comédie-Française this week. This flagship of French theatre has just pulled a scheduled production of a play by the prominent avant-garde Austrian, Peter Handke - best known as the co-writer of Wings of Desire. The decision was taken because Handke attended the funeral of Slobodan Milosevic. His presence was an outrage to the victims of the Serbian dictator, declared the theatre's administrator.

Handke's performance at the funeral was most certainly not pretty. Pronouncing himself happy to support a leader who had "defended his people", he eulogised a tyrant on trial for genocide and war crimes. He flourished the Serb flag and, pressing forward to touch the coffin, threw a red rose upon it by way of tribute.

But does such behaviour mean that his work should be banned? This week, a chorus of voices has been raised to defend or denounce the decision. Handke's latest play may not have been overtly political, but many concur that a man with his views should be denied a public platform. As many others, including Elfriede Jelinek, the Austrian Nobel laureate, deplore an act of cultural censorship.

I think that the theatre company has made the wrong decision. Art is about freedom. Censorship is about control.

Of course, artists cannot demand a special place outside legal parameters. But neither should creativity be stifled by moral considerations. "The work of art may have a moral effect," declared Goethe, "but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his own work."

"I don't want to know anything about your systems of ethics," insisted Beethoven. "Strength is the morality of the man who stands apart from the rest." This strength lies - at least in part - in the courage to challenge received opinions, to question orthodoxies, to test accepted truths.

Handke is by no means the first artist to have espoused unpalatable political causes. Ezra Pound was committed to Mussolini and his brand of Fascism. Yet his Cantos survive, a cornerstone of the Modernist literary canon. Wagner is vilified for his anti-Semitism, for the influence he exerted on the Nazis. And yet his compositions find audiences the world over, whether in concert hall spectaculars or in Hollywood scores. Picasso offered his enthusiastic endorsement to Stalin.

The artistic achievement lasts, triumphing over the warped opinions of its creator. And yet, even in the face of such monumental precedents, we still insist on attempting to circumscribe creativity within narrow parameters - and not least in Britain. Ours, after all, is the country whose belief in outward proprieties was outraged by Lady Chatterley's Lover. We encouraged F. R. Leavis, who famously ranked literature according to its "moral purpose", to exert critical control over the minds of generations of students. Now we are in the thrall of a bullying left wing that wants to corral us into the compound of political correctness. The purpose of art is not to support the underprivileged or downtrodden. That is the job of social services.

When David Hare slipped an eloquent pro-war monologue into Stuff Happens, audiences, I am told, sucked their teeth in disapproval. But the point of such work is to broaden perspectives, not to shore up our preconceptions and leave us stewing in our own prejudices.

Nicholas Hytner, the director of the National Theatre, highlighted the problem only recently when he put out a call for some good right-wing plays. It got the theatre critics scratching their heads. About the only contemporary example they could come up with was David Mamet's Oleanna, with its scathing take on feminism.

Brit Artists tend to be branded as a cheeky band of punk rebels, outlaws of a repressive Thatcher regime. But they are, in fact, quintessentially the children of Thatcher - models of the individualistic enterprise that her Government encouraged and promoted, to boot, by the ad-man art collector who ran her publicity campaigns.

It is time the art world became more politically open. It is often at its most profound when it polarises audiences. The last thing to serve victims of Milosevic's rule is the sort of censorship that the Comédie-Française now exerts. To ban is to close down debate. The Serb dictator died and escaped his verdict. Art could reopen the trial.

 

 

Latest news:
http://news.google.be/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Kosovo+

Good luck, Montenegro

http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/novina/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=2&NrArticle=21345&NrIssue=13&NrSection=20


"Consolidation" of Kosovo's TMK as "multiethnic army"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/05/albanian-premier-calls-for.html

NATO to protect decisions on Kosovo future
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060508-014304-5002r

"Kosovo Status Determination Will Build Regional Security"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/05/kosovo-status-determination-will-build.html

"The most important thing is finding a healthy and long-term solution for Kosovo and Metohija"
http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2006/May_08/2.html

....................

