Kostunica: Serbia not to Give up on Kosovo in Exchange for faster EU
Accession (Danas)



Serbian PM Vojislav Kostunica said in an interview with Danas that Serbia
would never accept to give up on Kosovo in exchange for a faster EU
accession and stressed that Belgrade would respond with all legal means to
an eventual independence of Kosovo. He has expressed his optimism that the
solution 'to the most difficult problem of the state' will not be
detrimental to Serbia. "A part of international community largely considers
that there is only one possible option, that is, that Kosovo should become
independent, and therefore only presents its superficial advantages. This
option has many flaws, and the solution that we advocate - the substantial
autonomy has many advantages."


When asked how serious was Tomislav Nikolic's call for defending Kosovo
militarily, Kostuica said that for him the most important thing is that the
Kosovo debate should first go through the Parliament, and the Belgrade
negotiating team would submit its report to the Serbian Parliament in early
autumn: "The Parliament is the only democratic forum for discussing Kosovo.
If we think about the worst Kosovo outcome, the position of our country
would be to conclude that Kosovo is a part of Serbia. It is not an empty
rhetoric, but a constitutional and legal formulation," said Kostunica.

 

According to him, Serbia has until now used arguments of legality and not of
force. "We would like to continue to do that. Arguments of force are often
on other sides, in certain parts of the international community that
sometimes condition our European integrations with giving up on Kosovo. It
is impossible. There are certain criteria for all countries that wish to
become EU members. No country has been conditioned with giving up a part of
its territory in order to join the EU. This cannot be applied to Serbia."

Crossfire War - Balkans - Kosovo - Countdown to Resumption of War

By Willard Payne

Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - Southeast Europe Theatre - Kosovo: Tehran - Belgrade/Brussels - Vienna; "Serbia Will Fight for Kosovo" - Tomislav Nikolic - Serbian Radical Party - Countdown to Resumption of War

Night Watch: BELGRADE - Tomislav Nikolic is the leader of the increasingly popular Serbian Radical Party and chances are he is expressing what most Serbs, including Serbian leaders, are saying privately, despite their official posturing during the current series of Vienna negotiations. Nikolic represents a wave of ultra-nationalism that has been sweeping Serbia since NATO took control over the province in 1999 after a 78 - day bombing campaign, that coined the phrase "collateral damage" as a way of writing off civilian deaths. [SERBIANNA]

Most Albanians are also aware that if the UN sponsored talks result in an international declaration of Kosovo independence, war will break out in the Balkans again. Nikolic stated, "The whole world must know that. Serbia will fight for Kosovo." And that no Serbian leader will accept Kosovo independence. Albanians seem to be provoking a renewed conflict by conducting attacks against Serbian communities in Kosovo.

Nikolic continued by admitting that "if they want to take Kosovo away from us Belgrade cannot prevent that. Serbia will be peaceful as long as talks are going on but could explode in unrest in case of Kosovo independence." The only question is who will the Serbs attack first, Albanians or UN/NATO forces in the area supporting Kosovo.

Tehran does not care just as long as fighting resumes which will direct Vienna's and Brussels' attention away from Tehran and toward the war right on Europe's doorstep. In preparation for Iran's direct intervention Tehran signed, in January, a security agreement with Belgrade similar to the military-security agreements Tehran has with Damascus and Islamabad. It was a follow up to Tehran establishing relations with every capital in the divided Yugoslavia in 1992 and announcing this was their "entry into Central Europe", Iran's avenue of invasion.

I don't know what the schedule for the UN talks are but war begins again in the Balkans with the recognition of Kosovo independence unless Serbs decide to respond militarily to attacks against them that have been going on for at least a year by Albanian groups. Serbian and ethnic Albanian officials were not available for comment when asked to respond to statements from the Serbian Radical Party leader.

Regular readers of crossfirewar.com know I have long stated the conflicts here are the result of the most regressive decsion Europe ever made in its modern history when it agreed to the division of Yugoslavia in the name of the "New World Order" that was declared right after the end of the Cold War in 1990. It was supposed to be a staged crisis, orchestrated by Vienna, showing the world the new cooperation between Eastern-Western Europe. Vienna and all the 55 governments in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) assumed the crisis could be solved with a series of high profile, highly publicized diplomatic agreements and conferences, the same way they arranged crises throughout the Cold War. But this time Vienna-Brussels underestimated the impact of weapon dealers.

The division unleashed the dark forces of pagan ethnic nationalism and religious hatred, Europe's most primitive and proud mentality. It is impossible to have a more divisive influence. I had convinced myself Europe was through with map-making, but societies retain their character. Neither did Europe know Tehran would realize this is a front they can use.

Enter Persia, intelligent ancient evil, experts at using availability. The West has not confronted an enemy like Iran for quite some time, not since the Ottomans. The West will regroup around Rome. NATO will not survive. Brussels put itself completely out of position when it recognized the divided Yugoslavia. NATO will never be any threat to Iran. Rome will replace Brussels as the most important adminstration center in Western Europe. The West's new military alliance will be headquarted there. Berlin and Eastern Europe will remain in close cooperation with Moscow.

Night Watch Information Service
http://www.crossfirewar.com

http://newsblaze.com/story/20060728222959payn.nb/newsblaze/OPINIONS/Opinions.html

Copyright © 2006, NewsBlaze, Daily News

 

No deal in sight on Kosovo

25.07.2006 - 09:59 CET | By Ekrem Krasniqi

Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders stuck to diametrically-opposed positions during their first direct talks on the future of Kosovo on Monday – but the EU "welcomed" the meeting which saw the Serb prime minister stay away from lunch.

Serb president Boris Tadic and prime minister Vojislav Kostunica met their Kosovan counterparts Fatmir Sejdiu and Agim Ceku in Vienna on Monday (24 July), under the guidance of UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari with US and EU envoys also in tow.  

"As the first meeting of its kind, today's discussion was meant to enable both sides to present and argue their respective positions, and the meeting did achieve that objective," Mr Ahtisaari said after the talks.

"It is evident that the positions of the parties remain far apart: Belgrade would agree to almost anything but independence, whereas Pristina would accept nothing but full independence," the UN top diplomat said.

Kosovo is officially still a Serb province, but has been under UN administration since the end of the war in 1999 when NATO drove out Serbian forces ending their crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

No handshaking
The two delegations on Monday entered the Viennese palace room from the opposite ends, without shaking hands.

The camps had lunch around the same table, but Mr Kostunica stayed away from his chair next to Mr Ceku, for "phone consultations" before the meeting continued in the afternoon.

The Serbian prime minister in his speech said that "in the history of Europe there can't be found any precedent which would serve as an argument to take away from Serbia 15 percent of its territory and change the internationally-recognized border against it will".

He added Serbia is ready to accept a "substantial autonomy" however, according to which Belgrade would retain power over key policies in Kosovo.

Under the proposal, Serbia would hold on to "basic elements of sovereignty" such as foreign policy, border control, customs, human rights, monetary policy and the protection of cultural and religious heritage.

The Serbian proposal also stipulates that Kosovo would be completely demilitarised , meaning there would be no Serbian or Albanian military forces, with the UN acting as a guarantor.

Alpha and omega
But Kosovo's president Mr Sejdiu said that it is time to end the status quo, which has "hampered the economic development and has provoked political tensions."

The continuation of the status-quo "is not in the interest of anybody in Kosovo, and in the region" he continued, adding that it "damages the peace and the overall stability in South-Eastern Europe".

"An overwhelming majority of Kosovan people wants Kosovo to become an independent and sovereign state", the president explained, adding "independence is the alpha and omega, the beginning and end of our position."

Ethnic Albanians represent around 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million population.

EU future
Despite the deep divisions, EU officials welcomed the meeting, while urging both Belgrade and Pristina "to engage constructively and show flexibility."

"The meeting is welcome. Clearly, there are divided views on the status question but it is important that with this meeting a new phase of the talks has begun," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana's spokeswoman said.

"This process in our view should lead to a Kosovo which is multi-ethnic, democratic and secure for all citizens, which can contribute to regional stability and which is able to make progress towards the EU," she added.

The international community is keen to settle Kosovo's final status by the end of the year, but it is unclear if future bilateral talks will follow the same format or take place at a lower political level.

"It is a bit premature to start speculating on the timeframe," the UN's Mr Ahtisaari indicated, adding that a more detailed schedule might emerge following internal UN meetings in mid-September.

• Back
• To the top

© 2006 EUobserver, All rights reserved

http://euobserver.com/9/22160

 

TRANSITIONS ONLINE (www.tol.cz) Kosovo: The Power of Compromise by Aleksandar Mitic 21 July 2006

A Serbian journalist argues that only a genuine compromise over Kosovo's future status can guarantee stability.

A true, balanced, and negotiated compromise on Kosovo's future status would swing the pendulum of Balkan stability towards the European path.

A manipulated, one-sided, and imposed decision would, however, open a Pandora's box of secessionist movements in the world and release the ghosts of a nationalist past in the Balkans.

As we approach the beginning of talks on the future status of the Kosovo province, it becomes crucial to grasp the full complexity of the Kosovo status issue.

There has been an attempt in the last year and a half to close down international debate before the status talks had even begun by suggesting that only independence is a viable solution for Kosovo.

The truth is, the issue of Kosovo's status is dependent on so many historical, legal, political, religious, economic, and demographic elements that it deserves, at the very least, a wide international debate on possible solutions and their implications.

To argue thus that only one solution is possible is not only flawed reasoning, but a dangerous and explosive recipe for future frustration, tension, and conflict.

There has also been an attempt to refocus and spin the talks in the direction of Kosovo's independence, from those who say that these are not really talks on the future status but rather on the terms of Kosovo's future independence to those who argue that the negotiations should be only about the position of the Kosovo Serbs in an independent Kosovo. Some also argued that the talks will be about finding a way to impose independence upon Belgrade. While there are a few officials who have, often privately rather than publicly, indicated their preference for such approaches, it must be said that these are completely contrary to international law.

RISKY BUSINESS

The aim of the talks on Kosovo's future status is to finally provide a fair, stable, long-term solution for this crisis region. The majority Kosovo Albanians must get a maximum of opportunity and real means to manage their future without feeling threatened, but also without endangering the welfare of Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians. The interests of Serbia, of which Kosovo is a part, the stability of the Balkans, and the worldwide impact of these negotiations are also crucial factors which must be taken into account.

Within the principles of international law and the preset recommendations of the international community's informal "Contact Group" – no return to the pre-1999 Milosevic-era situation, no joining of neighboring states, no partition – a number of possible solutions for the future status of Kosovo deserve to be examined.

There is also a number of pre-conditions for successful talks that must be met: artificial deadlines such as end of 2006 must not be used to the detriment of a sound solution; and the outcome should be an agreed, negotiated compromise, not an imposed, one-sided decision.

The breaching of international law and the creation of worldwide precedents should be avoided for the sake of regional and world security.

In this regard, it is of paramount importance that double standards must not be allowed to win over universal standards.

To claim that the Kosovo situation features "unique" characteristics and that its independence would not represent a precedent for triggering other crises elsewhere in the world is unlikely to convince everyone in the international community. What is it that makes Kosovo so unique? Ten years of institutional discrimination? Several thousand victims of a conflict between a repressive state security force and a separatist guerilla force? A majority ethnic group actively seeking independence? But the very same characteristics are shared by dozens of similar regions around the world. If every such case is seen as unique, international law becomes irrelevant.

Independence for Kosovo would indeed be a risky, unilaterally-imposed and ultimately wrong solution. Why would one side get it all, the other one lose all? Why reward seven years of Albanian violence in post-war Kosovo? Why break up Serbia, the most ethnically diverse country in the Western Balkans and create a second ethnic-Albanian state on one part of its territory? Where is the logic of European integration in this pursuit of Balkanization of the Balkans?

A BLUFFER'S GUIDE TO INDEPENDENCE

Bluffs and spin must not be used as arguments. To say, for example, that Serbia already lost Kosovo in 1999 is only an interpretation and does not stand in any single international document, let alone in the UN Security Council resolution 1244 that ended the conflict. In the resolution, "self-governing" is mentioned three times, "self-government" four times, "self-administration" once, "substantial autonomy" three times, whereas neither "self-determination" nor "independence" are mentioned at all. Did NATO intervene in 1999 to protect human rights or to provide the basis for secession? If Kosovo was lost to Serbia in 1999, why did it not obtain independence then? As far as the so-called moral argument that it is the violence of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic which lost Kosovo for Serbia, the Kosovo Albanians should be least inclined to favor it since their massive and systematic violence and repression of the Serb community in the last seven post-war years has taken all the "moral credit" out of their hands.

The same goes for the often heard assertion that Serbia should choose between Kosovo and the European Union. In fact, under the EU Thessaloniki agenda on the Western Balkans, Serbia has a clear European perspective and as the Western Balkans' largest country, it certainly won't remain a black hole inside the EU. To suggest that Serbia should give up a large part of its territory – which has been the cradle of its civilization, culture, and religion for nine centuries now – for the sake of possibly entering a supranational integration process two or three years earlier does not make much sense. No international or domestic campaign aimed at convincing Serbian public opinion on this one would succeed.

One of the most common arguments for the independence of Kosovo is that if the ethnic Albanians do not get what they want, they will stage mass violence against the Serbs, other non-Albanians, and the international troops. The argument points to the massive riots in March 2004 as a warning of what could happen if ethnic Albanian desires are not satisfied. But is the world really so afraid of such threats that it does not dare stand up to them? NATO seems ready to call this bluff. The Alliance's Secretary-General has warned on several occasions that violence as means of promoting political objectives in the status talks would this time be met with a robust response from 17,000 NATO troops in the province. Indeed, threats of violence must not be legitimized nor used as arguments.

Finally, it is most worrying to suggest that some sort of "conditional independence" should be the outcome of the status talks.

This empty formula is even presented by some as a compromise solution, because ethnic Albanians will have to wait a few more years for independence and give up on the idea of Greater Albania. Many of its backers suggest "conditional independence" means that Kosovo will be granted independence in phases, provided the majority ethnic Albanians finally start respecting the human rights of the Serbs and other non-Albanians. But this option is an insult to negotiators and 21st-century human-rights standards. If Belgrade is resolutely opposed to immediate independence, why would it accept independence two or three years from now? If even the most basic standards of human rights are not respected under international supervision, why should we expect that they would be in a conditionally independent Kosovo? And doesn't the "conditional independence" concept introduce a new kind of trade-off: respect for human rights in exchange for territory?

COMPROMISE: A WIN-WIN SOLUTION

Looking at the situation realistically and fairly, the most sustainable and just solution for the future status of the province lies between the standard type of autonomy, which ethnic Albanians now reject, and independence, which clashes with international law and is unacceptable for the Serbs in general and Serbia as a state.

A solution that would provide for a maximum of autonomy for Kosovo within the borders of Serbia could satisfy all the legitimate demands, including the Kosovo Albanians' demand to be self-governing, and it can protect the interests of non-Albanians in Kosovo and the interests of Serbia as a state. Such a solution would also comply with the principle of the inviolability of international borders.

Kosovo would enjoy full legislative, executive, and judicial capacity, a limited external representation – in particular regarding its full direct access to the international financial institutions – and most importantly, normalized relations with Serbia.

On the other hand, Serbia still has many positive things to offer Kosovo, including a strong push in its macroeconomic revival, a common market for goods, an integrated energy, electricity and infrastructure network, access to its health and education systems, a common fight against organized crime, and a joint contribution to regional stability and European integration.

