Israel/Hezbollah vs. Kosovo War Part I

July 25th, 2006

Those of us intimately familiar with the 78-day 1999 Clinton/Blair war against Serbia recognize many similarities with the ongoing Hezbollah/Israel air war. For those of us who have experienced bombings as innocent civilians in our childhood, even if bombings date back to the WWII, the TV pictures of civilian sufferings on both sides are causing an outrage and a profound disappointment that such civilian sufferings are tolerated by the international community in the 21st century. Here are some notable comparisons between the Israel/Hezbollah and the Kosovo air wars.

Hezbolllah vs. KLA

Both Hezbollah and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are terrorist organizations. President Clinton’s special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, said: “The UCK (KLA) is without any question a terrorist group.” Hezbollah is a first tier world terrorist organization with Al Qaeda being only the second tier. Iran created Hezbollah in1982. Iran and Syria have enormous influence as they provide hundreds of millions of dollars in military and economic aid but Hezbollah is nobody’s puppet as President Bush and Israel have claimed. Despite its terrorist tactics Hezbollah has successfully recast itself as a legitimate political party. Its candidates advocate civic duty and responsible governance. Hezbollah enjoys support from 40% Lebanese Shiite population. It also has various supporters in Lebanese diaspora mainly in the South and North America. The KLA, a paramilitary wing of the Albanian mafia on the other hand, was supported by the government of Albania, Albanian narco-mafia, Albanian diaspora; Radical Islam such as Al Qaeda, government of Iran, various Saudi and other Wahhabi organizations, Organization of Islamic Conference as well as the U.S, British and German intelligence agencies.

Jupiter vs. Oxes

The U.S. not only doesn’t want to negotiate with Hezbollah but it does not want to negotiate directly with the legitimate governments of Iran and Syria despite the fact that Iran is probably the only party that can influence Hezbollah to terminate hostilities. The U.S. can influence Israel to stop slaughter of innocent civilians in Shiite neighborhoods instead of a tokenistic response thus far allowing Israel to “finish the job.” Thus far the legitimate and sovereign Lebanese government has received only lip service and an offer of humanitarian aid.

In contrast the U.S. and Germany exploited almost 100-year Serb-Albanian conflict to wrest the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia (15% of the Serbian territory) for their own purposes to strengthen their position in the Balkans. In order to accomplish this objective the Western alliance sided with the KLA insurrection from Albania into Kosovo and Metohija. From terrorists the KLA were instantly converted into partners and freedom fighters. Albanian terrorism, which as a matter of fact dates back to 1912 when Kosovo was liberated from the Ottoman Empire, was not a crime. When the insurrection was repelled primarily by the Serbian police forces the U.S.-led NATO, that defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot, launched the 78-day air war of infamy against Serbia.

Nebojsa Malic, A tale of Jupiters and Cattle, ably quoted ancient Latin proverb created by Terence, a playwright of the Roman Republic: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi. What is permitted to Jupiter, isn’t permitted to oxes.  Jupiter is the Roman king of gods, the supreme god, and patron of the Roman state, identified with the Greek god Zeus. This ancient Roman rule is fully applicable for the 20th century as well as in the 21st century: Americans are Jupiter, Israel is Jupiter-light while Serbia and Lebanon are in the ox category.

Casus Belli

As in 1982, the Hezbollah/Israel war started with a minor incident. In 1982 it was a Palestinian assassination of an Israeli diplomat in London. On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah sent his fighters on a cross-border raid into Israel, where they killed eight soldiers and captured two as hostages. In recent years, Nasrallah has mounted several similar raids into Israel. Tough-minded prime ministers of Israel, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, did not respond with an air war against Lebanon.

In contrast with Israel using a pinprick for casus belli there is an example of India. On July 11, Mumbai train bombings terrorist attack killed 207 Indians and wounded more than 800. The suspect is Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan. India did not retaliate by bombing Islamabad or Karachi but concentrated on the police work that led to arrest of three men ten days later. They have also arrested the organizer and the kingpin of Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Indian-controlled portion of the contested Kasmir province.

While Israel has used pinpricks to initiate wars, President Clinton used fabricated, staged massacres as casus belli both to bomb the Bosnian Serb positions in 1995 and all-out bombings of the Serbian infrastructure and civilians in 1999. Staged massacres and then blaming the Serbs for them were a pattern of Bosnian Muslim war strategy. Combined with highly cooperative partisan media, these staged massacres served as pretense to bomb the Bosnian Serb positions. Similarly in Kosovo, the KLA staged the Racak massacre, which was aided and abetted by the American man on the ground as the chief of OSCE observers, ambassador Walker. The Racak massacre was litigated during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY. Milosevic was obviously successful in his defense as illustrated with the fact that the British judge dropped the Racak massacre from the indictment of Milosevic’s successor, Milan Milutinovic, former deputy prime minister, two former army chiefs of staff and two generals. The six accused represent almost all of Serbia’s political and military top leadership in 1999. The judge stated that it “would be too difficult to prove exactly where the responsibility lies


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Israel/Hezbollah vs. Kosovo War Part II

July 26th, 2006

Right of Self-Defense

President Bush has daily stated that Israel has the right to defend itself. The UN charter recognizes that right but does it include launching an air war on civilians and the infrastructure? Did the same right apply to Serbia fighting the KLA terrorists on its own territory rather than the territory of a neighboring state?