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=838

Axis (Turkey)

May 8, 2006

The Great Kosovo Riddle

Can Karpat, AIA Balkan Section

Serbia is at odds with the EU after it failed to extradite Ratko Mladic. The fourth round of the Kosovo final status negotiations in Vienna ended with mutual recrimination and accusation between the Albanian and Serbian teams. During Kosovo Premier Agim Ceku’s visit to Skopje, Macedonian Premier Vlado Buckovski suggested that experts from Macedonia and Kosovo would confirm the former administrative border between Macedonia and former Yugoslavia as a real state border. Here is the week that shook Serbia…

On 3rd May, the EU postponed the talks on the stabilisation and association agreement because Serbia failed to extradite Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army chief wanted for genocide.
On 4th-5th May, the fourth round of the Kosovo status talks began. The direct talks, which turned to greater local self-government for Kosovo’s 100.000 remaining Serbs, degenerated into mutual recrimination and accusation between the Albanian and Serbian teams.
On 5th May, after his meeting with Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku, Macedonian Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski suggested that technical experts on both sides with support of US cartographers would confirm the administrative border between Macedonia and Yugoslavia as a real state border.
Last week’s chronology is not very hopeful as far as Serbia is concerned. And there is no immediate good sign on the horizon. Montenegro has already begun to prepare new passports. The fifth round of the Kosovo negotiations is scheduled for 23rd May - two days after the independence referendum in Montenegro. The “Greater Serbia†chimera progressively turns into a “Smaller Serbia†reality.

Painful times for the Serbia-EU relations

Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic assured the international community that search for the fugitive war crimes accused Ratko Mladic will continue in the following days. However chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Carla Del Ponte, speaking in Sarajevo last Friday, dismissed the arrests and raids in Belgrade, aimed at apprehending Ratko Mladic, as not serious: “Operations in Belgrade are just for the galleryâ€. It seems as though the current Serbian authorities completely lost their credibility. But what if the EU itself, which closed its doors, though probably momentarily, to Serbia, has actually lost its credibility?
The EU follows an obvious reward-or-punish process in its dealing with Serbia. On 29th April, NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, speaking at a forum in Brussels, clearly stated: “See that Mladic gets to The Hague, and I can tell you that NATO will bring you in very quickly, [and] then you can continue stabilisation and association with the European Unionâ€.
Apart the childishness of this process, is this really the best way to “rehabilitate†Serbia? If someday Serbian authorities extradite Mladic and Karadzic, it would be better that they do so because they think that these men should be tried for what they allegedly did during the Bosnia War. Only then Serbia could “exorcise its demonsâ€. Otherwise the extradition would be an unpleasant duty, which one accomplishes rather reluctantly just for the sake of a reward. Serbia must be won, not “bribedâ€.
It is known that in Serbia even those, who defend publicly the need to cooperate with the ICTY, base their arguments on little more than compliance with the international law. This can be changed through the consolidation of democracy, education, etc., but certainly not through punishment. Those, who want to join the EU in Serbia, are 60 percent of the population. Other 40 percent, however, is not a negligible minority, and their arguments are not always unconvincing. The international community should not give them such simple opportunities to strengthen their arguments.

The Kosovo talks: Deadlock on Mitrovica

During the fourth round of the Kosovo final status talks, the Serbs wanted 14 new municipalities, while the Kosovo Albanians were offering 3. The Serbian team demanded to make the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica (northern Kosovo) a municipality of its own, while the Albanians were asking for two municipalities to be formed within the confines of one city. The two proposals about the fate of Mitrovica were diagonally opposite: Division or reunification.
The Kosovo Serbs live scattered in small communities throughout the province. Except in Mitrovica where they remain in sizeable numbers - enough to have a mini-state of their own. Mitrovica is the last urban centre of the Serbs in Kosovo and a gateway to Serbia proper. The town is divided by the river Ibar, which separates the Serb-dominated north from the Albanian-dominated south. Mitrovica, the scene of the bloody riots of March 2004, was recently patrolled by tanks to prevent ethnic clashes.

Ethnic map of Kosovo - blue zones represent Serbian concentration  (click for enlarge)