At the same time, an autonomous Kosovo would still need to improve its treatment of the Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians. A wide-scale decentralization including a horizontal linkage of Serbian municipalities, which would benefit from the education, social, and health system of central Serbia, is a precondition for the survival of Kosovo Serbs, as suggested by UN special envoy Kai Eide.

This horizontal linkage is not a model for partition and conflict but, on the contrary, a model for integration and survival, as these municipalities would be fully integrated in the autonomous Kosovo system run from Pristina, while keeping some political links with Belgrade.

Considering all this, an autonomy for the Kosovo Serbs within a maximum autonomy for Kosovo inside Serbia appears as the most reasonable and viable long-term solution.

More than anything, it is a win-win solution. The Kosovo Albanians would finally get the means to manage their future and so will the Kosovo Serbs; Serbia would not have its borders changed and its historical and religious cradle amputated; Macedonia and Bosnia will receive guarantees that border changes in the Balkans are no longer tolerated; the EU would obtain regional stability and be able fully to take charge of its European perspective; the United States would be able to disengage its troops without losing its diplomatic leverage in both Pristina and Belgrade; Russia, China, India, and many other countries in the world would appreciate not having to deal with a dangerous secessionist precedent; the UN will see a major crisis issue resolved peacefully and with full respect for international law.

It is time to respect international law; it is time to find a long-term solution for Kosovo; it is high time to be patient, fair, sound, and consistent.

It is time for a successful compromise for the first time in Kosovo's long history.
 

Aleksandar Mitic is a Brussels-based journalist and one of the authors of the CD-ROM and Internet project "Kosovo 2006: The Making of a Compromise."

 

Serbia: Between Empire of Heaven and Empire of Earth Again

Can Karpat, AIA Balkan Section

Tomorrow the Kosovo final status talks enter a brand new phase. For the first time since the war, the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia meet in order to present their positions on status of Serbia’s breakaway province. There is no reason to believe that while seven purely technical rounds have failed, these new highly political rounds would succeed. Does it mean that the international community has switched to the Plan-B, namely the “Diktat solution”? Is this the beginning of the end for Serbia... Serbia's choice       Knez Lazar   “The Downfall of the Serbian Empire” is one of the best known Serbian epic songs, which tells the choice of Knez Lazar on the eve of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. “Lazar, glorious Emperor, which is the empire of your choice? Is it the empire of heaven? Is it the empire of the earth?” If Lazar chose the empire of the earth, the Ottoman army would all perish. However, the empire of the earth would be nothing but temporal. If Lazar chose the empire of heaven, he and his men would all die, but ensured their place in heaven. “And the emperor chose the empire of heaven above the empire of the earth”. Because the empire of the earth is eternal. For centuries long this song on Lazar’s choice had been a sweet consolation for the Serbs, who had been defeated by the Turks in the Battle of Kosovo. It comforted the Serbian psyche: They were not defeated; they chose to be defeated, for no less than a secure place in heaven. The Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica should better prepare himself for such a fatidic choice today. When Kosovo will be a lost cause for Serbia, Prime Minister should be able to tell his people that heaven is waiting for them to sooth their wounded pride. This time heaven may not be that spiritual, however, as it was in case of Prince Lazar. EU membership would be Serbia’s earthly compensation. Today the Kosovo final status talks enter a new top-level phase. Kosovo Albanian and Serbian high-level leaders are to meet face-to-face in order to present their positions on the future of Serbia’s breakaway province. The Serbian President Boris Tadic will sit opposite Fatmir Sejdiu, the President of the province that still, though de facto, belongs to Serbia. And Vojislav Kostunica will sit in front of his counterpart Agim Ceku, whom Serbia has been accusing of serious war crimes for years. One must not be a clairvoyant to guess the outcome of this new second phase: dialogue of the deaf and failure. The beginning of the end There is no reason to believe that while seven purely technical rounds have failed, these new highly political rounds would succeed. From now on, the two sides will discuss the future status of Kosovo, and not the peripheral issues like decentralization, the economy or protection of the Serbian cultural heritage and religious sites in the province. Not even the question of the protection of the Serbian culture in Kosovo, definitely one of the softest issues on the agenda, could be resolved during the seven rounds of talks. Even the Special Envoy for the Kosovo Future Status Process Martti Ahtisaari stated that he did not expect the talks to generate any concrete results and added that this would likely have to wait until after the next UN General Assembly session in September. Thus Martti Ahtisaari confirmed the general belief that the talks are only a necessary transition period, which will serve as a confirmation of the failed status talks. As soon as the failure of the second phase of the talks is totally confirmed, the Kosovo case will be transferred to the UN Security Council (UNSC), which will probably impose its decision as an “international Diktat” to the two sides. The attitude of Russia and China, the two permanent members of the UNSC, will be decisive since all the others are in favour of some form of independence for Kosovo. However, as long as Russia is concerned, the international community receives highly contradictory signals from Moscow. Until very recently Russia has totally backed the Serbian cause. However, now, Moscow is keen to change its policy on Kosovo in light of the precedent it would set for other regions like, not unexpectedly, Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Moldova's breakaway region of Transdnestria. The USA and Great Britain insist that a comparison cannot be drawn between Kosovo and Georgia and Moldova. However, sooner or later they will have to assure Russia’s vote in the UNSC. And the price of the Russian vote is now well known. Since according to the Western powers Kosovo’s independence will be the key to the total pacification of the Balkans, it would be not a big surprise if, at the end of the day, Russia gets at least some kind of assurance for a similar deal for South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdnestria. The elections of the year Meanwhile party leaders in Serbia are discussing possible dates for the next general elections. While Vojislav Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) prefers elections left to next spring, Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party (DS) prefers this autumn. In any case, the elections will be held probably before the Kosovo issue is resolved. Vojislav Kostunica’s minority government is losing blood every day, namely its working majority in Parliament. On the one hand, since the death of their leader, Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) has threatened to withdraw their support from the government if any other forcible extraditions take place. On the other hand, the Europhile-technocrat liberal party G 17 Plus warns the government that they will pull out of the coalition by October if pre-accession talks with the EU are not resumed. Serbia goes through an extremely difficult year. On 3rd May the EU suspended pre-accession talks with Serbia after Belgrade failed to deliver General Ratko Mladic to The Hague. On 21st Montenegro seceded from its state union with Serbia and became independent. The Presevo Valley, Sandzak and Vojvodina may be the next regions, which would bedevil the political atmosphere in Serbia. And of course, Kosovo. Unsurprisingly the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) exploits this situation to the extreme. No less than 37 percent of the Serbian people support this party at the public surveys. A particularly sad picture since nothing but the mentality of SRS and alike were responsible for this desperate no-way-back situation in Kosovo in the first place. Very hard times are waiting for moderate nationalist Vojislav Kostunica. How will he persuade his voters that he is the reasonable Prince Lazar, and not the treacherous Vuk Brankovic, whose betrayal, so the Serbs like to believe, supposedly condemned the Serbian kingdom to defeat before the Turks in 1389? How will the new epic song look like? In his open letter on 13th July, Vojislav Kostunica himself made this point clear: “Can such a country, by any measure a democratic one, survive the forcible taking of 15 percent of its territory? What democratically elected government could explain to its voters after such an act that they should continue to believe in the principles of tolerance, liberalism and the sacrosanct will of the people - the values of enlightened Western civilization, in the name of which they toppled an evil, authoritarian regime?” Unlike DS, DSS and other pro-Western parties, SRS is able to give its supporters very simple and clear messages. And in times of political suffocation people, who lost their confidence even in themselves, often prefer this kind of simple and clear messages. Sad but history can testify to this. The general elections in Serbia will be by far the most important elections in the Balkans this year. If the two major Serbian parties DS and DSS cannot find a common ground to cooperate, not only Serbia would stray from the path that leads towards democracy, but the Western powers would also have to deal henceforth with negotiators that they never dreamt of in their worst nightmares at the status talks in Vienna. Related items: From the Wisdom of Suffocating Serbia (22.06.06) Kosovo: Riddle whose Answer everyone knows (06.06.06) Serbia - Independent despite Herself (25.05.06) The Great Kosovo Riddle (08.05.06) Serbian Radical Party: The Hubris of Serbian Political Scene (04.05.06) Kosovo: A New State or a New Bone of Contention in the Balkans? (26.11.05)

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1000

 

UNSC set to break Kosovo status quo

With talks between Belgrade and Pristina over Kosovo's final status set to fail, the UNSC is ready to make the decision itself by the year's end, a diplomat says.

By Ekrem Krasniqi in Brussels for ISN Security Watch (20/07/06)

If Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders and the authorities in Belgrade fail to reach an agreement over the status of Serbia's UN-administered province of Kosovo by the end of the year, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will make the decision on its own, an EU diplomat told ISN Security Watch.

And Kosovo's independence looks like a done deal, especially with Russia seemingly on board at the UNSC, though not without its own game plan.

UN-mediated Kosovo status talks between Belgrade and Pristina are expected to take place later this month, but EU diplomats in Brussels have said that if the two sides failed to reach an agreement, the UNSC would step in and make it for them.

"The Contact Group prefers an agreed solution," but if that does not happen, "then the Security Council will have to take up its responsibilities," a European diplomat told ISN Security Watch on condition of anonymity.

UN special envoy for Kosovo talks, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, is trying to organize the first high-level meeting between Kosovo and Serb leaders in Vienna on 24 July, hoping to bring in Serbian President Boris Tadic, who has already agreed to attend, and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who has not net responded, and their counterparts from Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu and Agim Ceku.

The meeting in Vienna would open the second phase of the talks on the future of Kosovo.

Since the beginning of the year, negotiations on decentralization (the creation of more municipalities for the Serbian minority and the shift of power from the central government to municipal authorities), the economy (the privatization of Kosovo's enterprises, property rights, citizens savings, pensions, etc) and culture (ensuring the cultural heritage and religious sites of Serbs) failed to bring about any significant results.

But even if partial agreement could be reached on some of these issues, there is little chance that Pristina and Belgrade would agree on dueling status proposals, and there are not any new options on the table: Kosovo's ethnic Albanians will settle for nothing less than independence, while Belgrade insists that independence is not an option and is willing to go only as far as granting the province greater autonomy.

What is most likely to happen is that the Vienna meeting will serve only as a confirmation of the failed status talks, which will allow the "Kosovo File" to be sent directly to the UNSC to decide on how best to end the status quo.

The US and Britain are pushing for the independence, with US President George W Bush saying that the solution should reflect the demand of the majority, but must also respect the rights of the minorities.

Washington says the Kosovo status chapter must be closed as soon as possible, as the status quo can no longer be maintained and any further delays keep the economy in limbo and could lead to renewed unrest among ethnic Albanians.

Implications for Belgrade

But handing the decision over to the UNSC - which is likely to result in a declaration of independence for Kosovo later this year or early next year - could be problematic.

One question Western leaders will have to answer is how to sell Kosovo's independence to the Serbian people to avoid internal instability. This comes at a time when radicals are leading the polls with a 40 percent popularity rating. Declaring an independent Kosovo would certainly give radicals a further boost and could be the downfall of the current government.

The Serbian leadership is hoping to convince the UNSC to delay its decision by a few months, at least until after elections, which are tentatively planned for the end of this year.

Serbian President Tadic, a moderate who on several occasions has acknowledged that Kosovo was moving toward independence, said after meeting with top EU officials Tuesday in Brussels that he would prefer extraordinary elections in Serbia before Kosovo's status was decided.

But over all, what Belgrade really wants is a temporary solution for Kosovo, such as "essential autonomy" inside Serbia, and a postponement of final status for up to 20 years - an idea that already has been categorically rejected by Western governments.

The question of Russia

For the West, the political implications for Belgrade seem to hold less importance than Russia's demands, however. After all, elections will come and go in Serbia and regardless, Belgrade will have to make a touch decision between holding on to Kosovo and pursuing its path of Euro-Atlantic integration.

Russia, on the other hand, would use Kosovo independence to win the backing of Western governments for independence for Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Moldova's breakaway region of Transdneistria.

Russian authorities have been quite vocal about the precedent Kosovo's independence could set.

At least for now, Britain and the US have maintained that a comparison cannot be drawn between Kosovo and Georgia and Moldova, but that could change as Kosovo's independence would require Russia's vote on the UNSC - a vote it is not likely to give without some assurance of a similar deal for South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdneistria.

In Brussels, the ISN Security Watch's EU source echoed sentiments in London and Washington, saying that "all issues should be resolved according to their specifications," but he said he doubted Russia would move to bloc the UNSC vote on Kosovo's final status.

Russia's apparent readiness to accept Kosovo’s independence in light of the precedent it would set represents a marked change in Moscow's position.

Earlier, Russia had rejected the idea of independence for Kosovo as it feared it would strengthen the case for the independence of its Northern Caucasus republic of Chechnya.

But now, diplomats are cautiously optimistic that Russia will not abandon Contact Group statements saying that the solution for Kosovo "must be acceptable to Kosovo people” - a statement Western diplomats interpret as meaning "acceptable to the ethnic Albanian majority," or independence.

Observers also believe that with Russia on board - though it is not clear if Moscow's demands will be met - Kosovo independence is a done deal.

“The Russians believe that Kosovo’s independence will help their case in the three regions,” Nicholas Whyte from the International Crisis Group (ICG) told ISN Security Watch.

There have been diplomatic rumblings in Brussels that the UNSC was planning to "invite" member nations to recognize Kosovo's independence in the fall, though this has not been independently confirmed.

But if the West fails to agree on Russia's hoped-for concessions, complications could erupt at the UNSC, he suggested.

Since Moscow's change in position, the Serbian leadership has been lobbying other Contact Group members, including China, to vote against Kosovo independence. But so far, those lobbying efforts seem to have made little headway.

Regional implications

Since Montenegro's declaration of independence from the state union with Serbia in May, Bosnian Serbs have stepped up their calls for a similar right to self-determination - a call that has been categorically rejected by Western officials. The Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia split the country into two administrative entities, the Bosniak- and Croat-dominated Federation entity and the Bosnian Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity.

The Serbian government has repeatedly warned that a declaration of independence for Kosovo could threaten regional stability in the western Balkans.

But EU and US officials have remained adamant that whatever the solution for Kosovo, the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be changed.

Some also have warned of potential consequences for Serbia's internal borders, with Serbs in northern Kosovo threatening partition, which could in turn provoke the ethnic Albanian majority in the south of Serbia (Presevo Valley) to seek to join a newly independent Kosovo. Others warn that it could also incite new tensions in Macedonia (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), where the Albanian minority forms a quarter of the population.

The Contact Group has made it clear that an independent Kosovo could not join any parts or countries in the region, referring to northwestern Macedonia, southern Serbia and Albania.

EU boosts Kosovo independence hopes

On Monday, Kosovo's independence was boosted further when EU officials released a report to member states' foreign ministers signaled the bloc would begin to treat Kosovo as an independent state.

The report says Kosovo is to move toward the EU as an independent country from Serbia by building bilateral relations as Brussels does with other aspiring countries of the western Balkans region.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the 25-nation bloc expected Kosovo authorities to work hard on meeting the criteria set for accession. They also said Brussels should be ready to grant to Kosovo all contractual relations for this purpose.

Once the final status has been decided the EU will take over the mandate of the United Nation's Mission (UNMIK) and is to supervise Kosovo's "limited" independence, while NATO will continue to run the security mission, but with reduced troop numbers.

As such, EU member states will assume the main role in Kosovo, with a European police mission that is expected to help local authorities provide security guarantees for minorities.

Ekrem Krasniqi is ISN Security Watch’s senior correspondent at the EU, UN, and NATO in Brussels, where he has been based since 1992. Has has worked for the Kosovo weekly magazine Zeri and the daily Zëri i Ditës. Krasniqi is the founder of DTT-NET.COM press agency and serves as the outlet’s editor-in-chief.