On February 28, 1998 in response to killings of four Serbian policemen in the Drenica region of Kosovo the Serbian special police units launched a crackdown on the KLA terrorists. The action was directed at Adem Jashari whose clan constituted the core of the KLA organization. The Serbian forces killed Jashari and destroyed the KLA power base but also killed more than 50 Albanians including women and children. Almost instantaneously the U.S. threatened military intervention even without the UN Security Council approval. Secretary Albright said, “We know what we need to know to believe we are seeing ethnic cleansing all over again.” The Contact Group, representatives of the U.S, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia, announced measures aimed at applying punitive sanctions on Serbia and called for removal of Serbian forces from its own province. What would have happened if the Serbian air force by any chance bombed the KLA bases in Albania (Tropoja, Bajram Curi, Kruma, Peskopeja, Drac, Elbasan) or even pulverized Tirana, the Albanian capital? A textbook example of Jupiter vs. Oxes.

Disregard for Human Life

The terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, KLA and others have obviously no respect for innocent human life and that is why they are characterized as terrorists.  However, both Israel and the U.S.- led NATO have also exhibited a disregard for innocent human life and civilian infrastructure despite intensive PR campaigns to prove to the contrary and using the collateral damage terminology, the term I resent from the bottom of my heart. In the military lingo these are called strategic bombing campaigns aimed to flatten key economic resources and are usually designed to bend the targeted government to the will of the attacker or turn the populace against the government. The U.S. is one of the chief proponents launching campaigns in Vietnam, Iraq and Serbia. The U.S.-led NATO air campaign had an objective not only to punish Milosevic but also to teach Serbian people a lesson. Likewise Israel is teaching Lebanese people a lesson.

Use of U.S.-designed precision-guided bombs plus selection of strictly military targets should have avoided human tragedies like the one in Tyre where 72 victims of airstrikes were buried in a mass grave so that hospital can hold other bodies. One woman lost 24 members of her family. Israel bombed the Lebanese northern city of Tripoli, which has no conceivable relationship to Hezbollah. General Clark, supreme allied commander, bombed the Novi Sad bridges in Northern Serbia hundreds of km from Kosovo. He would have bombed the Belgrade bridges as well had it not been for the French president Chirac who saved them. The Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was even bombed. Similarly Israel bombed the UN border post killing four monitors. The UN Secretary General plus foreign ministers from China, Japan, South Korea and the 10 nation ASEAN bloc claimed that the attack was deliberate.

The effect of Israel strategic bombing campaign is likely to be much the same as General Wesley Clark’s in Serbia where the Serbian forces in Kosovo were not defeated and that in the Islamic world the growing numbers of civilian casualties are likely to turn Arabs and others against the Jewish state and its key ally, the U.S. and still not fatally wound Hezbollah. Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, said that Israel’s furious response was recruiting millions of new enemies. Similarly, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has recruited millions of other enemies.

For most policymakers and people, moralization stops once they make up their mind as to who initiated the fight so that regard for human life during the fight is a nonissue. This is why the NATO governments and the media were so adamant in convincing the world of Serb atrocities so that once the fighting starts all moralization is out of the window because the belief as to who is guilty has already been settled.

Exodus of Civilians

The UN has estimated that 600,000 Lebanese civilians were uprooted in the first 12 days of Israeli aggression. They have been fleeing from Israeli bombs and responding to Israeli leaflets dropped by aircraft urging them to flee from Southern Lebanon.

The ICTY prosecutors claim that Serbian forces expelled some 800,000 Kosovo Albanians who fled into Macedonia and Albania. In his defense Milosevic claimed that the bulk of them fled from NATO bombs and in response to leaflets dropped by NATO urging them to flee. Local radio stations, including Radio Tirana, joined in. The exodus of civilians in Lebanon provides yet another piece of evidence that the Serbian forces in Kosovo couldn’t have had a monopoly on deportations as the ICTY indictment claims. Perhaps the judge will determine the blame allocation for the exodus!
 