Mitrovica is the ultimate symbol, which will confirm whether reconciliation between the Albanian and Serbian communities is possible in Kosovo. While Kosovo’s Serbs and Albanians work and socialise together in urban areas like Pristina, life is less friendly in the Serbian enclaves. The “Train of Freedom†has run from the province's southern border with Macedonia to the northern border with Serbia proper since the end of the Kosovo War. The de facto divided town of Mitrovica is not an obstacle for the train. Yet, the last stop for Albanian passengers is on the southern side of the town. Many Serbs usually gather in a café on the other side, watching the bridge to check that no Albanian come across. According to French author Ernest Renan, in order to form a national body, the people of this body must learn to “forgetâ€. Obviously in the case of Kosovo, it is too early to forget - the wounds are still fresh.
Mitrovica is the key for the future of Kosovo and that of the whole region. Many fear that if Kosovo becomes independent without granting the Kosovo Serbs the large autonomy they want, these Serbs would leave Kosovo for good. This means that there will be thousands of Serbs along the Kosovo border of Serbia, full of resentment and ready to explode any time. The ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party would not fail to provoke them and exploit their anger. This stock of angry radical nationalists on Serbian border would threaten not only the safety of Kosovo, but also that of other neighbouring countries, the rest of Europe and Serbia itself.
During the last direct talks, the Serbian team made an interesting proposal. Slobodan Samardzic, a Serbian negotiator, stated that his team suggested the creation of 16 “communities†run by Serbs and other non-Albanians, including Roma Gypsies, Turks and Muslims of Slavic origin (Gorans and Bosnians). Does Serbia try to mobilise other non-Albanian communities of Kosovo and make out of minority rights a cause célÄbre in order to gain some support from “inside the castleâ€?
On 28th April, representatives of the Goran and Bosnian communities demanded for setting up new municipalities in Vitomirica (western Kosovo, near Pec), Recane (southern Kosovo, southeast of Prizren) and in the part of Dragas municipality (southern Kosovo, near Gora region) inhabited by Gorans and Bosnians.
As to the Turks of Kosovo, which are the third largest minority of Kosovo, they lost most of their rights after the establishment of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Turkish language, which was the third official language of Kosovo before the war, was replaced by English thereafter. Against the UNMIK, which somewhat discriminates some minorities of Kosovo, the Serbian proposal may seem attractive.

The border dispute anaesthetised

As to the visit of Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku to Skopje, it brought nothing new. Agim Ceku and his Macedonian counterpart Vlado Buckovski stated that the Kosovo-Macedonia border issue is just a technical question, not a political problem. Buckovski stressed: “The former administrative border of the former Yugoslavia will be the one pending demarcation once certain conditions are met i.e. once we get a partner with a full international credibilityâ€. The discussion of this issue was postponed until a “more appropriate momentâ€.
Serbian Foreign Ministry expressed its surprise over the statement by Vlado Buckovski that experts from Macedonia and Kosovo would confirm the former administrative border between Macedonia and former Yugoslavia as a real state border. The internationally recognised state border between Serbia-Montenegro and Macedonia was established as such by the agreement on the state border in 2001.
Thus, ten days after the border dispute, which was revived on 25th April by Agim Ceku, everything got back to the starting point. Was this a kind of much ado about nothing?
According to the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo President Sandra Raskovic-Ivic, this was not the case: “The first thing that is obvious is that Ceku already feels like the premier of an independent and internationally recognised state of Kosovoâ€. Ceku was appeased on 5th May with Buckovski’s proposal of experts. Ceku acted as a real prime minister, and was also responded as a real one. He marked a good point for the Kosovo team.
Was Buckovski’s proposal a coincidence? Macedonia decided to hold parliamentary elections two months ahead of the official September deadline. Did Buckovski, the leader of the ruling Social Democrats, send a message to the Albanian minority, which forms no less than 19.2 percent of the population (est. 2004)? Also Ceku claimed that the reactions of Macedonian politicians were done for internal political consumption in the first place. If this is the fact, then Ceku himself is not exempt from internal political motives. He must placate the angry inhabitants of the Kosovo border village of Debelde, whose properties were divided by the new boundary.
The border demarcation agreement was signed on 22nd February 2001 - two years after Serbia lost control over Kosovo. Despite this fact, the agreement was welcomed by every factor in the international community (Macedonia’s neighbours, the EU, USA, NATO, etc.). Today there is no reason to change the current situation. With an unemployment rate nearing 55 percent, Kosovo will probably independent only by name. An economically dependent Kosovo will not be able to annul an agreement, which still benefits from international approval.