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=16415

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060719-081857-6783r_page2.htm

Letters to the editor

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
July 20, 2006


   New York


   Balkan realities
   Tod Lindberg is right that the EU and NATO countries should not turn
their backs on Balkan countries wishing to share in the peace and prosperity
of the new Europe. However, he is wrong to suggest that it was only Slobodan
Milosevic's "genocidal policies" that set the Balkans in flames in the early
1990s and wrong to condemn Serbian determination to maintain Kosovo as an
integral part of its territory ("Where Milosevic's butchery held sway,"
Op-Ed, July 11).
   It has become fashionable to blame Milosevic and Serbia for everything
that went wrong in the former Yugoslavia while overlooking the concerns of
the Christian Serbian population in Bosnia and in Kosovo at the grim
prospects of having to live in Muslim-dominated states.
   Alia Izetbegovic, the Muslim Bosnian leader, was an Islamist extremist
who made no attempt to hide his plans for destroying the Christian entity in
Bosnia, writing, "There can be no peace or co-existence between the Islamist
faith and non-Islamist institutions." As for Agim Ceku, the so-called prime
minister of Kosovo, the Canadian military knows what crimes he is guilty of
even if the Hague Tribunal refused to indict him.
   In 1993, Mr. Ceku commanded Croatian forces that violated a
U.N.-brokered cease-fire and overran three Serbian villages in the Medac
pocket. When the Canadians counterattacked and re-entered the burned
villages, they discovered all of the inhabitants and domestic animals had
been slaughtered. Mr. Ceku later also ordered undefended Serbian villages
shelled in violation of the rules of war, causing heavy casualties among the
civilian population.
   In 2002, Mr. Ceku was indicted by Serbia for responsibility as a Kosovo
Liberation Army commander for the murders of 669 Serbians and other
non-Albanians during the fighting that broke out in Kosovo in 1998. The
indictment includes murder, abduction, torture and ethnic cleansing of the
non-Albanian population from Kosovo. This is the man recently invited to
Washington to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a meeting
obviously planned to show U.S. support for Kosovo independence.
   For many outside observers, including this writer, the continued support
by the United States for an independent Kosovo is incomprehensible. Granting
independence to Kosovo would be a serious violation of Serbia's territorial
integrity, which is one of the most cherished principles of international
law and is enshrined in the United Nations Charter. U.S. violation of this
principle would have far-reaching implications for the very framework of
international peace and security.
   Independence for Kosovo also would create a criminal and terrorist state
in the heart of the Balkans. This is not a happy prospect in today's world.
   Kosovo independence would set a precedent for other aspiring ethnic
groups for independent status and would destabilize not only the Balkans,
but many other parts of the world. It also would mark a low point in U.S.
foreign policy. It is difficult to be held up as the champion of the rule of
law, of democracy and the global war on terror, while at the same time
giving support to war criminals and terrorists.

   JAMES BISSETT
   Former Canadian ambassador
   to the former Yugoslavia
   Ottawa
                                   Serbian News Network - SNN

                                        news@antic.org

                                    http://www.antic.org/

 

Dividing the Pannonian Sea
By Russell Gordon

If those who aspire to the fulfillment of the Wolfowitz Doctrine were nonplussed by the termination of the 50-year Cold War with the Soviet Union, existent blowback may be the answer to their hegemonic prayers.

The West has finally forced Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s hand, with Russia now supporting the North Korea-Iran/Syria Axis. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s less than stellar protégés have indeed revived the Cold War: by pushing NATO eastward, humiliating and bombing the Serbs, isolating Russia from its near-abroad through thinly-veiled, anti-democratic “color revolutions”, and covertly supporting al Qaeda terrorists in Chechnya. Russia, in turn, has escalated its support of Iran, Syria, possibly North Korea and some Iraqi insurgents, Columbian Marxist guerillas, and others in opposition to US global policies.

Blowback - intended or otherwise - is nothing new to the US foreign policy establishment. The US helped create the Viet-Minh while materially backing the French, thus setting the stage for French loss of former colonial possessions in Indochina, and US entry into the region. In a similar vane, the US heavily-armed the most extreme of Afghan and foreign mujahedeen factions, which helped lead to the Soviet Union’s demise, but as forecasted, created a stateless nemesis whose future eradication will prove much more tenuous.

And indeed, if Washington gives independence to Albanian Islamo-fascists in the Serbian province of Kosovo, Foggy Bottom may become up to its’ deaf ears in unforeseen consequences. Or are they?

Charading as Wilsonianism, the Wolfowitz Doctrine has shown itself to be a cheap knock-off of Bismarkian and Hitlerian doctrine, amplifying Bismarck’s Mittel-Europa to a global scale. Washington’s foreign policy elite have effectively shown any and all comers who might have defensible interests that all bets are off in regards to morality, justice, civility, ethics, nobility, and even logic. To say that the US global policies are even in defense of US strategic interests is presumptuous, given the obvious long term consequences.

In the short-term, the US already is seeing negative results. US forces are bogged down in Iraq, squaring off against Islamist and local insurgent forces supported by Sunni and Shi’ite entities – local and regional. Russia, China, Iran and former Soviet Central Asian states have formed a counter-veiling bloc via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran is saber rattling atomic capabilities, and playing the Hezbollah trump card to counter-balance Sunni Arab control in the Middle East.

Common misperception is that the Russians are the Serbs historical friends, but as the Serb saying goes, “God help us if the Russians arrive.” Indeed, as no nation has friends, but rather allies of immediate convenience, Putin is ready to sacrifice Kosovo to set a precedent for Trans-Dniestr, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and other regions, some of which will prove troubling for US plans in dominating the Caucasus oil supply. Moreover, Kosovo independence will affirm to countless separatist groups worldwide that military escalation combined with public relations will eventually yield results, thus making increased local warfare inevitable.

In the Balkans, it appears that Washington wishes not the continuation of Belgrade's current “collaborative” policies, but rather to force Serbia into a corner, thus driving the Serbian populace towards the Radicals, and thereby creating a justification to isolate Serbia yet again, all the while claiming the Serbs have “chosen the forces of darkness and isolation over a brighter European future.”

With the release of Muslim war criminal Naser Oric from ICTY Hague detention, and continued demands for the arrest and extradition of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, the Serbian populace may have achieved final proof that the international policy bias was not a series of mistakes, but rather intended as deliberate. Provoking Serbian inat – self-defeating spite –will again enable a free hand to Washington militarists to exact further reprisals in a continuing message to global rivals, and conveniently causing further disunity in Europe. As for the Serbs, damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

Predictably, the US can then jump back into pre-determined paradigm of breaking Serbia up more by demanding special status for Sandzak/Raska, Presevo area, eastern Montenegro, Voivodina, and western Macedonia. Undoubtedly media war, and Albanian terrorist actions, will be employed as provocations, and already US Marines are training with maps of Montenegro, to 'intervene to stop a “genocide” against Albanians.' The humiliating psychological conditions are not too dissimilar to those imposed on Germany at Versailles, and may yet contribute to armed conflict at a later date. As far as NATO is concerned, this may be in their perceived interests.

Unfortunately, many Serbs are still stuck in outdated paradigms themselves, appealing to logic, reason and decency which have long since been forgone in the halls of power in Washington and the capitols of the co-opted. One Western analyst opined that “most Serbian politicians are fighting over money….”  With gauleiters unwittingly assisting in a phased plan of dismemberment, time may be running short.

Possible encouraging signs include the appointment to DCI of Gen. Michael Hayden, who along with his mentor Gen. Charles G. Boyd has been outspoken in his criticism of US policy and media bias against the Serbs, singling out CNN and the New York Times by name for their duplicity. But as one intelligence analyst noted, Hayden may become “boxed into a corner [at the CIA] in five minutes.” Ohio National Guard troops are training Serbian Army troops in Serbia, and two US F-16’s recently touched down in a courtesy call to the Serbian military – sans accouterments explosives of 1999. Clearly there is some diversity of opinion in Washington and Langley.

But as one Serbian-American publisher said, “a conspiracy of silence continues” about the reality of the previous and current Balkan conflicts, which could prepare the way for US public support for continued US moves against Serbia -- should darker forces win out.

 

http://www.serbianna.com/columns/gordon/003.shtml

 

Independent Kosovo a model for breakaway regions worldwide

July 18, 2006 8:42 AM

BRUSSELS, Belgium-Serbia's president warned Tuesday that if the province of Kosovo is allowed to secede, it could create instability in the Balkans and set a precedent for independence movements around the world.

President Boris Tadic also indicated he had not decided whether to attend an unprecedented round of direct talks with Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders next week in Vienna, as proposed by U.N. mediator Martti Ahtisaari.

Belgrade strongly opposes the possible independence for the region of two million people, which has been a de facto international protectorate since NATO forced Serbia's then-dictator Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his troops from the province in a brief war in 1999.

But ethnic Albanians, who account for 90 percent of the province's people, are demanding independence, insisting they can never again be ruled by Belgrade.

Serbia's new democratic government has proposed granting the province self-rule backed by international guarantees, while formally retaining it within the borders of Serbia.

"From my point of view (independence) is not going to be a useful solution," Tadic said at a news conference with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

"An independent Kosovo would be a precedent, it is going to be a problem for regional stability not only for the Balkans but for other regions in the world," Tadic said.

Analysts have said that if Kosovo is allowed to break away from Serbia, whose province it has been since the early Middle Ages, this would almost certainly be used by many other territories to justify their own secessionist designs.

These potentially include regions as diverse as Spain's Catalonia and the Basque country, Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia statelets, Moldavia's rebellious Trans-Dniester, Azerbaijan's disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, and Indonesia's war-torn provinces of Aceh and West Papua.

Ahtisaari, the U.N. envoy, is currently trying to bridge the differences in talks on Kosovo's future status being held in Vienna. On Monday, he said he would try to bring the presidents and prime ministers of both Kosovo and Serbia together for the first time to discuss political issues.

Kosovo's President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku have agreed to attend, but Tadic and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica have not yet confirmed.

"We are expecting that Mr. Ahtisaari will send us some conditions for the talks," Tadic said without elaborating. "We will then decide whether to participate."

Tadic visited Brussels a day after Kostunica briefed EU leaders on the details of a new plan to track down and arrest fugitive war crimes suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic.

Serbia's failure to arrest Mladic, wanted on charges stemming from the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, and hand him to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, led the EU to suspend talks on a so-called Stabilization and Association agreement. This is a stepping stone to possible membership in the bloc, and is considered crucial for the country's stability and economic growth.

Although no details of the new three-page plan were released, officials said it details measures to apprehend Mladic, who is wanted on charges of involvement in genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. It also calls for the appointment of a government coordinator to put the plan into effect, who would have daily contact with U.N. prosecutors.

The plan is closely modeled on a similar document presented by neighboring Croatia last year, when Zagreb's talks with the EU were jeopardized by its failure to catch an army general indicted for crimes against humanity.

Belgrade is hoping the bloc will accept its assurances and restart negotiations even if Mladic remains at large, just as it did in Croatia's case.

Barroso welcomed the plan, but stopped short of endorsing a resumption of talks before Mladic's capture.

He underlined, however, that if full cooperation with the U.N. court is achieved, "there is still time to achieve the Stabilization and Association Agreement by the end of the year."

"It is not fair for the Serbian people that because of one or a few (individuals) that are accused of being war criminals, that the democratic and European future of Serbia is put on hold," Barroso said.

http://www.serbianna.com/news/2006/02071.shtml

 

Kosovo gone, Montenegro gone: what is left for Belgrade?

The dream of a Greater Albania

By Jean-Arnault DĂ©rens and Laurent Geslin

The Albanian minister of foreign affairs, Besnik Mustafaj, caused alarm when he said in March, “If Kosovo is divided, we can no longer guarantee its borders with Albania, or the border of the Albanian part of Macedonia” (1). Kosovo’s changed status has raised again the question of Balkan borders: nobody can predict what will happen.

On the evening of 21 May Montenegrin and Albanian flags flew side by side in Ulcinj, the southernmost town of the Montenegrin coast. Montenegro has become independent mostly because of the way the national minorities voted. The 50,000 Albanians living in the tiny republic have long been convinced citizens of the Montenegrin state.

According to Ibrahim Cungu, former police commissioner for Ulcinj and local leader of the Social Democratic party: “It is possible to be Albanian and a citizen of Montenegro.”

But the Montenegrin Albanians are an exception in the Balkans. In Macedonia, Albanians and Macedonians view each other with suspicion. The political and cultural rights of the Albanians have been recognised, and the Ohrid agreement of August 2001 ended the violent conflict between Macedonian security forces and the ethnic-Albanian National Liberation Army of Macedonia. Like the Macedonian Slavs, the Albanians are now considered a “second constitutive people” of the Macedonian republic. Albanian is the second official language in any commune where Albanians are over 20% of the population. “Before 2001 Albanian high school pupils had trouble getting into university, but the situation has improved since then,” said Afrim Kerimi, headmaster of the Albanian high school in Kumanovo.

The 2001 conflict has left deep scars, however. Many people are disappointed by the peace agreement and the guerrillas are itching to fight again. An elastic amnesty further feeds resentment and small guerrilla groups, often linked to criminal interests, are constantly springing up. One group formed in 2003 is led by Avdil Jakupi,“Commander Cakalla”; another, headed by Agim Krasniqi, occupied the village of Kondovo outside Skopje for six months in 2004.

Albanians living in Serbia’s Presevo valley are also dissatisfied with the peace. They want to take part in the Kosovo negotiations as they fear they may be completely passed over in a regional settlement.

Albanian guerrilla movements arose in Macedonia and the Presevo valley in 2001 because of Kosovo. By igniting local conflict, radical militants and supporters of a Greater Albania sought to remind the world that the international protectorate did not solve the Kosovo question. If future international decisions on Kosovo do not suit them, they will have no problem inflaming the whole region.

The Albanian nationalist movement developed only at the end of the 19th century, far later than those of the other Balkan peoples. After the Balkan war of 1912-13 Kosovo was divided between Montenegro and Serbia, with Serbia also getting a large area of Macedonia. The Treaty of London established “little Albania” on approximately the territory now occupied by Albania, but it left many Albanian people outside the new state.

There are two distinct ideas in Albanian nationalist rhetoric: Greater Albania and ethnic Albania. Greater Albania designates the lands that at various times were peopled by Albanians or their supposed ancestors, the Illyrians. Ethnic Albania corresponds to the regions where Albanians are the majority of the population (2). The nationalists tend to forget an important factor: that other communities live side by side with the Albanians in those regions.

After the dangerous ambitions of a Greater Serbia and a Greater Croatia, is it now the time for a Greater Albania? A number of radical, but marginal, militant networks openly campaign for it, but they may not have much popular support. There is still considerable distrust between the citizens of the republic of Albania and the Albanians from former Yugoslavia, long separated by history.

The only response to the challenge of a Greater Albania, as with a Greater Serbia, is full European integration. The prospect of a national unity that requires border changes is potentially dangerous for the region. Nevertheless the issue of a national trans-border “Albania” is a reality.

It should be possible for anyone writing a book in Shqiptari to address likely readers in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, while an ethnic Albanian student should be free to study in Tirana, Tetovo or Pristina. But the borders will have to be far wider open than they are today.

http://mondediplo.com/2006/07/14albania

                                                                Politicized Mythology

                                                               The Kosovo Dimension

 

                                                                                                  R.K.Kent, Historian

 

In its llth July 2006 edition, the New York Times published a report from Paris  by  Marlise Simons, entitled “War Crimes Trial Begins for 6 Milosevic Aides,” (p. A3)

While  the  text  seems  to  be  a “matter-of-fact report,” it is marred by a priori judge-ments, skewed optics and   tell-tale perceptions. Together, they suggest what the verdict is likely to  be even if it  will  not be easy to prove the alleged centerpiece of collective sin  a “secret plan” to expel all Albanians from Kosovo Her text also shows that there is hardly any depth to presumed  knowledge of the subject.. 