Personal Criminal Responsibility

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour stated in Geneva that both sides could bear “personal criminal responsibility” for their assaults. “Indiscriminate shelling of cities constitutes a foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians. Similarly, the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable.” While serving as the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Ms. Arbour did not condemn both sides when NATO indiscriminately shelled the Serbia cities, including capital Belgrade, and killing civilians in houses, apartments, fleeing refugees, in hospitals, the Belgrade TV studio, on a pedestrian bridge, on a bus, in a car on unpaved mountain road, in a prison, etc. Furthermore, she did not condemn NATO bombing causing ecocide with long-term detrimental health effects to the population as a result of daily attacks on chemical, petrochemical and pharmaceutical plants, plastic factories, refineries, fuel storage tanks, the electric power grid, etc. Ms. Arbour had the power to indict NATO generals, like General Clark, but had no clear conscience to do so. Ms. Arbour was a servant to the Jupiter then. Under the orders from Jupiter she issued an arrest warrant for the first head of state even while the war was still in progress. For her obedience and outstanding services to the Jupiter she was first appointed to the Canadian Supreme Court and then to the present position of the UN Human Rights Commissioner.

http://serbianna.com/blogs/joksimovich/

 

August 30, 2006

Gracanica Monastery

RUECKER'S OPENLY PRO-ALBANIAN  STAND

 

Two highly-placed UN officials, Joachim Ruecker and Marti Ahtisaari have recently launched a fierce pro-Albanian propaganda campaign, promoting Albanian interests and wishes in the media in an effort to frighten the Serbs into believing that the final status of Kosovo and Metohija will inevitably be independence. Recent statements of these officials have caused a great deal of surprise, concern and, even, bitterness among the Serbian people

(Foto: Bishop Artemije travels throughout Kosovo and Metohija under military protection. Almost all Serbian cemeteries in Kosovo and Metohija are desecrated as in this photo.)

Particularly frequent were public statements by Mr. Ruecker, in which he openly shows his pro-Albanian orientation which is in essence pro-Islamic. In these statements Mr. R uecker goes as far as to reveal the "nature of the solution for the future status" of K&M   which he presents in the form of "inevitable independence." ("I don't wish to distance myself from my predecessor Soren Jesen-Peterson, if he told you that he considers independence inevitable…." he stated   for the BBC although his new appointment is to start only on September 1. Mr. Ruecker did not explain what parameters served as the basis for his reaching this conclusion regarding the final status while negotiatins are still in progress. Nor did he specify the manner in which it would be achievedâ€â€whether by consensus, imposition by force, or some third possibility. We fully expect from a diplomat of such a high rank to give us an explanation of his views.

But here we have to bear in mind the fact that a few weeks ago Germany had stopped all sale of weaponry to Israel, placing itself firmly on the side of Islamic terrorists. Some other European states (France, Belgium, Spain…) have embarked upon a similar path by giving support to or promoting global Islamic terrorism. In addition, the European Union has been giving 10 milion dollars a month to the Palestinian authorities, in full knowledge of the fact that these moneys would be used for purchasing, importing and training Muslim terrorists and their weapons of mass destruction.

Viewed in this light, these first public statements by Mr Ruecker, given before his assumption of duties slated for September 1, as well as the actions of his predecessorsâ€â€former chief of UNMIK or Commander of KFOR (Michael Steiner and General Kamerhofâ€â€fully support the conviction   that the real objective of Germany is to establish an Islamic state in the Balkans.

 

(Foto: Monastery in barbed wire. Kosovo reality.)

But should we take into account the "historical background," as we have been invited to do recently by Ruec ker and Ahtisaari, as they maintained that "historical heritage cannot be ignored, but must rather be taken into account when searching for a solution of the status of Kosovo and Metohija," referring to the priod under Miloševi?'s rule, we would have to remember that during World War II the allies of the German invader of Kosovo and Metohija were precisely the Muslim Albanians who, under the protection of the German occupying forces, were engaged in a most fierce genocide of the Christian Serbs, exterminating not only the people but also that people's heritage and all the traces of its existence on that territory. Even if we look only at the recent past, we shall see that during the last seven years under the international administration of Kosovo and Metohija Muslim terroristshave continued the process of erasing all traces of Christian people and Christian presence in the region by expelling 220,000 Christians from their homes, killing more than 1000 Christians, destroying more than 150 Christian places of worship, while, at the same time, permitting uncontrolled inflow of Muslims from neighboring Albania into Kosovo and Metohija, building more than 400 new mosquesâ€â€all of which was accompanied by an expansion of the Wahhabi ideology which is the basis for Al Qaida activities all over the world including Kosovo and Metohija.

Does it mean that Germany and Europe are supporting Islamic terror in Kosovo and Metohija in order to weaken, fragment and then destroy the Serbian state? If this assumption is correct, then it becomes quite clear why Mr. R uecker would make such a statement as "I can work in excellent collaboration with the Prime Minister Agim ?eku" who, by the way, stands accused of war crimes against the Christian Serbs as one of the leaders of the terrorist organization KLA. Another fact is made equally here, namely why not a single terrorist, or simple criminal, was apprehended, tried and brought to justice for a multitude of crimes committed against Christian Serbs during the seven years of international administrtion of the province.