Related items:
Serbian Radical Party: The Hubris of Serbian Political Scene (04.05.06)
Euro-Atlantic Axis in the Balkans: Macedonia-Kosovo-Albania (02.05.06)
Kosovo Turks: Those Who Live in the Most Critical Region of the Balkans (15.12.05)
Kosovo: A New State or a New Bone of Contention in the Balkans? (26.11.05)
Kosovo is Heating Up Again (16.11.05)
Kosovo - Another Example of the International Impotence (29.10.05)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060508-091537-7458r.htm

Kosovo consternation
By James "Ace" Lyons Jr.
May 9, 2006


Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women and children forced into prostitution).
    Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral part of the war on terror.
    Fighting organized criminal activities is difficult even in countries with a functioning legal system, honest police and the rule of law. Think how much harder that would be when dealing with an independent country where the authorities are an integral part of the criminal enterprise.
    Amazingly, that's what the international community seems to want to help establish in the Serbian province of Kosovo. When Kosovo was placed under United Nations administration and NATO military control at the end of the 1999 war, some hoped the province soon would meet at least minimum qualifications for some kind of independence, as demanded by Muslim Albanians who greatly outnumber the remaining Christian Serbs.
    That hasn't happened. Instead the drug, sex slave, weapons, money-laundering, and other illicit trades that helped fuel the conflicts of the 1990s have continued to grow. Just this month Marek Antoni Nowicki, Poland's leading human-rights lawyer and the U.N.'s international ombudsman for Kosovo until last year, denounced the "real criminal state in power" in Kosovo, working right under the nose of the U.N. and NATO. "Crime groups have been able to operate with impunity," said Mr. Nowicki. "These networks can rely on the weakness of the public institutions to sanction their operations." Mr. Nowicki's charges came on the heels of a March 2006 report by the U.N.'s internal watchdog agency, the Office of Internal Oversight, which found the head of U.N. Mission -- who holds virtually dictatorial powers -- derelict for ignoring fraud and other abuses at the airport in Kosovo's capital, Pristina.
    None of this should come as any surprise. Even in 1999, when the Clinton administration decided to take military action in support of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), there were numerous and credible intelligence and news reports of the KLA's criminal and terrorist inclinations. Predictably, KLA veterans found even more opportunity to ply their illicit trades when, ostensibly demobilized, they were recruited by the UN into Kosovo's police, civil administration, and quasi-military "Kosovo Protection Corps." The foxes were asked to guard the chicken coop -- another U.N. fiasco.
    As described in reports issued by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, criminal activity in Kosovo continues to be closely tied to operations of the Albanian mafia across Europe, from home bases in Kosovo and adjacent areas of Albania and Macedonia. For example (from 2003): "According to the International Organization for Migration and EUROPOL, the principal supplier countries [i.e., for trafficked women] today are Moldova (up to 80 percent: many Moldovan villages do not have any more women), Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. The networks used various routes, including the route that passes through Kosovo, Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (see the village of Veledze, the regional centre of prostitution) and Montenegro, then through Italy. The Albanian mafia has set up a real cartel on prostitution. It handles more than 65 percent of the trafficking in women in the Balkans." From 2004: "In Kosovo, as many as 80 percent of internally trafficked victims are child!
 ren."
    The response of international bureaucrats to this disgrace is predictable: ignore it and hope nobody notices. Or even better, pretend all is going well, declare the mission a success -- and hand power over to the criminals as the new sovereign "government."
    If that happens, even the minimal interference in the Kosovo-based gangs' operations will be removed. A criminal state not seen since the defunct Taliban regime in Afghanistan will be set up with easy proximity to the rest of Europe.
    Such an outcome would make a mockery of some of the United States' most important global security priorities. While the international community desires some sort of "closure" to the ongoing mess in Kosovo (and this is understandable), it is hard to think of a supposed solution worse than independence. Seven years after the 1999 war, this is one Clinton legacy that demands urgent reconsideration.
    
    James "Ace" Lyons Jr. is a retired admiral in the U.S. Navy. He is a former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (the largest single military command in the world), senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations and as deputy chief of Naval operations and was principal adviser on all Joint Chiefs of Staff matters.
   
Copyright 2006 The Washington Times 

Will the Whistleblower Who Revealedthe First War Crime in Yugoslavia Go to Jail Soon ?