 The first inaccuracy   is that “7,000 to 9,000 people were killed” at Kosovo while leaving no doubt that it was a one-way killing of Albanians by the Serbs. Numerous examinations, starting with the Helsinki Watch and terminating after NATO troops took over in Kosovo,  came  up with what should be considered as a  defining  verdict. There were about 3,000 casualties with a ratio of two Albanians to one Serb.

 The second one consists of the assertion that “Serb terror” “drove out” of Kosovo an estimated 800,000 … Albanians..”  Two facts remain unbreakable. The mass exodus of Albanians  from  Kosovo  took place only after NATO began its bombing missions and not before. Moreover, a variety of sources, including  Jewish spiritual leaders in Kosovo’s urban centers, reported that the so-called “Kosovo Liberation Army” agents actively urged the  more sophisticated town dwellers  to join the ranks of mainly rural refugees so as to swell the  numbers. The purpose  was  to  pave the ground for an eventual independence of a Kosovo under total Albanian control. The Serb Third Army and Police units   jumped on the opportunity to “assist” the exodus by providing all sorts of transportation out. It was not “Serb terror”  but  rather  a spontaneous  accord between

legitimate Serb military and police  and Albanian extremists, with different aims in mind..There, equally, can be no way to overturn the fact that no mass exodus of Albanians  took place before NATO bombs and missiles began to drop from the sky over Kosovo itself. It does not really matter what Milosevic said in his defense. The facts stand out with Milosevic dead or alive and  no   “tribunal “ can change them.

 The skewed optics derive  from the fact any reader can verify. The  “Kosovo Liberation Army” is mentioned nowhere in the article. Defined once as a terrorist organization by the State Department, the KLA  became ”freedom fighters” overnight. As a surrogate of U.S. power “NATO” did not wish to put American soldiers on the ground and switched to the KLA  for  potential substitutes. The most ardent supporters  of this switch were Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and General Wesley Clark, Commander of NATO.

 

                                                                                                                               (2)

 

Although numerous recent statements by members of the U.S. Government have made it clear that self-defense is inalienable as a right that belongs to all human groupings, the so-called “Hague Tribunal” has denied it to the Serb authorities at Kosovo. The KLA ambushed and killed about 300 Serb policemen before NATO entered into the matter.

But, the most glaring omission in the article, probably not deliberate, is the testimony of a German head  of European Observers at Kosovo who sent daily, weekly, monthly and very detailed reports to the European Union. As he testified at the “Hague Tribunal” at lenth and in mufti, Herr Hartwig placed the entire blame for turmoil at Kosovo on the KLA and completely exhonorated the Serb  authorities in respect to any criminal or “genocidal” charges. Hartwig stressed in his testimony that he was astonished after leaving Kosvo to find out what the  media  were “reporting” while his massive and  meticulous reports compiled from  hundreds of subordinate European observers never had  any publicity at all.

 The tell-tale sign comes from the so-called “secret plan” for total “ethnic cleansing” of

all  Kosovo Albanians. It proved to be a forgery of Bulgarian Secret Services working for its German analogue (BDN) and “floated” by a German General. The Germans have had

a long association with Albanian extremists going back to WWII and the Albanian SS Skender Beg Division which initiated massive killings and expulsions of Serbs from Kosovo.  It  began to alter the Serb demographic advantage at Kosovo by the mid-Fortiies. There is not much doubt that our own policies in the break-up of Yugoslavia,  while siding with former enemies of the US  owe  a great deal to influence of the Forth Reich on the CIA and the Pentagon as well as the State Department responding to our own Solons who had much support from Albanian PACs in the U.S..

 It is amazing to those of  us  who have followed the details of the fratricidal drama in ex-Yugoslavia that  self-admitted and externally documented men who butchered the Serbs

get  away from jails in the Hague or   return home after light sentences. Meanwhile  any Serb in uniform at Kosovo and elsewhere gets a great deal of attention as a “criminal” with almost pre-determined sentences at the Hague. What is entirely lacking in this  structured “set-up” is a sense of history as it does not pay in the long run to punish one’s certified and long-time friends while favoring their and our enemies, for whatever momentary and /or strategic reasons .stay hidden and away from home publics.

 

Taking a licking in the Balkans Saturday, July 15, 2006 The drubbing that Serbia and Montene gro's combined soccer team took in the World Cup last month is a metaphor for what's happening to the final remnants of the former Yugoslavia. The last chapters of Yugoslavia's end are being written in political backrooms instead of on the battlefield, but the final slice-up could still trigger a return to nationalist violence if solutions are forced on the region. In May, the tiny, mountainous republic of Montenegro took the democratic option. It voted to strike out on its own, achieving independence without a drop of blood spilled. But the voluntary defection of a nation whose majority population shares bloodlines, language and the Christian Orthodox religion with most Serbs was a huge psychological blow in Belgrade, where retro-nationalism is back in style. Now it all comes down to Kosovo, a province in southern Serbia whose people overwhelmingly favor an independence that its legal owner, Serbia, declines to grant. The international community has made little secret of its intention to break this logjam with a deciding vote for the ethnic Albanians who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's populace and want out. There are four serious problems with this approach. First, it downgrades negotiations and makes the wishes of the affected people secondary to those of outsiders fed up with having to patrol and rule Kosovo themselves. Since a 1999 NATO air war wrested control of Kosovo from Serbian forces, NATO and U.S. troops have patrolled and the United Nations has ruled. Any imposed solution is likely to displease all sides. Second, it rewards lawlessness and ethnic retribution. The U.N. pretends security problems are history, but the reprisal murders of ethnic Serbs continue - the latest a 68-year-old man shot in his home. Ethnic Albanian police were attacked recently simply because they were patrolling with ethnic Serbs. Independence talks were supposed to follow ethnic reconciliation, not precede them. The likely outcome will be another ethnic exodus and violent reprisals. Third is the gleeful reaction from Moscow. Vladimir Putin has boasted about how he plans to cite Kosovo's independence as a precedent for the secession of pro-Russian, Christian ethnic enclaves in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. This is stoking fears about recharged independence movements from the Catalans and Basques in Spain to the Uighurs in China. Finally and most significantly will be the erosion of the bedrock principle of territorial sovereignty enshrined in the U.N. charter. The United Nations probably will have to approve any solution imposed on Serbia - putting it in the position of approving the abrogation of territorial sovereignty of a member nation. No wonder former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, the U.N. emissary trying to negotiate a way out of the Kosovo mess, reportedly is pressing to delay a resolution of the situation into next year. Washington, tired of having U.S. troops tied down in Kosovo, has made little secret that it wants forward movement by year's end. Artificial deadlines in this case are not helpful, particularly given the potential of this final slicing up of Serbia to propel ultranationalists into power. Serbia's reformers have found and returned the bodies of 836 murdered Kosovo Albanians hidden in mass graves around Serbia - the awful legacy of the most recent war. But more than 2,000 people are still missing from the Kosovo conflict, representing most ethnic groups in the formerly multiethnic province. Reconciliation and face-to-face talks are the best way to cure the pain of these deaths - not an imposed solution that would violate core tenets of international law and simply propel another cycle of ethnic repressions and separation. © 2006 The Plain Dealer © 2006 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.

http://www.cleveland.com/politics/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1152952590240110.xml&coll=2

 

Russia Challenges UN Power on Kosovo, Calls for Talks

Created: 14.07.2006 09:45 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:08 MSK , 20 hours 26 minutes ago

 

MosNews 

Russia said on Thursday the United Nations had no authority to impose a solution on Serbia over the status of its breakaway Kosovo province and only a negotiated deal was acceptable, the Reuters news agency reported.

The statement by Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin was significant as the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia have dug their heels in the international talks aimed at determining whether Kosovo wins independence or remains a part of Serbia, making an imposed solution more likely.

“I stated today in the closed meeting of the Security Council that I do not believe that the international community has legal, political or moral ground to force Serbia into a solution on this issue,” Churkin told reporters. “There is plenty of opportunity for the sides to have their discussions, and the only stable solution, the only solution good for regional and global stability, would be a solution negotiated between the two sides,” Churkin said.

Ethnic Albanians, 90 percent of the impoverished province’s 2 million people, demand independence while Serbia insists Kosovo must remain within its borders, albeit with substantial autonomy.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since June 1999 when NATO bombs drove out Serb forces accused of atrocities against civilians while battling a guerrilla insurgency.

Martti Ahtisaari of Finland is leading the U.N.-backed process set up to determine Kosovo’s eventual status. Direct talks on the fate of Kosovo began in February in Vienna, and he hopes for a result by the end of this year.

Churkin spoke after Ahtisaari briefed the council Ã¢â‚¬â€- and then talked to reporters Ã¢â‚¬â€- on his talks.

During the closed-door meeting, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica again ruled out independence and accused the international community of seeking to change Serbia’s borders by force, diplomats attending the session said.

Ahtisaari, asked before Churkin spoke whether he thought a solution might have to be imposed because of Kostunica’s hard line, said it was “entirely premature to start talking how the end result of this exercise is going to be.”

But other council diplomats said an imposed solution would clearly be in order if a deal could not be negotiated. Ahtisaari said he had strong council support for his work. “I think everyone is interested that we have a thorough process Ã¢â‚¬â€- in the end of the day that we can say that we have done our utmost to try to find a negotiated settlement,” he said

http://mosnews.com/news/2006/07/14/kosovo.shtml

 

Russia challenges UN power to impose Kosovo ruling

By Irwin Arieff2 hours, 25 minutes ago

Russia said on Thursday the United Nations had no authority to impose a solution on Serbia over the status of its breakaway Kosovo province and only a negotiated deal was acceptable.

The statement by Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin was significant as the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia have dug in their heels in the international talks aimed at determining whether Kosovo wins independence or remains a part of Serbia, making an imposed solution more likely.

"I stated today in the closed meeting of the Security Council that I do not believe that the international community has legal, political or moral ground to force Serbia into a solution on this issue," Churkin told reporters.

"There is plenty of opportunity for the sides to have their discussions, and the only stable solution, the only solution good for regional and global stability, would be a solution negotiated between the two sides," Churkin said.

Ethnic Albanians, 90 percent of the impoverished province's 2 million people, demand independence while Serbia insists Kosovo must remain within its borders, albeit with substantial autonomy.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since June 1999 when NATO bombs drove out Serb forces accused of atrocities against civilians while battling a guerrilla insurgency.

Martti Ahtisaari of Finland is leading the U.N.-backed process set up to determine Kosovo's eventual status. Direct talks on the fate of Kosovo began in February in Vienna, and he hopes for a result by the end of this year.

Churkin spoke after Ahtisaari briefed the council -- and then talked to reporters -- on his talks.

During the closed-door meeting, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica again ruled out independence and accused the international community of seeking to change Serbia's borders by force, diplomats attending the session said.

Ahtisaari, asked before Churkin spoke whether he thought a solution might have to be imposed because of Kostunica's hard line, said it was "entirely premature to start talking how the end result of this exercise is going to be."

But other council diplomats said an imposed solution would clearly be in order if a deal could not be negotiated.

Ahtisaari said he had strong council support for his work. "I think everyone is interested that we have a thorough process -- in the end of the day that we can say that we have done our utmost to try to find a negotiated settlement," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060714/wl_nm/serbia_kosovo_un_dc&printer=1;_ylt=AhVB2eIsXwkX8e.yXrRTbIRn.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

 

 

Serbia's Darkest Year

By Erich Wiedemann and Renate Flottau

It hasn't been a good year for Serbia: First Montenegro voted to secede and now Kosovo wants independence. The football catastrophe suffered by the country's team during the World Cup in Germany has merely added insult to injury.

 

"A present for your chancellor," he says. "Please, take it, it's free." The tousle-headed merchant in Belgrade's Pioneer Park unwraps a yellow porcelain cup and places it on a cardboard box. The inscription reads: "You can take the lives of our heroes, but not our country." What would German Chancellor Angela Merkel do with this patriotic coffee cup? "It'll make her understand that you can't just push around a great people," he explains.

He certainly means what he says, but the man's premise is false. The Serbian people, after storming themselves into irrelevance in a blind rage, are now sitting on the edge of Europe. Because of this, they now feel resentful. It's an understatement to say that 2006 so far hasn't been a good year for Serbia. Indeed, it's rare to see a country -- in peacetime -- forced to endure so many setbacks and disgraces in such a short time span.

The European Union slammed its door in Serbia's face in early March, indefinitely suspending talks over future Serbian EU membership. It was punishment for Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's government's failure to hand over former General Ratko Mladic, the man accused of the mass murder of almost 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

On March 20, unflattering television coverage of the funeral service for deceased dictator Slobodan Milosevic was broadcast around the globe. Montenegro then declared its independence from Serbia in May.

And, of course, there was Serbia's catastrophic showing at the World Cup in Germany, where its national football team lost 0:1 against the Netherlands, 0:6 against Argentina and 1:2 against Ivory Coast. After the match against Argentina, Belgrade newspaper Politika summed up its dejection over the fiasco in an acerbic cartoon depicting an empty football goal and six headstones lined up in front of it. Tabloid Blic wrote that what Serbian fans were witnessing "a descent into hell," clearly the lowest possible point for team and country.

Kosovo pushes for independence

But 2006 isn't over yet -- nor is Serbia's steady disintegration. The next item on the region's agenda is a decision over the future of breakaway province Kosovo. It'll likely end with Albanian-dominated enclave declaring independence from the Republic of Serbia. And then there isVojvodina, an autonomous province threatened by separatism. Balkanization has undoubtedly returned to the Balkans.

Not all the blame lies with Belgrade, of course. The European Union, which sees its role in providing order and stability in the Balkans, has also dropped the ball. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana now faces precisely the kind of secessionist domino effect he had wanted to avoid. And now that Montenegro is independent, yet another tiny state will be pushing for EU membership.

Controversial Austrian poet Peter Handke has written that Serbia is "Europe's most forlorn country." Handke's political assessments are always a step away from the truth, but when he's right, he's right. Indeed, detractors call him "Serbian Peter."

Is there no light at the end of the tunnel for Serbia? The last politician thought capable of leading Serbia out of the darkness was the pro-European former Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. He battled corruption and nepotism and turned over Milosevic to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. He was assassinated in 2003 by gunshots ordered up from the swamp he had tried to drain.

The retired university professor with a Communist Party pin on his label is drowning his sorrows in red wine in the Writers Club at Franzuska 7. He believes that it will take something on the order of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Polje for Serbia to regain some of its national pride. What exactly he means by this comparison isn't quite clear.

The Battle of Kosovo Polje figures prominently in the Serbs' nationalist mythology. On June 28, 1389, the Serbian Prince Lazar led an army of 30,000 knights and soldiers against 70,000 Turks. Lazar and his forces lost the battle.

Nationalist zealots have embellished Serbia's woes to a point beyond recognition. In their view, no one has suffered more than the Serbs. They even believe that their ancestors' heroic battle against the Turks somehow set the stage for the idea of a united Europe. It must come as a slap in the face to Serbs that Romania and Bulgaria will be joining the EU first.

Dwelling on their dreams and the good days over glasses of homegrown red Vranac is a favorite pastime among the members of Belgrade's retired intellectual elite. The Writers Club is the kind of place where one can acquire an educated perspective on Serbia's miseries and their presumed causes. Or on Serbia's sacrifices as a result of a European conspiracy leading up to World War II, a conspiracy that led to oppression of the Serbs at the hands of the Europeans -- at least according to the prevailing view here.