But the fact is that Europe should understand that it does not pay to support terrorists because the terrible consequences of Islamic terror are becoming increasingly painful for many European countries.

However, when asked by a reporter of the German paper Handelsblat what the greatest difficulty in Kosovo and Metohija was, Riker answered "the difficult integration of the Kosovo Serbs."   He also accused Belgrade of preventing the Kosovo Serbs from integrating economically and politically. At the same time, in connection with the question of the non-existence of security and freedom of movement, he said that he did not "deny that here and there there are some problems with the freedom of movement." We ask ourselves, and we ask Mr. R uecker, how he would feel if he could not walk freely in the streets of Berlin, Dresden or Munich, as Christian cannot walk out freely in the streets of Priština, Pe?, Djakovica and other towns in Kosovo and Metohija for fear that they would be caught, maltreated, perhaps even killed by Islamic fanatics? Would he then say that "here and there there are some problems with the freedom of movement?"

The most recent examples of the absence of security and non-existence of freedom of movement for the Christians in K&M include a bomb thrown by a Muslim Albanian at a coffee shop in Kosovska Mitrovica leaving nine people hurt and an incident which occurred in the center of De?ani in which a Christian Serb was battered. It is worth noting that that Serb came to De?ani, his former home, as part of Project "Multiethnik Camp" designed to demonstrate that multiethnicity and coexistence are possible in Kosovo and Metohija.

This is why the proclamation of Mr. Ruecker's conviction that "the question of the final status will be decided by the end of this year" sounds both unreal and tendentious. R uecker must know that the Serbs will never accept the independence of Kosovo and Metohija in any shape or form. Moreover, he should also know that the Srbs are not, nor could they be, a minority in their own state; that treating them as a minority is an insult and a gross misrepresentation of facts. Consequently, no decision about the future status of Kosovo and Metohija can be made without the participation of the Serbs in the decision-making process, unless, of course, it is a forcibly imposed solution.

So many tendentious statements, such obviously pro-Islamic pronouncements, as we have seen in the last few days presented by the European media (ĒĒġ, DieWelt, Standard, Handelsblat) in almost identical form, even before the assumption of his duties as chief of UNMIK, we really could not have expected from Mr. Riker.

 
Press Department of Diocese of Ras-Prizren and Kosovo-Metohija

 

 

Is the Fragile Peace in Bosnia Crumbling?
Eleven years after the war ended, local political leaders are inflaming ethnic tensions and risking further instability  or even possibly violence
By DEJAN ANASTASIJEVIC/BELGRADE

Until recently, Bosnia-Herzegovina was often described as a shining example of succesful international effort in post-conflict reconstruction and nation building. Since the war ended eleven years ago, hardly a shot was fired, towns and villages were repaired, and many refugees have returned to their homes. But now, a month ahead of crucial presidential and parliamentary polls, ethnic tension spurred by local political leaders is running so high that Bosnia's relapse into war no longer seems unthinkable.

Bosnian Muslims, the largest ethnic group in the region, are pushing to dismantle Republika Srpska, the Serb-dominated entity created by the 1995 Dayton peace accord and one of the two ethnically centered statelets, or entities, that comprise Bosnia. The other is the Muslim-Croat federation. Each has its own parliament, government and president. (Bosnia as a whole has a weak central government and a three-member presidency: one Serb, one Muslim and one Croat.) Bosnian Serbs are threatening to secede and merge with neighboring Serbia. "When I hear people talk on the news and in the cafes, I get the feeling that they're just about to jump at each other's throats," says Mirjana Topic, a student from the Bosnian Serb capital of Banja Luka. "All it would take is some fool's call for war."

Although Bosnian politicians have so far refrained from calling up voters in their constituencies to reach for the guns, they have done just about everything else to provoke and insult the opposing ethnic groups. Last Sunday Borislav Paravac, the Serbian member of Bosnia's collective Presidency, stated that the behavior of his Muslim colleague Sulejman Tihic was "idiotic." Tihic had previously said that those Serbs who do not accept his vision of Bosnia as a centralized state should pack up and move out of the country.

Considering the intensity and the general tone of Bosnia's dirty election campaign, it's almost a miracle that violent incidents involving Serbs and Muslims  who share many cultural traits, but not a religion  have been relatively few. Yet there were some: on August 11, an explosive device damaged the tomb of Alija Izetbegovic, Bosnia's wartime (and Muslim) president; most Muslims blamed the Serbs, who for their part insisted that Muslims staged the explosion; the ongoing investigation has so far been fruitless.