GEORGES BERGHEZAN

June 25, 1991: Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally proclaim their independence, the Yugoslav army is deployed at the country's international borders. Three days later, in the village of Holmec, at the Slovene-Austrian border, three young conscripts, attacked by Slovene police who had encircled their tank, waved a white flag and surrendered. They were killed in cold blood by the police in the presence of a cameraman from the Austrian TV network ORF. It was the first documented war crime in a conflict that would continue spilling blood in the former Yugoslavia for the next eight years.These facts were kept secret for the next seven years until the ORF footage showing the surrender and the execution of the three soldiers -- two Serbs and one Croat -- was finally broadcast on Slovenian television. Pressured by the Slovene branch of the NGO Helsinki Monitor and its president, Neva Miklavcic Predan, an official inquiry was conducted, but it concluded in 1999 that no war crimes at all had been committed (the soldiers would have simulated their execution and they would have been killed shortly afterward in combat). Things probably could have stayed there -- and the affair could have continued to be completely ignored by the international media -- if Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president, during his cross-examination of the Slovene President, Milan Kucan, who had been summoned by The Hague Tribunal in May 2003 to testify against Milosevic, had not posed several troubling questions to his adversary and brought several supplementary pieces of information to the case, which included the death certificates of the aforementioned soldiers. Visibly caught off guard, Kucan gave assurances that the case had not been closed, all the while denying that the conscripts had been executed. A few days later, Neva Miklavcic Predan held a press conference in Ljubljana in which she cast a shadow of doubt on Kucan testimony. The statements made at this press conference sparked a defamation lawsuit filed by twenty-six Slovene war veterans whose "feelings were profoundly hurt" by her allegation of war crime. At the same time, a Slovenian court closed the case once again at the beginning of April 2006, reiterating that no war crime had taken place in Holmec, basing its decision on the 1999 inquiry. On the other hand, in Belgrade, a special tribunal for war crimes finally decided to open an inquest on the matter. At The Hague, despite the evidence provided by Miklavcic Predan, and then by Milosevic, there still does not seem to be any interest in what appears to be the first war crime committed in the Yugoslav wars.For Neva Miklavcic Predan, however, the case has not been closed. The complaint filed by the war veterans has gone its course and resulted in the trial now taking place. She risks being sentenced to two years imprisonment and the next hearing has been set for May 30. During the first two hearings, the accusations relied on a gross falsification of the ORF video that tries to make one believe that the Slovene police did not fire upon the Yugoslav conscripts.Furthermore, she is accused of having tried to bribe a government official in order to obtain citizenship for a Roma. This second trial has now been suspended. She could be sentenced to three years more in prison as a result of the proceedings. Finally, a judge in Ljubljana, feeling offended by a remark that Miklavcic Predan made, has also filed a complaint. She is subject to three months' imprisonment if she is sentenced.Neva Miklavcic Predan considers herself to be the victim of political trials intended to punish her for having cast a shadow over the mini-war of independence waged by Slovenia, which has often been characterized as a model among the new members of the European Union. Even if the affair starts making headlines throughout the former Yugoslavia, it still remains unknown beyond. However, the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) have initiated a campaign of support and have requested writing to the Slovene authorities in order to stop the harassment of the president of Helsinki Monitor. We have taken up their appeal, which we reproduce below. Action requested:Please write to the Slovenian authorities and ask them to: i. Put an end to any kind of harassment against Mrs. Neva Miklavcic-Predan, and ensure that her right to a fair and impartial trial be guaranteed in any circumstances;ii. Conform with the provisions of the Declaration on Humans Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1998, in particular article 1, which states that "everyone has the right, individually or in association with others, to promote the protection and realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels", and article 12.2, which states that "the State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration";iii. More generally, conform with the provisions of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and with all other international human rights instruments binding Slovenia.