The Writers Club was the epicenter of political heresy in the days of former Yugoslav dictator Josip Tito. But it has lost much of its aura of rebellious charm, now that practically everything is allowed -- at least politically -- in Serbia.

Three young men are standing in the street in front of a bridal gown rental shop, vocally discussing Serbia's woes. The tenor of their conversation is the same as it is in the Writers Club, but the delivery is a little more direct. Our problems are the fault of the Jews, says the leader. But the gypsies, Croats and Muslims are also at fault, he adds -- they're the ones who stirred up so much hatred for Serbia in the EU. One of the men has the flag of football club Red Star Belgrade wrapped around his midsection. Red Star is about the only bright light shining for them in the current Serbian darkness.

A war invalid leans against a shop window next door. A cardboard sign informs passersby that the man lost both arms in the Bosnian war and needs money for bread.

Deep-seated misery

Belgrade's misery is so deep-seated that all hopes for improvement are shattered as quickly as they appear. Fifty percent of the city's youth are unemployed. The average monthly income is €200, with incomes four times as high in neighboring Croatia. Unlike Serbia, Croatia enjoys excellent economic ties to the rest of Europe. According to Germany's ambassador in Belgrade, even Bulgaria seems more attractive than Serbia, with more and more German companies moving their Belgrade offices to the neighboring country.

Ironclad nationalism shows its ugly face all over the city. Street vendors sell T-shirts depicting war criminal Mladic. A giant portrait of Milosevic, soiled by tossed eggs, hangs from the top of a four-story office building opposite a bank building.

His death in a prison cell made Milosevic a martyr to many Serbs. Austrian poet Handke says that the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has essentially accepted his death. Most Serbs, Prime Minister Kostunica included, would likely agree. Nevertheless, they are also pleased to be rid of him.

Young people are forming right-wing parties and action groups with names like "Marching Column," "Blood and Honor" and "Serbia Now." Their heroes are Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic -- who was canonized by the Serbian Orthodox Church and who considered Adolf Hitler "Europe's savior" -- and people wanted for war criminals like Ratko Mladic.

Prime Minister Kostunica obviously knows where Mladic's old boy network is hiding the leader of the Bosnian Serb army. But he faces pressure from the right-wing radicals who tolerate his government, as well as from their leader, Vojislav Seselj, who is also awaiting trial in The Hague. For the far right, Mladic's extradition to UN tribunal would be treason.

Radicals in the wings

If Kostunica's administration collapsed and elections were held tomorrow, the radical left and right could expect to capture the majority of seats in the Serbian parliament. But this is less a reflection of the country's political preferences than of its desperate emotional state. After a decade and a half of misfortune, the Serbs want nothing more than a way out of their crisis. But propping up Kostunica's government must be in the EU's interest, because it has been reluctant to force the prime minister to finally hunt down General Mladic and agree to a formal separation from Kosovo.

 

Before its wars of secession, Yugoslavia was almost the size of the former West Germany. Now Serbia, stripped of Montenegro, is only a rump just larger than Bavaria. Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic told SPIEGEL that he hopes that the referendum over Montenegrin independence has finally put a stop to the country's steady disintegration. Prime Minister Kostunica, who recently paid a symbolic visit to the Serb Gracanica Monastery in Kosovo, apparently agrees.

Draskovic doesn't expect any further amputations. All appearances to the contrary, he continues to count Kosovo as part of Serbian territory. The majority Albanian breakaway province has been under a UN protectorate since the NATO bombardment of Serbia in the summer of 1999. "We will not recognize" the declaration of an independent state, says Draskovic, adding that the Serbs could retaliate by establishing a Serb state within Bosnia. He also rejects demands for autonomy by Vojvodina's Hungarian majority.

The US government has summoned Prime Minister Kostunica to Washington this week to secure his commitment to a joint program of reforms with President Boris Tadic, as well as to pledge economic aid to Serbia. But convincing the two Serb leaders, who are bitter enemies, to join forces and pull their country out of its quagmire will be an uphill battle.

Translated from German by Christopher Sultan

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,426518,00.html

 

 

INTERVIEW WITH SERBIA'S VUK DRASKOVIC

"The Time for Demagogues has Returned"

In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Serbia's Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic warned about the danger Kosovo's possible independence poses for the Balkans and the legacy of Slobodan Milosevic.

 

SPIEGEL ONLINE. Mr Draskovic, Serbia is a shrinking state. Are you bitter?

Draskovic: I would have liked for Serbia and Montenegro to co-exist under one umbrella. But we accept reality. The disintegration of former Yugoslavia is now complete.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Not necessarily. The province of Kosovo could soon become independent as well.

Draskovic: In that case the Kosovo Contact Group, the UN Security Council and the governments of those states that are calling for the independence of Kosovo ought to come out and say plainly that Serbs have no right to protection in Kosovo, because they're Serbs.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why would it not be possible to protect the rights of Serbs in an independent Kosovo -- through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) or other international bodies, for example?

Draskovic: The talk about a multiethnic community is farcical. Ever since the NATO entered Kosovo, about 220,000 Serbs and non-Albanians have been driven out of the province; 40,000 Serbian houses have been destroyed and more than 1,000 Serbian civilians have been killed. Now the Albanians want a state of their own as a reward. Europe is just soothing its own conscience with its ostensible concern for these tiny Serbian enclaves in Kosovo. Almost 80 percent of Kosovo's territory is ethnically pure.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How would Belgrade react if Kosovo should indeed become independent?

Draskovic: If an internationally recognized Albanian state should be formed on Serbian territory, we wouldn't recognize it.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What consequences would an independent Kosovo have for the region?

Draskovic: This criminal solution would turn the entire region into a dangerous flahs point and cause political earthquakes in the neighboring countries. No authority in the world could then explain to the Serbs why they don't have a right to an autonomous state, while the Albanians do.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would Russia allow for this scenario to become a reality?

Draskovic: Russian President Vladimir Putin certainly doesn't support an independent Kosovo. Speaking to the Kosovo Contact Group in January, he didn't mince his words, but said clearly that if Kosovo becomes independent there will be no guarantees that this won't be cited as a precedent by the Caucasus, Karabakh and numerous other regions. It's also an open question how the Turkish part of Cyprus would react to such a development. And what would happen in Catalonia, in the Basque territories of Spain, in Scotland or in Taiwan?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is the maximum you would be willing to concede in negotiations over the future status of Kosovo?

Draskovic: We're making large concessions. We're saying to the Albanians: Rule Kosovo by yourself; you're the majority. You'll receive internal independence for Kosovo -- but within Serbia. You can follow your own path to Europe and become a member of international organizations directly -- with the exception of the United Nations, NATO and those organizations that strictly represent international independence. The only demand would be that the current borders of the Serbian state are respected, that the Serbs living there are protected along with their churches and monasteries and that there be special cultural and economic relations between the Kosovo-Serbs and Serbia.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Such a model doesn't exist anywhere in the world...

Draskovic: Specific situations require specific solutions.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do your discussion partners from Western governments have to say about this proposal?

Draskovic: They agree as far as the right to the inviolability of our borders is concerned. But they point out that the Albanians would be very unsatisfied with this solution and would perhaps opt for terror. But isn't it absurd for the world to go as far as to congratulate the Albanians just because they're giving their "word of honor" that they will respect the rights of Serbs in case of independence?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Belgrade doesn't rank behind the Kosovo Albanians as far as empty promises are concerned. Don't you think it's shameful how the Serbian government is making a fool of the international community with its ostensible search for Ratko Mladic? Now it's been openly admitted that he was in Belgrade until the end of 2005.

Draskovic: I have no explanation and no justification for the fact that Mladic is still a free man. But I believe Premier Vojislav Kostunica when he says Mladic has become a nightmare and that he would do anything to arrest him. Kostunica will present his plan of action for better cooperation with the Hague War Crimes Tribunal to the EU in mid-July. There will be a radical break with the legacy of Milosevic -- in all areas. Then Europe should tell us where it can help us -- especially in the seizure of war criminals.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You say support for Mladic comes mainly from the army, the police and the intelligence service. Why did the current government not purge dangerous individuals from these institutions when it overthrew Milosevic?

Draskovic: We've lost much time and paid dearly for our fatal mistakes. Following the overthrow of Milosevic, we should have used the referendum in order to destroy the intelligence service, open the secret files and build a new security agency with the help of European experts. The remaining functionaries from Milosevic's regime have killed our former Prime Minister Djindjic, and they've tried to murder me twice.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But why are the murderers still being protected? Consider how slowly the trial against the assassins of Zoran Djindjic is proceeding, and you'll understand the people's disappointment.

Draskovic: Of course something isn't quite right there. The trial is being slowed down and obstructed. It almost seems as if someone wanted to gain time.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Time? To do what?

Draskovic: To re-establish the system we had before October 5, 2000 -- before the fall of Milosevic. Look at the polls. If elections were held tomorrow, the radicals and the socialists could get back into power. The people quickly forget their misery and who was responsible for it. The time for demagogues has returned.

 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Given the danger of a return to the Milosevic regime, why don't you form an oppositional democratic bloc, instead of bickering within the government?

Draskovic: Of course the current government deserves to be criticized not just on 100, but on 1,000, and we've made thousands of mistakes. But there is one mistake we haven't made: We haven't played with human lives, we haven't provoked war and no one has lost their life because of our policies. But Milosevic hasn't just left us a political catastrophe -- several million people were also shaped mentally by his regime.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is Serbia's population even still interested in EU membership today?

Draskovic: More than 80 percent are in favor of EU membership; 60 percent are in favor of the Partnership for Peace. But if Kosovo should become independent, the pro-European attitude could change quickly. Then our people would feel humiliated, and that's no foundation on which to build a European policy.

-- Interview conducted by Renate Flottau

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,426607,00.html

 

 

Justice for Serbia

By Vojislav Kostunica

Kosovo Independence Imperils Our Democracy

Washington Post
July 12, 2006

The demands for the independence of Kosovo present Southeast Europe and the rest of the world with a compelling question: Will absolute justice be made to yield to relative political interests -- and will authentic democratic values be sacrificed for a mere semblance of peace?

The arguments given by Serbia against independence for its southern province are well known. From the point of view of international law, these arguments are simply irrefutable. They are based on the fundamental documents and pillars of international order: the U.N. Charter, the Helsinki Final Act and relevant resolutions of the U.N. Security Council.

Depriving a democratic country of a part of its territory simply because one ethnic group that has aspirations for that territory threatens violence is impermissible, not only morally but also from the perspective of historical experience. Indeed, tragic occurrences have taught mankind that a policy of appeasement toward those who threaten force only opens the way to more and even greater violence.

There is another, purely pragmatic argument that is equally indisputable: An independent Kosovo could not help becoming a hotbed of chronic tension in the region, both because of the probability of new territorial demands and because of its economic unviability and its widespread network of organized crime.

Viewed strategically, and not just with regard to preserving stability in the Balkans, the arguments against an independent Kosovo are equally strong: Independence for Kosovo would surely be viewed as a precedent, setting off similar demands elsewhere. Those who argue otherwise are, quite simply, closing their eyes to the hard facts. Resolving the problems of national minorities through self-determination (especially in the case of nationalities that already have their own countries nearby) inevitably leads to border changes and all the dangerous complications that this entails.

But even if it remained deaf to all of these arguments, the international community would have to take account of the impact that Kosovo's eventual independence would have on democratic Serbia. Let us recall that Serbia liberated itself from a communist regime on its own by investing enormous effort and taking huge risks. Can such a country, by any measure a democratic one, survive the forcible taking of 15 percent of its territory? What democratically elected government could explain to its voters after such an act that they should continue to believe in the principles of tolerance, liberalism and the sacrosanct will of the people -- the values of enlightened Western civilization, in the name of which they toppled an evil, authoritarian regime?

To put it simply, a young democracy, which in a mere six years has achieved impressive results in developing its economy, building institutions, protecting human rights, battling corruption and crime, and fostering international relations, would stand little chance of survival under such circumstances.

Democracy, in Serbia as anywhere else, is essentially based on the equality of all and, no less important, on trust. If people stop believing in the rules of democracy, if they start thinking that a set of rules is applicable to one nation but not to others, if they feel betrayed by powerful institutions, and if the standards and norms of behavior for relations among individuals and nations alike are trampled upon, then people will lose faith. And where faith is lost, there can be no democracy.

In attempting to preserve the province of Kosovo within its borders, Serbia has acted in the most reasonable and constructive way possible. It is prepared to accept any form of compromise that does not entail independence, and it offers Albanians the greatest possible autonomy, including all legislative, executive and judicial powers, while expecting in return only the inviolability of borders and safety for the non-Albanian population of the province.

In its struggle for Kosovo, Serbia is also struggling for fundamental principles of international justice and order. And, by defending an inalienable part of its territory, Serbia may even be defending the future of democracy as a way of life and a view of the world.

 

 

---

http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/sovereign/sover/emerg/2006/0712serbia.htm

 

Serbia rejects independent Kosovo

By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 12, 2006

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday that Belgrade would not agree to Kosovo's independence, offering instead "the highest possible autonomy" for the United Nations-run province.
    During the first visit of a high-level Serbian official to Washington since Belgrade lost Montenegro, the last of the former Yugoslav republics to break away, Mr. Kostunica said independence for Kosovo is "out of the question."
    "I had a chance to explain the advantage of the position Serbia stands for, the highest possible autonomy," he told reporters at the State Department after meeting with Miss Rice. "It's a solution based on international legal standards regarding territorial integrity."
    Talks on Kosovo's final status began in February but have not produced results. The next round is scheduled for later this month in Vienna, Austria.
    The United States has avoided making definitive statements that would prejudge the outcome, but along with other Western countries, it supports the aspirations for independence among Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. Russia has sided with Serbia.
    "Independence is something the Serbian authorities cannot accept," Mr. Kostunica said yesterday.
    Kosovo, although still a Serbian province, has been ruled by the United Nations since the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia in response to President Slobodan Milosevic's treatment of the Albanians there.
    Mr. Milosevic was arrested in 2000 under the presidency of Mr. Kostunica and sent to The Hague war-crimes tribunal, where he died in March before his trial had ended. Other suspects including former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, remain at large.
    Certain U.S. assistance to Serbia is contingent on its cooperation with The Hague tribunal, and this year, Miss Rice refused to certify Belgrade's compliance, resulting in the withholding of $7 million in aid.
    The secretary urged Mr. Kostunica to do everything possible to deliver the suspects to The Hague.
    The May referendum in Montenegro that led to its independence prompted some changes in the Serbian government structure, although they have been smooth so far, said Jelena Cukic Matic, spokeswoman for the Serbian Embassy in Washington.
    The Foreign and Defense ministries, which used to be part of the union government of Serbia and Montenegro, have been folded into the Serbian Cabinet headed by Mr. Kostunica.
    The ministers and all other Serbian personnel remain the same, while the representatives of Montenegro in those agencies now work for the new Montenegrin government, Mrs. Matic said.