But the main fault line is not so much religion, but the legacy of war: Muslims, who were ill-prepared for the war, took much more casulties than Serbs, who were well armed and supported by Serbia; they now feel that Serbs were unjustly rewarded by being allowed to have their own statelet in Bosnia. Tihic, and other leading Muslim politicians have repeatedly stated that Republika Srpska "is built on genocide and agression" and should therefore be abolished. Serbian leaders, such as Srpska's Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, would have none of that. "Serbs are sick and tired of being collectively treated as war criminals by Sarajevo," Dodik said in a newspaper interview on Monday. "In the end, we may have no other options but to call for a referendum. It would be, after all, a democratic solution."

It would, however, be ilegal, both by the Dayton peace accords and by Bosnia's constitution. Bosnia is actually not a fully sovereign state  it supervised by the Office of High Representative and its peace is maintained by international European force  and the representatives of the international community have clearly stated that no move towards secession would be tolerated.

"The general feeling is that all this talk on the referendum and the abolishment of Srpska is a bluff, but the stakes are getting higher every day," says a Sarajevo-based Western diplomat. "The real cause for concern is that nationalism seems to be the only game in town. No one is preaching tolerance  it just doesn't win any votes." The diplomat pointed out that Bosnia's poor state of economy, and high unemployment rate, are also a factor, providing fertile ground for populists and demagogues of all sorts. "It's much easier to play the blame game than to actually address this country's issues," he said.

Another cause for concern is that the issue of Kosovo  formerly Serbian province which is expected to become independent early next year  is also affecting Bosnia. The fear is that Serbia, frustrated by losing Kosovo, may seek to compensate by encouraging Bosnian Serbs to join with Serbia. Still, no political leaders in Belgrade have publically endorsed the referendum idea.

Meanwhile, apart from the graveyard explosion, and ocasional fistfights between Serbs and Muslims in ethnically mixed villages, the fiery words remain just that  words. "As usual, people retained much more common sense than the politicians," says Fuad Kovacevic, the editor of Onasa news agency in Sarajevo. "Almost everybody here is old enough to remember the war, and nobody wants it back." Slavo Kukic, a sociology professor in Mostar, agrees. "I'don't think it could happen again," he says. "After the first shot, everybody would just run away to the far corners of the world. We've been through hell once, and it was more than enough."

Is the Fragile Peace in Bosnia Crumbling?
http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,1449151,00.html

 

Is partition the answer?

21 August 2006 William Montgomery

The conventional wisdom is that the troubles in the former Yugoslavia began with Kosovo and will end with it. That may not be accurate, as there are many other problems, which are still far from being resolved and have major elements of instability.