Addresses:� President of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr. Janez Drnovsek, Erjavceva 17, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tel.: 00 386 1 478-10-00, Fax: 00 386 1 478-12-00, Email: janez.drnovsek@up-rs.si; gp.uprs@up-rs.si� Premier of the Republic of Slovenia, Janez Jansa, Gregorciceva 20, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tel.: 00 386 1 478-10-00, Fax: 00 386 1 478-17-21, Email: janez.jansa@gov.si; gp.upv@upr-rs.si� Minister of Justice of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr. Lovro Sturm, Zupanciceva 3, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tel.: 00 386 1 369-52-72, Fax: 00 386 1 369-52-76, Email: lovro.sturm@gov.si� Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Dimitrij Rupel, Presernova 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tel.: 00386 1 478-23-73, Fax: 00386 1 478-21-70, Email: dimitrij.rupel@gov.si� Supreme State Prosecutor, Barbara Brezigar, Dunajska 22, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tel.: 00 386 1 434-19-35, Fax: 00 386 1, Email: bbrezigar@dt-rs.si� District Court of Ljubljana, president, Tavcarjeva 9, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tel.: 00 386 1 366-44-44, Fax: 00 386 1 366-45-18, Email: marjan.pogacnik@sodisce.si� Local Court of Ljubljana, President Vesna Pavlic Pivk, Miklosiceva 12, 1000 Ljubljana. Slovenia, Tel.: 00 386 1 47 47.701, Fax: 00 386 1 47-47-705, Email: urad.@sodisce.si� Higher Court in Ljubljana, President Jernej Potocar, Tavcarjeva 9, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tel.: 00 386 1 366-40-00, Fax: 00 386 1 366-40-70, Email: jernej.potocar@sodisce.si� Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia, President Franc Testen, Tavcarjeva 9, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tel.: 00 386 1 336-42-02, Fax: 00 386 1 336-43-01, Email: urad.vhrs@sodisce.si� Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia, President Janez Cebulj, Betthovnova 10, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Tel: 00 386 1 477-64-00, Fax: 00 386 1 251-04-51, Email: info@us-rs.si� Ambassador Mr. Aljaz Gosnar, Permanent Mission of Slovenia to the United Nations in Geneva, rue de Lausanne 147, 1202 Geneva, Switzerland, Tel: + 41 22 716 17 80, Fax: + 41 22 738 66 65, Email: mge@mzz-dpk.gov.si� Permanent Mission of Slovenia in Brussels, 30 avenue Marnix, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium, Tel : +32 25124466, Fax : + 32 25120997AUTHOR'S ADDRESS : g.berghezan@tele2.beMORE : See chapter "Medialies" in the book Liar's Poker -Yugoslavia, the great powers and the next wars. Info : michel.collon@skynet.beMORE ABOUT YUGOSLAVIA, MEDIA-LIES? HIDDEN US and GERMAN STRAGIES...: (in French)
http://www.michelcollon.info/mailinglist_en.php

Sir, I cannot see the draw for the people of Serbia to come into the 
vipers nest. After all,  the countries which are blackmailing Serbia 
over a Bosnian Serb, bombed the country and destroyed much of it's 
civilian facilities and infrastracture in 78 days of hell in 1999. 
There has been nothing but pressure and blackmail since that year of 
infamy. Why would anyone think for a moment that the Serbs have a 
place with the sowers of death and destruction is beyond me.
Sincerely, B. Perry
London

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2163199,00.html


Times Online
May 03, 2006


EU tells Serbia: 'No Mladic, no membership'
By Simon Freeman and agencies

The European Union today suspended membership talks with Serbia in punishment for the country's failure to deliver the fugitive war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic to a UN tribunal.

A deadline for the transfer of the Bosnian Serb general, wanted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, into the custody of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague expired at the end of April.
Olli Rehn, the EU Enlargement Commissioner, issued a statement today confirming that talks over Belgrade's possible integration into the EU had been frozen.
"It is disappointing that Belgrade has been unable to locate, arrest and transfer Ratko Mladic to the Hague. The Commission therefore has to call off the negotiations on the Stabilisation and Association Agreement.
"Serbia must show that nobody is above the law and that anybody indicted for serious crimes will face justice," he said after a meeting with Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the tribunal.
The EU's decision to carry out its long-standing threat will intensify the pressure within Serbia to hand over General Mladic, 64, who many Serbs still regard as a war hero, but whose continued freedom has rendered the country a hostage.
The renegade general has evaded capture since 1995, and is generally believed to be living under the protection of senior military and political figures within Serbia.
Suspension of the tentative talks will be seen as a hugely punishing sanction for the country which is struggling to rebuild its economy after a decade of civil war.
Vojisclav Kostunica, the Serbian Prime Minister, has coerced or bribed previous indictees into giving themselves up but General Mladic is refusing to co-operate, aware that his arrest could fatally destabilise the coalition government.
There was intense excitement on February 21 this year when television reports suggested that General Mladic, one of Europe's most wanted men, had been arrested.
Despite several days of headlines and insider reports that he had finally been captured, the reports - which came a few days before an earlier EU deadline - transpired to be without foundation.
There has been a fresh wave of rumours of his impending capture in the past few weeks, most recently it was suggested that Mladic had been tracked down by a team of agents from MI6 and the CIA and would be arrested on May 1.
General Mladic led the Bosnian Serb forces to commit many of the atrocities and massacres which characterised the Bosnian war.
He is chiefly associated with the four-year siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 attack on Srebenica - in which at least 8,000 Mulsim men and boys were massacred - considered the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War.
The next round of talks, the first stepping stone towards eventual EU membership, had been due on May 11. They have now been postponed indefinitely.