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20060711-103039-6212r.htm

 

 

Greece and the Balkans

By Alexandros P. Mallias
July 11, 2006

Greece's involvement in the Balkans is not new. Even before the foundation of the modern Greek state, the idea of a Balkan cooperation existed. The idea of a Balkan Federation, which Greece would lead, was conceived, toward the end of the 18th century, by Rigas Velestinlis, a man inspired by the ideals of freedom and democracy. Rigas visualized a Balkan region where people could move freely from country to country, where trade would be conducted without barriers, a region of prosperity for its peoples.
    Now, more than 200 years after its conception, this idea, modified to some extent, is to become a reality. The Balkans are now at the doorstep of the European Union. Greece gave a historic boost to the Western Balkans' legitimate European aspirations at the 2003 Thessaloniki Summit, during its EU presidency.
    Greece devised a long-term policy based on three solid pillars: (a) integration of the countries of the region into the EU and NATO, (b) economic development and investment and (c) regional cooperation.
    The integration of Greece's neighborhood into the European and Euro-Atlantic institutions, upon fulfillment of specific criteria and conditions, has become our policy's fundamental strategic goal. In January 2007, Bulgaria and Romania will be the first Balkan countries to join the EU. Greece was the first among its EU partners, in the mid-'90s, to advocate Bulgaria's and Romania's accession. European integration and the prospect of EU membership is the strongest single soft power mechanism for encouraging reforms, consolidating democracy, establishing the rule of law, strengthening institutions and eventually bringing economic prosperity.
    Greece has become a leading investor in the Balkans, with investments of more than $10 billion, and the generation of 200,000 new jobs. The volume of trade between Greece and its Balkan neighbors is more than $4 billion. In addition, Greece launched in 2002 a five-year development aid initiative called the Hellenic Plan for the Economic Reconstruction of the Balkans, which amounts to a $670 million program, and aims at promoting the economic development of Greece's neighboring Balkan countries.
    Many problems that the Balkans face are common to the countries of the region. It is therefore natural to deal with them in common. Regional cooperation is essential for ethnic reconciliation, to increase regional ownership and allow the Balkan counties to address, in a coordinated manner, issues of mutual concern. Greece was the driving force in revival of the South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP) in the 1990s. It has gradually evolved into the only genuine scheme of cooperation in the Balkans, acting at the same time as the region's authentic voice.
    Now, in 2006, we are about to witness the closing of another chapter in the history of the Balkans, begun by the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Montenegro's peaceful secession from its state union with Serbia and the settlement of Kosovo's status will be the epilogue of this chapter.
    On Kosovo, especially, Greece, with strategic interests at stake, has contributed concrete ideas both within the EU and within the framework of the Greek-U.S. strategic partnership. We need a win/win or at least a win/no lose solution, which will have the support or at least consent of both Belgrade and Pristina.
    Greece opposes partition of Kosovo. We cannot afford to have a Kosovo divided exclusively along ethnic lines, or to have Kosovo annexed by or united with any neighboring country or part of a country. We cannot have our region integrated into the European Union while, at the same time, we promote a solution that perpetuates division. We want to see a solution for a multi-ethnic and multicultural Kosovo based on European standards and values.
    A new chapter will soon open; a chapter which will be remembered by generations to come as an era of stability, prosperity and cooperation; an era when respect for the different is the rule and not the exception; an era when the Balkans are embraced by the European family, where they have always belonged.
    
    Alexandros P. Mallias is ambassador of Greece to the United States.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20060710-082052-1159r.htm

 

  UN Kosovo Envoy Buying Kosovo

8 July 2006 | 11:32 | FOCUS News Agency

Pristina. In his wish to preserve his position European Union's Special Envoy for Kosovo Marti Ahtisaari has sent a new unexpected proposal to Serbia: to recognize Kosovo’s independence and in return receive money and concessions. In the language of diplomacy this is called a “shopping list”, Serbian newspaper Vecerne Novosti reads. From diplomatic sources the newspaper found out that the so-called shopping list includes five points:

1. Serbia to join in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program (without being obliged to capture General Ratko Mladic)
2. An agreement Serbia to join the European Union (also without being obliged to hand in Mladic)
3. Financial aid from the US
4. Access to EU funds
5. Increase of direct foreign investments.

Marti Ahtisaari’s proposal to the southern Serbia region does not sound bad at all – at least on paper. But it means: “Give Kosovo up and we will give you everything else!” the newspaper comments.
According to an anonymous government source there is no official document for Ahtisaari’s shopping list.

 

http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=144&newsid=91824&ch=0&datte=2006-07-08

Kosovo's limbo suits both sides 

Mirjana Tomic International Herald Tribune

Published: July 6, 2006


MADRID Negotiations under way in Vienna, Brussels and New York on the future political status of Kosovo are expected to end this year. While Kosovo Albanians want independence, Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, declared during his recent controversial trip there that Kosovo "will always be part of Serbia."

Kostunica visited Kosovo on June 28, the day Serbs mark the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, when the defeat of the Serbs enabled the Ottoman Turks to invade the Balkans and stay there for almost five centuries.

When Western news media refer to Kosovo, they often remind their audience that for Serbs, it represents the cradle of Serbian civilization. They repeat what Serbian politicians tell them. But as the liberal Belgrade monthly Republika writes, Kosovo was "the heart of Serbia during Middle Ages." Today, "80 percent of the population has never been to Kosovo and has no links to the region, except for the mythology that has been consciously produced."

I am the only one among my friends and acquaintances who has actually been to Kosovo on vacation. Like most people of my generation, who attended Belgrade schools during the 1960s and early '70s, I had to memorize epic songs about the Kosovo battle and Serbian heroes. In our free time we listened to the Beatles and dreamed about visiting Western Europe. I never heard anyone say: "Let's spend our vacation visiting Kosovo."

In the absence of massive tourist demand to visit Kosovo, Yugoslavia's Communist authorities organized trips for employees and schoolchildren to visit the region. It was the only contact that most Serbs had with the "cradle of civilization."

The first time I visited Kosovo was in the late '60s. My parents took me on a tour of Serbian medieval monasteries, sources of culture and literacy before the Ottoman invasion and defenders of Christianity and tradition during the Muslim domination. Most monasteries were left to rot, but thanks to the efforts of monks and nuns, they functioned. In my early teens, Kosovo was a cultural shock: I remember veiled Albanian women in traditional costume selling food and crafts on filthy sidewalks.

Thirty years later, when I traveled to Kosovo as a journalist for a major Spanish daily and witnessed omnipresent underdevelopment, I wondered what had happened to the aid that had gone to Kosovo. According to a friend who had a leading position in the League of Serbian Communists, before Slobodan Milosevic came to power, all development aid was channeled to Kosovo Albanian Communist officials. Belgrade had no say on how it was spent.

As a reporter of Serbian origin, I did not feel welcome in Kosovo. In Albania, however, where I also went on a professional assignment, this was not the case. Our common Balkan cultural heritage created an immediate bond. My conclusion was simple: It was politics that created animosity, rather than a difference in cultural heritage.

Nowadays, after the 1999 war, deaths, expulsions, massacres and innumerable violations of human rights, the chance is small that young Kosovo Albanians and young Serbs would ever meet. If they did meet, it would be abroad. And if they became friends, they would not boast about it. A Vienna-based Albanian from Kosovo told me: "My mother's best friend is Serbian. When we go to Kosovo she has to hide it."

The Serbs who remained in Kosovo live in enclaves protected by international troops, while hundreds of thousands of Serbs, poor and rich, have emigrated from Kosovo during the past decades.

The poor live in Serbia's shantytowns; local Serbs consider them primitive. Some would like to go back, but fear prevents them. The rich, on the other hand, do not plan to return to Kosovo, where crime prospers and the electricity supply is unreliable.

Serbia's foreign minister, Vuk Draskovic, claims that the future status of Kosovo is of utmost importance for Serbia's future, but like other Serbian politicians, he does not specify why it is so important. Does Serbia's economic or political future depend on the status of Kosovo? Or would the loss of Kosovo mean that Belgrade politicians had to face the real issues affecting Serbia's population: crime, corruption, quality of education, unemployment, health care, democracy and human rights, low living standards, isolation from the European Union?

At the same time, the ambivalence about the status of Kosovo suits politicians: Serbian politicians evoke the Kosovo myth in order to postpone addressing their real problems; their Kosovo Albanian counterparts can always blame the lack of independence as the source of all evils, including unemployment, crime, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and the failing economy.

Mirjana Tomic, a freelance media consultant, lives in Madrid.
 MADRID Negotiations under way in Vienna, Brussels and New York on the future political status of Kosovo are expected to end this year. While Kosovo Albanians want independence, Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, declared during his recent controversial trip there that Kosovo "will always be part of Serbia."

Kostunica visited Kosovo on June 28, the day Serbs mark the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, when the defeat of the Serbs enabled the Ottoman Turks to invade the Balkans and stay there for almost five centuries.

When Western news media refer to Kosovo, they often remind their audience that for Serbs, it represents the cradle of Serbian civilization. They repeat what Serbian politicians tell them. But as the liberal Belgrade monthly Republika writes, Kosovo was "the heart of Serbia during Middle Ages." Today, "80 percent of the population has never been to Kosovo and has no links to the region, except for the mythology that has been consciously produced."

I am the only one among my friends and acquaintances who has actually been to Kosovo on vacation. Like most people of my generation, who attended Belgrade schools during the 1960s and early '70s, I had to memorize epic songs about the Kosovo battle and Serbian heroes. In our free time we listened to the Beatles and dreamed about visiting Western Europe. I never heard anyone say: "Let's spend our vacation visiting Kosovo."

In the absence of massive tourist demand to visit Kosovo, Yugoslavia's Communist authorities organized trips for employees and schoolchildren to visit the region. It was the only contact that most Serbs had with the "cradle of civilization."

The first time I visited Kosovo was in the late '60s. My parents took me on a tour of Serbian medieval monasteries, sources of culture and literacy before the Ottoman invasion and defenders of Christianity and tradition during the Muslim domination. Most monasteries were left to rot, but thanks to the efforts of monks and nuns, they functioned. In my early teens, Kosovo was a cultural shock: I remember veiled Albanian women in traditional costume selling food and crafts on filthy sidewalks.

Thirty years later, when I traveled to Kosovo as a journalist for a major Spanish daily and witnessed omnipresent underdevelopment, I wondered what had happened to the aid that had gone to Kosovo. According to a friend who had a leading position in the League of Serbian Communists, before Slobodan Milosevic came to power, all development aid was channeled to Kosovo Albanian Communist officials. Belgrade had no say on how it was spent.

As a reporter of Serbian origin, I did not feel welcome in Kosovo. In Albania, however, where I also went on a professional assignment, this was not the case. Our common Balkan cultural heritage created an immediate bond. My conclusion was simple: It was politics that created animosity, rather than a difference in cultural heritage.

Nowadays, after the 1999 war, deaths, expulsions, massacres and innumerable violations of human rights, the chance is small that young Kosovo Albanians and young Serbs would ever meet. If they did meet, it would be abroad. And if they became friends, they would not boast about it. A Vienna-based Albanian from Kosovo told me: "My mother's best friend is Serbian. When we go to Kosovo she has to hide it."

The Serbs who remained in Kosovo live in enclaves protected by international troops, while hundreds of thousands of Serbs, poor and rich, have emigrated from Kosovo during the past decades.

The poor live in Serbia's shantytowns; local Serbs consider them primitive. Some would like to go back, but fear prevents them. The rich, on the other hand, do not plan to return to Kosovo, where crime prospers and the electricity supply is unreliable.

Serbia's foreign minister, Vuk Draskovic, claims that the future status of Kosovo is of utmost importance for Serbia's future, but like other Serbian politicians, he does not specify why it is so important. Does Serbia's economic or political future depend on the status of Kosovo? Or would the loss of Kosovo mean that Belgrade politicians had to face the real issues affecting Serbia's population: crime, corruption, quality of education, unemployment, health care, democracy and human rights, low living standards, isolation from the European Union?

At the same time, the ambivalence about the status of Kosovo suits politicians: Serbian politicians evoke the Kosovo myth in order to postpone addressing their real problems; their Kosovo Albanian counterparts can always blame the lack of independence as the source of all evils, including unemployment, crime, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and the failing economy.

Mirjana Tomic, a freelance media consultant, lives in Madrid.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/06/opinion/edtomic.php

Russia delays West’s date for Kosovo’s freedom

Published: Thursday, 6 July, 2006, 12:37 PM Doha Time

By Matt Robinson

RUSSIA is frustrating the West’s plan for Kosovo independence this year, resisting US pressure and raising a risk of fresh Albanian violence in the breakaway Serbian province, senior Western officials say.

Seven years after Nato bombing drove out Serb forces and the United Nations took control, the United States and the European Union say a decision on Kosovo’s "final status" is overdue and should be made in the next six months.

Ethnic Albanians who form 90% of Kosovo’s 2mn people want independence. Dipomats expect they will get it, in a form limited for a time by EU supervision and secured by Nato, to continue protecting minority Serbs from possible attacks. But Moscow – partner of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the US in the Contact Group on Kosovo – is in no hurry. Its view reflects concern in some EU capitals that a sudden amputation of Kosovo, on top of other recent Serb humiliations, could put Serb ultra-nationalists back in power in Belgrade.

Differences came sharply into focus in the past few days.

US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, in Brussels on Friday as envoys met, said Washington was "confirmed in our judgment that 2006 must be the year of decision for Kosovo ... the final status talks must conclude this year".

But a senior Russian official said on Sunday that Moscow saw no need for an "artificial timeframe". Russia stood by the Contact Group’s January 30 statement which made clear that "all efforts" should be made for a 2006 settlement, but it "does not say that by all means this has to be over", he said.

"We need to find solution to many so-called technical issues related to the position of minorities in Kosovo," the Russian said. If talks produce "mutually acceptable and sustainable results" a timetable can be set, but now is "too early to prejudge" whether the process will be completed this year.

"The Russians’ focus now is on timing," said a senior Western official in Kosovo. "This is where the Contact Group will find things could become difficult."

Others say delay is too risky. Even if independence heads off a risk of renewed Albanian unrest, the UN has contingency plans in case of an exodus of half the remaining 100,000 Serbs, and Nato is braced for a Serb bid to partition the province.

While Serbia officially opposes independence, diplomats say it knows the West has made up its mind. Yet there is no sign of the "mutually acceptable" deal that Moscow wants to see.

A political source in Belgrade says Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica wants a delay to April 2007 and a face-saving formula giving Kosovo wide autonomy, years before sovereignty.

If not, ultanationalists already riding high in the polls could come to power, arguing that if Kosovo gets independence then so should the Serbs of Bosnia. A Serb secession from Bosnia would have dramatic consequences in the still turbulent Balkans.

The Albanians expect UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari to make his recommendation to the Security Council by November and to give them the green light for independence. But it is the Council, where Russia has a veto, that must finally decide.

The Russian official said Serbia has a lot on its plate, citing its recent split with longtime sister republic Montenegro which chose independence, and the freeze on its EU membership bid over its failure to net top war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic.

Asked about fears of violence by Albanian extremists if they sense any delay in independence, the Russian said: "We don’t like to be blackmailed. If any party resorts to violence it will be very detrimental to that party in negotiations."

One Western official who now predicts a delay says any stalling longer than three or four months means trouble.

Albanians impatient over life in limbo rioted in March 2004, killing 19 people and driving out 2,000 Serbs. Belgrade said it proved Kosovo was nowhere near stability or democracy, and it would redouble the argument if violence erupted again.

Meanwhile, Serbs in north Kosovo threaten to secede in the case of independence, a move that could reignite conflict next door with the Albanians of southern Serbia and Macedonia.

After Serbia lost control of Kosovo in 1999, when Nato bombed for 11 weeks to halt the killing of Albanians in a two-year guerrilla war, it was only with EU diplomacy that a smaller insurgency was smothered in south Serbia, while Macedonia got Western help in 2001 to stifle ethnic war.

There is concern that ethnic tensions are being kept in check only by the prospect of independence for Kosovo.