Photo: www.globalsecurity.com Bosnia can never be a fully functioning, viable, and dynamic state while saddled with its current Constitution and other aspects of the Dayton Peace Agreement.  Serbia lives under the shadow of growing Radical influence, disaffection with the West and its conditionality, and seemingly unbridgeable differences among the parties considering themselves to be "democratic." It is hard to see how, at least in the short term, this can end well. Macedonia's future (and real peace in Southern Serbia) depends very much on whether extremists in Kosovo will be contained or will resume their efforts to foment revolution. Be sure that the idea of a "Greater Kosovo" is alive and well. The fact remains, however, that Kosovo is a major source of the current instability in the Balkans and directly or indirectly impacts on all of the regional problems outlined above. It is in everybody's interest that it be "solved" in a way, which contributes to regional instability instead of the opposite. Kosovo's fate was actually sealed when immediately before and during the initial phases of the NATO Air Campaign, Slobodan Milosević's government decided to solve the problem once and for all by forcing hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians to leave the country. It was the video images of these refugees pouring across the border into tent cities, that both provided the rationale for the NATO campaign to continue (there was widespread unease among member countries about it to begin with and it would have been difficult or impossible to sustain without those images) and also convinced many key players in the International Community that Serbia had forfeited its right to Kosovo. Opinions were formed at that time that have not changed, despite the democratic transformation in Serbia itself. Members of the International Community, including from the United States, made many statements that helped to convince Kosovo Albanians that Kosovo would inevitably be independent. It is absolutely clear that the decision on the future status of Kosovo will be a form of conditional independence. That has been telegraphed ad infinitum by leading members of the Contact Group in public and private sessions. There are not and never were "negotiations" in Vienna about Kosovo. This is a play, written and directed by the Contact Group and UNMIK in which each actor has their role to play. It was really all about "form" and not about "substance" at all. The next stage of the play is when the UN/Contact Group arbitrarily announces its decisions. The only issue is whether this particular play should be called a tragedy or a farce. Serbian government's President of the Kosovo Coordination Center, Sanda Raskovic-Ivić, recently made a statement on BBC that if the parties could not in the end agree, some sort of partition would be a fit solution.  She should be congratulated on making the statement for two reasons: first, it united all parties in the region and internationally on an issue for the first and perhaps only time: everybody came out against it!  But secondly, for throwing on the table a different approach that has never been fully and fairly analyzed. It is not a new concept. Partition, cantonization, and the establishment of entities were all in theory legitimate options to consider. Because the reality is that there are absolutely no good options for Kosovo. Every alternative has significant downsides and the potential to make the overall regional situation worse, not better. Because of that, in 2001 and 2002 I persuaded the State Department and Secretary Powell that in our official statements on possible outcomes for Kosovo, we would "rule no solution out, keeping our options open." This was a short term victory, however, as the proponents of independence were so strong, that virtually every other type of solution was arbitrarily ruled out with little thought or analysis. At the same time, due to Washington's eagerness to escape the problems of the region, pressure was put on to resolve the question prematurely. Ironically, one of the reasons for ruling out entities or cantons such as in Bosnia (which would have been a logical step) was that although few will admit it, virtually the entire International Community believes that the entities and cantons in Bosnia have been a total disaster and have led to stagnation. They privately vowed to never repeat that mistake. They will never say this publicly, however, because it leads to the natural question of when they intend to do something about it in Bosnia itself. The problems that confront proponents of partition are two-fold. First of all, its opponents believe that it will give precedent and impetus to similar movements in Macedonia and in Bosnia.  But those who state this are fooling themselves if they believe that those movements do not already exist and will undoubtedly create significant problems in any case. Moreover, the very independence of Kosovo is a very bad precedent for other parts of Europe, as the Russians are quick to point out (and warn). Secondly, the international community is wedded to the idea of a multi-ethnic society and extremely reluctant to take steps that formalize ethnic divisions.  While absolutely correct as an ideal, in practice Kosovo never really was a multi-ethnic society and the experiences of the past 20 years have only widened the already existing gaps between the ethnic groups there. The Kosovo Albanians, however, have been brilliant at "talking the talk" of multi-ethnicity which the West so loves to hear. That this is a total sham seems to escape the International Community. That the likely outcome will be an exodus of Serbs from Kosovo as we saw in Sarajevo in 1996 also doesn't seem to register. Prime Minister Koštunica is in an impossible position. No Serbian politician can agree to independence for Kosovo and maintain his/her political standing. Moreover, the Serbs more than most are focused on their history and no one wants to be remembered for generations as the Serb who gave away Kosovo. So he is sticking to a position, which is and will increasingly be in confrontation with the International Community. It would like to see the Prime Minister using this time to "prepare" Serbia for the inevitable instead of rallying Serbs to the Kosovo cause.  This has the side effect of making the International Community less receptive to Serbian positions on many of the key areas of disagreement in Vienna. This is too bad, as the very best that Serbia can hope to achieve is to have significant decentralization take place along the lines of the models they suggested. Given how hard the Kosovo Albanians are fighting this concept, it is likely that the end result will be something that doesn't give the Serbs enough to convince most of them to stay in an independent Kosovo. One remaining question is timing. There is a debate going on in the International Community over whether to press forward with the Kosovo decision this fall or to wait a while in hopes of early Serbian elections. The strategy would be to wait until after those elections so as to give democratic forces the best chance of prevailing.  This option might have more of a chance if the democratic parties seemed to be moving towards those elections in a reasonably short time period, but that is not yet the case. Thus, the pressure to announce the decision on future status continues to increase. The other new development is that the series of steps by which the conditional independence will be obtained may be far more drawn out that Kosovo Albanians will like and the International Presence and authority more robust than was earlier planned.  This is in response to the growing awareness of the impact in Serbia itself. The reasoning seems to be that the pain will be softened if spread out for a sufficiently long period. This would also give time for the treatment of ethnic minorities to improve.

http://www.b92.net/eng/insight/opinions.php?nav_id=36233

Serbianna

Views & Analysis
Moscow Calling

Why Milosevic was never trated in Russia?
By Jonathan Widell, Dr Patrick Barriot and Jacques VergÄs


Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell in the United Nations Detention Unit in The Hague on March 11, 2006. According to the pathological report, the cause of death was the heart infarction. That is still debated. The cause of death hinges, at least in part, on the question whether the cause of death could have been prevented by the treating physicians. Understandably, they would prefer a cause of death that could not be detected nor treated. The debate can get convoluted and technical, but it cannot be overstated that Milosevic was known to be a sick man when he came to The Hague. The tribunal could not pretend it did not know of his health problems. The detention unit even confiscated Milosevic's antihypertensive drugs on his arrival. Even if Milosevic's hypertensive problems have become part of the tribunal's folklore by now, closer medical attention has revealed much more profound health problems. Those who do not want to admit that the tribunal could have done anything about the problems seem to opt for ventricular fibrillation as the cause of death, because it fills the bill: it was hard to detect and to treat. However, that was not all. To cite just one of the preventable, though perhaps more innocent-sounding, health conditions we could mention the hearing loss, which was ultimately diagnosed by one of the Dutch physicians. Because the cardiac problems had taken the center stage, the tribunal did not have the opportunity to decide how it was going to conduct the trial in spite of Milosevic's hearing problem.
Milosevic's medical history soon turns into a report card of the court's appointed physicians. One does not have to be prejudiced or particularly harsh to conclude that at least the medical officer, Dr Paulus Falke, may have been out of his depth. The Trial Chamber even remarked that one of his reports was unsatisfactory. The fact appeared in all its poignancy after the examination by three "foreign", i.e. non-Dutch, doctors who examined Milosevic on November 4, 2005 at Milosevic's request. One of them, Dr Margarita Shumilina, was bold enough to mention in her report that the treatment of Milosevic in the detention unit had been inadequate so far. The visiting doctors made the concrete proposal to prescribe a six-week rest for Milosevic until further tests could be carried out.

The prosecution thought the medical problems concealed some sinister conspiracy against the tribunal. Its theory must have been that Milosevic was losing his nerve as the end of the trial was approaching and did everything he could to disrupt the remainder of the trial. So he sought an escape by some desperate act. Even the reliability of the visiting doctors was questioned. It did not seem quite plausible to argue that they had been bought by Milosevic to produce reports that he wanted. However, no matter how remote that possibility seemed, the tribunal clung to that explanation rather than admit that its physicians had been wrong.

In the meantime, Milosevic must have been strengthened in his conviction that his health was really at stake and that whatever could still be done about it was not going to happen in The Hague. After a period of medical as well as legal uncertainty, he submitted his request for provisional release on December 20, 2005. He wanted to get treated at the Bakoulev Center in Moscow.

By that time, the reports of November 4, 2005 seemed outdated and, as it turned out, the original reports submitted by the visiting doctors were not formulated clearly enough with Moscow-based treatment in mind. The prosecution made the most of the time gap between the reports and Milosevic's current medical position. In fact, the prosecution realized how useful it was to delay the process. The winter recess, during which Milosevic planned to get treated in Moscow, had passed, and the prosecution was still posing questions about his choice of the Bakoulev Center. The Center's main attraction, the expeditious treatment promised by the Head of the Center, Dr. Bockeria, began to wear thin.

But so did Milosevic's health. The time-consuming case within a case that Milosevic's request had prompted was at cross purposes with the urgency of the matter. The arguments centering on the expeditiousness that were thrown around in the process sounded hollow. All they did was to prolong the resolution of the case even further.

Not that Milosevic's choice for the Bakoulev Center had come out of the blue. Dr Elena Golukhova from the Bakoulev Center had examined him in early 2004, as was confirmed in the Parker report, which the tribunal published after his death. He had good reasons to trust the specialist from the Bakoulev Center, and his declared trust in the medical specialists at the Center was put forward in the request for provisional release as the main reason his wish should have been respected. Instead, the prosecution started making ad hominem arguments against Dr Shumilina, whose primary fault was that she had stated that Milosevic's current treatment was inadequate.

The confidentiality of Milosevic's medical file has been lifted, at least some of it. There are still many unanswered questions, and the documents that would answer them are not available. What we can do is to point out the questions. Still, the medical file to date contains more than 360 pages. In what follows we will review the documentation. Due to the amount of material that we intend to cover, the article is not really an article. It is longer.

I. Row of rotating doctors.......CONTINUED----> http://www.serbianna.com/columns/widell/005.shtml

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 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 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 vain, 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 Bismarckian 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 indigenous insurgent forces supported by Sunni and Shi’ite entities – local and regional. Russia, China, Iran and former Soviet Central Asian states have formed a countervailing bloc via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran is saber rattling atomic capabilities, and playing the Hezbollah trump card to counter-balance Sunni Arab influence 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, and Nagorno-Karabakh, 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 localized 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 humiliation. Provoking their 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 paradigms of 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 “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 accoutrements explosifs 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 realities 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. Dividing the Pannonian Sea
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/gordon/003.shtml

Book Review Ratko Mladic: Justice or Vindictive Triumph? Carl Savich Columns Serbianna.com

Navigating Kosovo's future - Print Version - International Herald Tribune:

"Navigating Kosovo's future

The New York Times

FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 2006

The 1999 war over Kosovo left the former Serbian province in political limbo, postponing the question of possible independence for another day. That day is now at hand, and the main question facing the international community is not whether Kosovo will become independent, but when and how. Status talks are expected to conclude in the next few months, with the UN Security Council to rule on the issue by the end of the year.

The original plan was for Kosovo's political leaders to demonstrate their ability to govern responsibly before formal discussions of sovereignty could begin. They haven't really done so, although they have made some grudging moves under international pressure.