"If the light goes out ... by February or March, this will be an impossible mission to manage," said the Western official. – Reuters
 http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=95894&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26

 

	SERBIA: Russia Hints Veto Over Kosovo
	2006-07-06 15:14:33
	Russia for the first time hinted at a possibility to exercise its veto rights at the UN Security Council provided that the Western countries imposed independence for Kosovo, Belgrade's daily Politika said. The paper says Russia presented its stands to the Contact Group members, and had for the first time mentioned the possibility to veto a resolution granting Kosovo independence. Politika daily says at the Contact Group meeting, held on 30 June in Brussels, Russian representative put on the table an unofficial document containing four paragraphs reflecting Russia's position on Kosovo status talks. Source: Makfax

http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=61515

 

Burgeoning Balkans

TODAY'S COLUMNIST
By Nikola Gruevski
July 4, 2006 
     
    The good news from the Balkans is that the wars which have plagued the region for the past 15 years appear to be finished. The bad news is that there is still unfinished business at hand which, if not handled properly, could lead to more troubles.
    Kosovo is still an open question. While the outcome is important, how final status negotiations are handled is just as important. With the decision by Montenegro to become independent now finalized, our friends in Serbia must be treated with dignity, respect and, above all, fairness to avoid a backlash. Those who are guiding this process must also take into consideration neighbors to Kosovo and Serbia and how the final outcome -- whatever it may be -- will affect them.
    Other issues are also on the table that affect the internal stability and politics of each country in the region. Tomorrow, Macedonians will go to the polls to elect a new parliament and a new government. This will be the fourth time in our young history as a modern-day nation-state that we will elect those who will govern us for the next four years. There is much at stake in these elections.
    Membership in the European Union is something Macedonia still strives for, as is NATO membership. While we strongly believe that NATO membership for us, along with our friends in Croatia and Albania, is just a few years away, membership in the European Union is further off. The EU, however, must accept all countries in the Balkans who aspire to EU membership -- assuming we fulfill our commitments -- to avoid having a black hole in Europe.
    But the most important question as we go to the polls now is a question of basic economics and trust. The current government led by the Social Democrats has been acting more and more like the party they once were -- the Communists. As a result, the economy is suffering and along with it, so are the people. At the same time, Macedonia has seen levels of trust in the government plummet to new lows. People trust the government about as much as they trust that gas prices will go down.
    This is why our party, if elected with our coalition partners, has promised a new direction. We believe that Macedonians want to do more than just survive -- they want to succeed. And to succeed we need a stronger, healthier economy -- one that delivers jobs and growth, that frees individuals to pursue their God-given potential with a minimum of government interference and that opens up the creative spirit in people.
    When my party, VMRO-DPMNE, was in government from 1998 to 2002, we saw the economy steamroll forward. In our first three years in office, we brought in more than $650 million in foreign direct investment. By comparison, the current government brought in a less-than-stellar $295 million in its first three years. (In contrast, next-door neighbor Bulgaria attracted over $1.4 billion in FDI during 2004 alone, while Macedonia has brought in $1.3 billion since gaining independence in 1991.)
    In its Index of Economic Freedom for 2006, the Heritage Foundation, quoting an EBRD report, notes that FDI "is at a low level as many foreign investors continue to be deterred by a difficult investment climate" and that "FDI has dried up since then because of... continued weaknesses in the business environment." The blame for this lies squarely with the government.
    At the same time, GDP has not advanced as it should. We need growth rates of 6 percent to 8 percent per year to achieve our dream of EU membership by 2010. The current government has given Macedonians rates of 0.9 percent in 2002, 3.4 percent in 2003, 4.1 percent in 2004 and estimates of 3.2 percent for 2005. These are hardly inspiring numbers.
    The current government was elected on promises of bringing higher rates of economic growth, increased employment, more FDI and increased salaries for the people. Instead, they have brought the opposite and with it contempt from the voters who believe the government has betrayed them.
    As Heritage points out, there is a key correlation between economic freedom and democracy. If a country is rich, or least economically stable and moving toward becoming a rich country, then it is more than likely to be stable and peaceful internally and with its neighbors. Our new government will provide the economic growth which the current government has failed to deliver thereby providing greater stability and peace in a region which has experienced little of either.
    
    Nikola Gruevski is president of the Macedonia party VMRO-DPMNE. He has served as trade minister (1998-99) and finance minister (2000-02).
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060703-102601-4840r.htm

 

Russia delays West's date for Kosovo independence

PRISTINA, Serbia, July 3 (Reuters) - Russia is frustrating the West's plan for Kosovo independence this year, resisting U.S. pressure and raising a risk of fresh Albanian violence in the breakaway Serbian province, senior Western officials say.

Seven years after NATO bombing drove out Serb forces and the United Nations took control, the United States and the European Union say a decision on Kosovo's "final status" is overdue and should be made in the next six months.

Ethnic Albanians who form 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people want independence. Dipomats expect they will get it, in a form limited for a time by EU supervision and secured by NATO, to continue protecting minority Serbs from possible attacks. But Moscow -- partner of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the U.S. in the Contact Group on Kosovo -- is in no hurry. Its view reflects concern in some EU capitals that a sudden amputation of Kosovo, on top of other recent Serb humiliations, could put Serb ultra-nationalists back in power in Belgrade.

Differences came sharply into focus in the past few days.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, in Brussels on Friday as envoys met, said Washington was "confirmed in our judgment that 2006 must be the year of decision for Kosovo ... the final status talks must conclude this year".

But a senior Russian official told Reuters on Sunday that Moscow saw no need for an "artificial timeframe". Russia stood by the Contact Group's Jan. 30 statement which made clear that "all efforts" should be made for a 2006 settlement, but it "does not say that by all means this has to be over", he said.

"We need to find solution to many so-called technical issues related to the position of minorities in Kosovo," the Russian said. If talks produce "mutually acceptable and sustainable results" a timetable can be set, but now is "too early to prejudge" whether the process will be completed this year.

"The Russians' focus now is on timing," said a senior Western official in Kosovo. "This is where the Contact Group will find things could become difficult."

SHOCK WAVES

Others say delay is too risky. Even if independence heads off a risk of renewed Albanian unrest, the U.N. has contingency plans in case of an exodus of half the remaining 100,000 Serbs, and NATO is braced for a Serb bid to partition the province.

While Serbia officially opposes independence, diplomats say it knows the West has made up its mind. Yet there is no sign of the "mutually acceptable" deal that Moscow wants to see.

A political source in Belgrade says Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica wants a delay to April 2007 and a face-saving formula giving Kosovo wide autonomy, years before sovereignty.

If not, ultanationalists already riding high in the polls could come to power, arguing that if Kosovo gets independence then so should the Serbs of Bosnia. A Serb secession from Bosnia would have dramatic consequences in the still turbulent Balkans.

The Albanians expect U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari to make his recommendation to the Security Council by November and to give them the green light for independence. But it is the Council, where Russia has a veto, that must finally decide.

The Russian official said Serbia has a lot on its plate, citing its recent split with longtime sister republic Montenegro which chose independence, and the freeze on its EU membership bid over its failure to net top war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic.

Asked about fears of violence by Albanian extremists if they sense any delay in independence, the Russian said: "We don't like to be blackmailed. If any party resorts to violence it will be very detrimental to that party in negotiations."

One Western official who now predicts a delay says any stalling longer than three or four months means trouble.

Albanians impatient over life in limbo rioted in March 2004, killing 19 people and driving out 2,000 Serbs. Belgrade said it proved Kosovo was nowhere near stability or democracy, and it would redouble the argument if violence erupted again.

Meanwhile, Serbs in north Kosovo threaten to secede in the case of independence, a move that could reignite conflict next door with the Albanians of southern Serbia and Macedonia.

After Serbia lost control of Kosovo in 1999, when NATO bombed for 11 weeks to halt the killing of Albanians in a two-year guerrilla war, it was only with EU diplomacy that a smaller insurgency was smothered in south Serbia, while Macedonia got Western help in 2001 to stifle ethnic war.

There is concern that ethnic tensions are being kept in check only by the prospect of independence for Kosovo.

"If the light goes out ... by February or March, this will be an impossible mission to manage," said the Western official.

 

http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/07/russia-delays-wests-date-for-kosovo.html

 

NO JUSTICE
SCANDALOUS DECISION AT THE U.N. WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
Naser Oric, Bosnian Muslim war criminal freed!

Naser ORIC, who was handed a lenient two-year sentence by the ICTY in The
Hague (June 30, 2006) for murder and torture of Serbs and for destruction of
Serbian villages in Eastern Bosnia, was freed since he had been in jail for
more than three years.

The ICTY judges found that between 24 September 1992 and 16 October 1992,
Naser ORIC detained number of Serbs at the Srebrenica Police Station. "He
physically abused them, which included beatings by various objects:
including wooden sticks, wooden poles, steel pipes, metal bars, baseball
bats, rifle butts, bare fists, kicking with boots and forced teeth
extractions with rusty pliers. These beatings and physical abuse caused
severe pain and injuries such as fractured bones, severe injuries to limbs
and broken teeth. On numerous occasions, detainees were beaten into a state
of unconsciousness." Seven detainees were beaten to death. [1]

Muslim armed units under the command of Naser ORIC engaged in various
military operations against the Army of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina forces in Eastern Bosnia. In the course of such operations,
Oric's Muslim armed units in the Municipalities of Bratunac, Srebrenica and
Skelani, burnt and otherwise destroyed and plundered a minimum of fifty
predominantly Serb villages and hamlets. As a result, thousands of Serb
individuals fled the area.

ORIC described theses crimes as his "Greatest hits" while talking to Bill
Schiller of the Toronto Star and showing Schiller his shocking video of what
he and his Muslim army units did to the Serbs. [2]

By sentencing Naser ORIC, a Muslim, to two years in prison for despicable
crimes against the Serbs, the U.N. Tribunal in The Hague encourages those
who want us to believe that Muslims have always been victims in the Balkans.

Srdja Trifkovic stresses in his article " Jihadist hotbed in the Balkans",
that " Western policy in the Balkans should be reappraised because.. [it]..
continue[s] encouraging the Muslim sense of pure victimhood…",  and
"nourishes their hate. The obstacle to doing so is often the apologetics and
the tradition of pro-Muslim appeasement of the Clinton decade; but that
appeasement must stop." [3]

War crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Serbs by the
Bosnian Muslims, Croats and  Squiptars (Albanians) in the former Yugoslavia
have never been investigated and properly trailed at the ICTY. The Naser
ORIC's sentence proves again that the ICTY at The Hague is incapable of
serving the justice and therefore must be closed.

Source:
[1]  http://www.srebrenica-report.com/Oric2.htm 
 [2] http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/ori-2ai041004e.htm
[3] http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic04/NewsST011004.html


BOBA BOROJEVIC
ckcuboba@yahoo.ca

 

Athens fears spread of Balkans turmoil

By Andrew Borowiec
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
July 3, 2006

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Greek officials and analysts are increasingly worried about trouble signs in the Balkans, an area remembered for triggering World War I.
    "History lives on in the Balkans, ready to break out in more bloodshed," one Athens analysis has warned.
    Conservative Athens daily Kathimerini ran an article titled "Greece caught in the Balkan maelstrom," which asserted that "hopes for a universal, European equilibrium in the Balkans are fading into the distant future."
    The concern centers on the restive province of Kosovo, formerly one of Yugoslavia's two autonomous regions, now an enclave within Serbia administered by the United Nations.
    With Kosovo's Albanian majority clamoring for independence and Serbs vowing to prevent it, Soren Jessen-Petersen, head of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, cautioned last week that the area could become "a ticking social time bomb, which in time will be impossible to manage."
    Serbia's official position, as summed up by President Boris Tadic, is that "Serbia is dedicated to the preservation of Kosovo as part of Serbia." The Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank warned of violence if Serbia insisted on this policy.
    Kosovo and its Orthodox shrines have been considered by Serbs as their heartland since the 1389 battle of Kosovo Polje, when an Ottoman Turkish army defeated the Serbian troops of Prince Lazar. The emotional aspect of this claim has affected Belgrade's policy in the area for years.
    Montenegro's independence in May completed the breakup of the six republics that had made up the Yugoslav federation. Serbia, once the dominant power in the Balkans, has yet to come to terms with its diminishing status and the spectacular collapse of the nation-building effort by dictator Josip Broz Tito.
    Events in the former Yugoslavia have left Greece as the "richest and most stable country in the Balkans, but threatened by the fallout of the area's instability," a Western diplomatic assessment said.
    Diplomatic sources say Greece has alerted the European Union to the danger of admitting more Balkan candidates, some of them in the throes of contagious ethnic conflicts.
    Bulgaria and Romania are preparing their EU entry for January, but EU officials in Brussels are not certain of their qualifications. The European Union appears lukewarm to the membership ambitions of such Balkan countries as Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
    Diplomats generally attribute the rising Balkan tensions to Yugoslavia's disintegration after years of forced stability under Mr. Tito's iron fist.
    Albania's chaotic emergence from its longtime communist isolation and its ambition to annex part of Kosovo have added to the tension, with repercussions also expected to affect Macedonia's Slavic and ethnic Albanian populations.

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20060702-102210-8989r.htm

NO JUSTICE

SCANDALOUS DECISION AT THE U.N. WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL

Naser Oric, Bosnian Muslim war criminal freed!

July 3, 2006 -- Naser ORIC, who was handed a lenient two-year sentence by
the ICTY in The Hague (June 30, 2006)  for murder and torture of Serbs and
for destruction of Serbian villages in Eastern Bosnia, was freed since he
had been in jail for more than three years.

The ICTY judges found that between 24 September 1992 and 16 October 1992,
Naser ORIC detained number Serbs at the Srebrenica Police Station. He
physically abused them, which included beatings by various objects including
wooden sticks, wooden poles, steel pipes, metal bars, baseball bats, rifle
butts, bare fists, kicking with boots and forced teeth extractions with
rusty pliers. These beatings and physical abuse caused severe pain and
injuries such as fractured bones, severe injuries to limbs and broken teeth.
On numerous occasions, detainees were beaten into a state of
unconsciousness. Seven detainees were beaten to death.

Muslim armed units und the command of Naser ORIC engaged in various military
operations against the Army of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina forces in Eastern Bosnia. In the course of such operations,
Oric's Muslim armed units in the Municipalities of Bratunac, Srebrenica and
Skelani, burnt and otherwise destroyed and plundered a minimum of fifty
predominantly Serb villages and hamlets. As a result, thousands of Serb
individuals fled the area.

ORIC described theses crimes as his "Greatest hits" while talking to Bill
Schiller of the Toronto Star and showing Schiller his shocking video of what
he and his Muslim army units did to the Serbs.

War crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Serbs by the
Bosnian Muslims, Croats and  Squiptars (Albanians) in the former Yugoslavia
have never been investigated and properly trailed at the ICTY. The Naser
ORIC's sentence proves again that the ICTY at The Hague is incapable of
serving the justice and therefore must be closed.



BOBA BOROJEVIC
Source:  http://www.srebrenica-report.com/Oric2.htm
http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/ori-2ai041004e.htm

 

 

Officer gets two years for ignoring Srebrenica atrocities

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Arthur Max

Associated Press

Amsterdam, Netherlands - A former police officer who commanded troops defending the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica was handed a lenient two-year sentence Friday for failing to prevent murder and torture of Serb captives.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal, which imposed the sentence, ordered Naser Oric's immediate re lease since he has been in jail for more than three years.

Oric, 39, was acquitted of direct involvement in the murder of prisoners in the early years of the 1992-95 Bosnia war. But the court found he had closed his eyes to their mistreatment and failed to punish their killers.

Advertisement

The three judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia acquitted him of all charges related to the wanton destruction of Serb villages.

The trial was closely watched in the Balkans. Muslims, who hail Oric as a war hero for his three-year defense of the enclave against Serb forces, had anticipated exoneration.

Serbs had hoped a conviction would counterbalance earlier judgments that found Bosnian Serbs guilty of genocide at Srebrenica. More than 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered there in one week in July 1995, Europe's worst civilian massacre since the Holocaust.

Prosecutors had sought an 18-year prison term. Defense lawyers said any punishment would be inappropriate.

The judges found that during two periods in 1992 and 1993, Oric's troops battered Serb prisoners with wooden planks, iron rods and baseball bats, and pulled the teeth of some of them with rusty pliers. At least six prisoners died in custody.

Oric should have known the prisoners were at risk and taken steps to prevent their mistreat ment, the judgment said. But the judges said they unanimously decided on leniency because of the untenable situation in the besieged town.

Oric, then 25, was responsible for a population swelled by refugees, without food, and in charge of ill-equipped and poorly trained forces. He had no military or administrative experience, his authority was scorned by other Muslim leaders and he had no communications with his superiors outside the area, the judges found.

"It was a continuous uphill struggle that, in actual fact, achieved very few results," the verdict said.

Bosnian Serbs denounced the sentence as "a farce," while some Muslims survivors of Srebrenica were disappointed he was found guilty of anything. In Belgrade, Serbia's President Boris Tadic called the sentence "scandalous."

"People who steal at supermarkets are given two-year prison sentences," Tadic said.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1151754912315440.xml&coll=2

Officer gets two years for ignoring Srebrenica atrocities
Saturday, July 01, 2006

Arthur MaxAssociated Press

Amsterdam, Netherlands - A former police officer who commanded troops defending the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica was handed a lenient two-year sentence Friday for failing to prevent murder and torture of Serb captives.
The U.N. war crimes tribunal, which imposed the sentence, ordered Naser Oric's immediate re lease since he has been in jail for more than three years.
Oric, 39, was acquitted of direct involvement in the murder of prisoners in the early years of the 1992-95 Bosnia war. But the court found he had closed his eyes to their mistreatment and failed to punish their killers.
Advertisement



');
}
-->
The three judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia acquitted him of all charges related to the wanton destruction of Serb villages.
The trial was closely watched in the Balkans. Muslims, who hail Oric as a war hero for his three-year defense of the enclave against Serb forces, had anticipated exoneration.
Serbs had hoped a conviction would counterbalance earlier judgments that found Bosnian Serbs guilty of genocide at Srebrenica. More than 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered there in one week in July 1995, Europe's worst civilian massacre since the Holocaust.
Prosecutors had sought an 18-year prison term. Defense lawyers said any punishment would be inappropriate.
The judges found that during two periods in 1992 and 1993, Oric's troops battered Serb prisoners with wooden planks, iron rods and baseball bats, and pulled the teeth of some of them with rusty pliers. At least six prisoners died in custody.
Oric should have known the prisoners were at risk and taken steps to prevent their mistreat ment, the judgment said. But the judges said they unanimously decided on leniency because of the untenable situation in the besieged town.
Oric, then 25, was responsible for a population swelled by refugees, without food, and in charge of ill-equipped and poorly trained forces. He had no military or administrative experience, his authority was scorned by other Muslim leaders and he had no communications with his superiors outside the area, the judges found.
"It was a continuous uphill struggle that, in actual fact, achieved very few results," the verdict said.
Bosnian Serbs denounced the sentence as "a farce," while some Muslims survivors of Srebrenica were disappointed he was found guilty of anything. In Belgrade, Serbia's President Boris Tadic called the sentence "scandalous."
"People who steal at supermarkets are given two-year prison sentences," Tadic said.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1151754912315440.xml&coll=2

Bishop Artemy calls Kosovo a Serbian Jerusalem

Moscow, June 29, Interfax - Administrator of the Raska and Prizren diocese of the Serbian church bishop Artemy called Kosovo �a spiritual and cultural cradle� of the Serbs, �a Serbian Jerusalem.��The entire Serbia is a church, while Kosovo is this church�s sanctuary,� the hierarch said at the divine worship in the Gracanica monastery, Vremya Novostey daily writes on Thursday. Serbian prime minister Vojislav Kostunica visited the monastery last Wednesday. He met with the leaders of the Serbian community and had a meal with the brethren. His visit was timed to the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo between the Serbs and the Turks on 28 June 1389.An expert of the Serbian Academy of Sciences Institute of History Slavenco Terzic said that the defeat of the Serbs tragic implications for the entire Balkan region.He noted that the Ottoman yoke had delivered a �strong blow on the rich heritage of the Christian nations in the Balkans. Their political, social and cultural elite was exterminated, and medieval towns, Orthodox churches and other monuments of culture had been destroyed.�The tragedy was exacerbated by the fact that the coming of the Ottoman Empire to the Balkans �had brought about contacts of the Balkan people with the militarized branch of Islam, rather then with high achievements of the Arab Muslim civilization,� the scholar added. Deputy director of the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dr. of history Andrey Shemyakin said that from historical perspective Kosovo was indeed the cradle of the Serbian statehood and Orthodox culture. �If these are taken away from the Serbs, they will never accept it and will be quite right,� he underscored. Serbian Jerusalem
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=1642

Making the Belgrade

By Andrea SachsWashington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, July 2, 2006; Page P03

Q. I will be attending classes in Belgrade. What destinations outside of the city should I see?
Jodi Winship, Arlington
With its cafes, nightclubs and 7,000-year-old history, the Serbian capital never sleeps. But for a break from urban life, just follow the Danube. "There is plenty to see in Belgrade," says Kathy Kutrubes, who runs Kutrubes Travel (800-878-8566, http://www.kutrubestravel.com/ ), a Boston travel agency specializing in the Balkans. "Outside is more of a rural atmosphere."
One of Serbia's best-known destinations is Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina province that sits on the river and is crammed with attractions, such as the Petrovardin fortress. Near the city lies Fruska Gora, a national park lush with orchids and linden trees, as well as boars and lynx. Also stop by Sremski Karlovi, home of the 18th-century Grammar School and the art-filled Orthodox Church.
Grab a meal at a salas, wealthy estates offering food, lodging, music and more. "Spending time on salas (one of them is Salas 84) is a unique experience," Serbian Embassy spokeswoman Jelena Cukic Matic said by e-mail, "and worth keeping your stomach empty during the day."
Belgrade has a beach on an artificial lake, but for wild water, go rafting down the Ibar River, which streams past the medieval city of Maglic. If "Black Beauty" is more your scene, the 227-year-old Zobnatica horse farm offers forest rides and the Museum of Horse Breeding. Fifty miles south of Belgrade is Topola, whose distractions include the prehistoric Risovaca cave; the Park of Bukovicka Banja and its sculpture garden; and the village of Orasac, which honors the first Serbian uprising against the Turks. When it's meal time, pair such specialties as Karadjordje's steak (stuffed and fried pork or veal) with local wine: The Oplenac Wine Route features wines that have been compared with French vintages.
For more quietude than cocktails, overnight at a monastery, such as Soko Grad. Find more holy centers in Kraljevo, including the UNESCO-protected Studenica. The region also touts earthly retreats: The Vrnjacka spa, for instance, is Serbia's largest modern spa, with mineral springs and treatments.
Info: Embassy of the Republic of Serbia/ National Tourism Organization of Serbia, 202-332-0333, http://www.yuembusa.org/eng%20.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063000269.html

Lighting up the world -- again

KEVIN CHONG

Globe and Mail Update

Nikola Tesla harnessed the alternating current, invented radio technology and patented 700 inventions, including the wireless remote control and spark plugs. But by 1943, the inventor died alone of a heart attack in a New York hotel room -- a fringe figure, an also-ran in the scientific community. He was impoverished, obsessed with the number three and saw the Nobel Prize awarded to another man for an invention he had created years earlier.
"Nikola Tesla's ideas," The New York Times wrote in his obituary, "bordered increasingly on what some considered the fantastic as he advanced in age." Still, as Tesla once insisted: "The present is theirs, the future is mine."
That future, it seems, is now. This year -- the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth -- Belgrade International Airport will be renamed the Nikola Tesla Airport. On the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, a statue will be unveiled to honour the man whose work enabled the construction of the world's first hydroelectric power plant. And starting this month, scientists from around the world are recognizing Tesla at conferences in Serbia, Croatia, Australia, Canada and the United States.
Tesla is also the mad scientist of choice among hipsters. He's appeared in novels, plays, an opera and a Japanese manga comic and is the subject of numerous songs -- including a few by a popular 1980s band named after him. In Jim Jarmush's 2004 film Coffee and Cigarettes musician Jack White demonstrates the Tesla coil. Later this year, David Bowie will play the Serbian-American in The Prestige, a film directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins).
On the stroke of midnight July 9, 1856, Tesla was born to Serbian parents in Smiljan, Lika, in what is now Croatia. His father was a Serbian-Orthodox priest; his mother was the inventor of a number of household appliances including the mechanical eggbeater.
Tesla's own ability to visualize inventions in precise detail started in early childhood. When he saw a steel engraving of Niagara Falls, for instance, he imagined a wheel being turned by the water -- thirty years before a hydroelectric plant became reality.
After studying mechanics, physics and engineering in Austria and Czechoslovakia, Tesla worked as an electrical engineer in Hungary and France. He then emigrated to New York in 1884, where he joined Thomas Edison's laboratory.
Within a year the two had split over the alternating current. Edison tried to show the dangers of AC by using it to electrocute dogs and horses in public exhibitions. Tesla later responded with a demonstration at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. As Paul Auster writes in his novel Moon Palace, Tesla -- who was 6 foot 6 and cut an impressive figure in a black Prince Albert coat and derby hat -- performed "magic tricks with electricity, spinning little metal eggs around the table, shooting sparks out of his fingertips."
Tesla won the "war of the currents," of course. The industrialist George Westinghouse eventually purchased the patent for AC power. And as W. Bernard Carlson, a history professor at the University of Virginia who's writing a biography of Tesla, says, "He was as popular, if not more, than Edison."
Other battles proved more challenging. Though Tesla invented the radio in 1895, Guglielmo Marconi -- who used one of Tesla's oscillators to send signals across the English Channel -- snagged the patent in 1904 and later won the Nobel Prize. Despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that awarded the patent posthumously to Tesla in 1943, Marconi continues to be considered the father of the airwaves.
Radio proved problematic in other ways, too. In 1899, while experimenting with high-voltage, high-frequency electrical currents on a high plateau in Colorado, Tesla believed he received radio signals from aliens. This made him a laughingstock among his peers (though it did inspire cults who believed Tesla himself was an alien).
Tesla's reputation might not have deteriorated over his lifetime if his financial savvy was anywhere close to his scientific genius. Marconi, a wealthy Italian nobleman, had strong financial backing for his quest to win the radio patent. Tesla was so inept in his finances that he tore up his royalty agreements with Westinghouse -- foregoing millions -- when the industrialist went through a temporary financial crisis brought on by the costly P.R. battle with Edison.
Money troubles also prevented Tesla from continuing research on one of his great obsessions: the wireless transmission of electricity. Tesla's dream was to provide energy freely to everyone, but because financiers did not see much profit in this utopian scheme, the deed to his laboratory had to be sold to settle debts.
Tesla's revival first picked up steam around the 1980s, when his outlandish claims begun to make sense to scientists. Take those alien signals. Dr. Jasmina Vujic, a nuclear engineering professor at UC Berkeley says, "We now know that many stars -- pulsars -- do emit radio emissions."
Science historians also noted that Tesla's work on a "death ray" -- a final project that he claimed could destroy 10,000 airplanes from 260 miles away and that he hoped would end all war -- was similar to Ronald Reagan's Space Defence Initiative or "Star Wars" project. (Conspiracy theorists point out that, after Tesla's death, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI confiscated his research and other belongings.)
Tesla's work on robotics and wireless communications networks have proved prescient as well. And his designs for a bladeless turbine and a pump without any moving parts (modelled after a diode) still intrigue contemporary engineers. "I would say that most of Tesla's concepts have been built upon and extended," says Todd Wilkie, an electrical engineer who's worked with Intel.
According to Mr. Carlson, Tesla is especially relevant in 2006 because "technology is dehumanizing; it debases us. Tesla allows people to celebrate technological progress in a very intuitive, spiritual way."
Moreover, Tesla is a unifying figure in the Balkans. Serbia and Croatia both regard him as a "native son." He appears on the Serbian 100-dinar banknote. He's also been commemorated with his own stamp in the United States, and societies of Tesla admirers burnish his memory in over 20 countries -- including Greece, Brazil and Korea. The scientific community has even honoured him by naming a unit of magnetic-flux density, which is used to calibrate MRI machines, "the tesla."
Then there's the alternating current. Dr. Alan Bristow, a researcher in physics at the University of Toronto says, "AC motors are the workhorse of modern-day society, without which we would not have most of our household appliances or any forms of modern industry."
As for Tesla's presence in pop culture? "He was an inventor and an artist," says playwright Kevin Kerr, who co-wrote Brilliant, a play about Tesla. "He loved beautiful things. The objects he designed were highly practical and usually revolutionary inventions, but they also always had to be aesthetically pleasing."
The story of a visionary who died with his genius unrecognized is of obvious interest to artists too. Tesla appears as a doomed romantic figure in the Handsome Family song Tesla's Hotel Room. The inventor's final days are elegiacally called "the last days of wonder, when spirits still flew/round bubbling test tubes in half-darkened rooms."
In the end, it's not Tesla's now-recognized achievements that capture the public imagination, but his failures -- so idealistically and extravagantly conceived -- and his bold unfulfilled promise.
Kevin Chong is a Vancouver novelist and freelance writer.
> <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060701.wxtesla01
> /EmailBNStory/Science/home

Kosovo will always be ours, says Serb PM

Patrick Bishop, Gracanica, SerbiaJune 30, 2006

AN emotional show of defiance against the outside world, the Serb Prime Minister has insisted that Kosovo will always belong to the Serbs.
Vojislav Kostunica made his declaration outside a 14th century monastery on Wednesday, the holiday of Vidovdan or St Vitus' Day when Serbs remember a centuries-old battle.
He spoke to an anxious crowd of about 1000, some of the few Serbs remaining in the province since NATO invaded in 1999 to rescue the Albanian majority.
"Kosovo has always been and always will be part of Serbia," he said to cheers in the town of Gracanica, in a Serb enclave of Kosovo. However, he emphasised his "willingness to talk, to negotiate and to compromise".
Serbia is in the midst of a diplomatic offensive aimed at retaining sovereignty over the province, which it regards as the cradle of the nation. Mr Kostunica, a nationalist but also a sincere democrat, has just been in London to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Belgrade's offer of autonomy has failed to attract any support from the 90 per cent Albanian population, who are increasingly frustrated at their lack of progress towards full independence.
The Serb Government has been accused by the UN, which administers the province, of promoting ethnic tensions in an attempt to hang on to Kosovo.
On the grimmest day in the Serb calendar, one Bosnian Serb recalled his nation's epic defeat more than 600 years ago as if it occurred within his memory.
"We were defending all of Europe, trying to save Christianity," Dejan said of the 14th-century battle of Kosovo, at which the Balkans fell to the Turks. "We were betrayed."
Montenegro abandoned its union with Serbia last month and declared independence. Kosovo is also being taken away. The country's negotiations to join the European Union have been suspended.
The country is at a crossroads.
TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/kosovo-will-always-be-ours-says-serb-pm/2006/06/29/1151174331969.html#