Yet as a practical matter, Kosovo's international wardship cannot be extended indefinitely. The most promising way to encourage further progress is by moving ahead to a carefully conditioned form of limited autonomy.

The most critical issue, now as ever, is guaranteeing the rights of the ethnic Serb minority. Any independence arrangement will have to assure minorities a substantial role in government, particularly in sensitive areas like the Justice Ministry.

For the first few years at least, the powers of Kosovo's new government must be strictly limited. An international authority will have to monitor the government's fulfillment of internationally agreed conditions, paying special attention to issues like the rule of law and minority rights. A few thousand NATO-led troops should remain in Kosovo with the power to intervene when necessary to compel compliance.

Most of the countries with troops in Kosovo would prefer to bring them home now. But Kosovo's march toward independence is going to remain difficult and dangerous for years. The need for a continuing armed international presence should be non-negotiable.

Kosovo: The Power of Compromise Aleksandar Mitic Columns serbianna.com: "Kosovo: The Power of Compromise
By Aleksandar Mitic
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. "

FOCUS Information Agency: "No Concessions Over Kosovo � No Ratko Mladic



17 August 2006 15:30 FOCUS News Agency



Novi Sad. Serbia�s Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica will not hand in General Ratko Mladic to The Hague Tribunal if he doesn�t receive concessions over Kosovo in return, the chair of the Center for Peace and Democracy Development Vesna Pesic said cited by Serbian radio station B92.
�If Kostunica does not convince the Contact Group to adopt one of the variants that would correspond to Serbia�s wishes and Kosovo receives independence instead he will hand in neither Ratko Mladic nor the others wanted by The Hague Tribunal,� Vesna Pesic said. According to her this is the reason why General Mladic is still at large and not at The Hague prison."

Company News Story:

"Milosevic Son Again Accuses UN Court Over Father's Death


BELGRADE (AP)--Slobodan Milosevic's son, in a letter published Thursday, reiterated accusations that the U.N. war crimes tribunal was responsible for the ex-Serb leader's death.
Marko Milosevic alleged in the letter published by Vecernje Novosti daily that the U.N. court 'had a monopoly over my father's health' while he was in its detention at The Hague, Netherlands.
'The tribunal sentenced my father to death ... when it rejected his demand for a temporary release, ignoring his health and rights,' Marko Milosevic said in the letter.
'And, in the end, premeditatedly, the tribunal took my father to a death by natural causes.'
Milosevic died of a heart attack in March, while he was being tried for genocide for his role in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s.
During the proceedings, Milosevic had refused to hire a lawyer and represented himself in the court, despite doctors' warnings that the stress could affect his already high blood pressure.
The tribunal in February refused to allow Milosevic to travel to Russia for treatment, saying he was in good hands at the Netherlands-based detention unit.
After Milosevic died, his family and allies in Serbia accused the tribunal of driving him to death by allegedly not granting proper medical care. Milosevic's Belgrade lawyer even suggested that the former Serbian and Yugoslav leader had feared he was being poisoned.
The Hague court has rejected the allegations.
Marko Milosevic said the tribunal's report about the cause of his fat"

Toward a Greater Albania - Editorials/Op-Ed - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Toward a Greater Albania

By Michael DjordjevicPublished August 16, 2006


Part two in a three-part series. With the fall of communism and emergence of America as the only world superpower, the hope for peace, freedom and progress was high. Nonetheless, in the twilight of the old order lurked a new global danger: fundamentalist Islam. This new challenge to world peace and stability is rooted in a cosmology older and stronger than ideologies of fascism or communism or ideas of the New World Order. The Balkans have historically been the key battlefield between Islam and European civilization since the battle at Kosovo, where the Ottoman Turks clashed with the Serbs in 1389, to the present. At its apex, the Islamic tide reached and was stopped at the gates of Vienna (1683). It was finally pushed out in the Balkan War of 1912, when the combined armies of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria were stopped at the Gates of Istanbul (Constantinople) by the intervention of the great European powers of that period. Although not admitted in the capitals of the West, the real and the first clash with this revived expansionist force took place in the Balkans in the 1990s. In reality we have fought on the side of our enemies. As in Bosnia before, now in Kosovo, the West has again failed to deal with the basic and overarching Balkan problem � the Serbian Question. Simply, this issue originated from the fact that with the fall of Yugoslavia, nearly overnight one-third of the Serbs found themselves in a new sovereign state hastily recognized by the EU and then the United States. Due to years of experience of genocide and ethnic cleansing during WW II by the Croats, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, the large Serbian minorities in these two countries demanded self-determination. This was denied as the West took the stand that "borders are inviolable." Yet now the Albanians in Kosovo are encouraged to violate the Serbian borders via self-determination, while the Bosnian Serbs in the entity of Republika Srpska are still denied the same right. Kosovo, a province in Serbia, is about 15 percent of her territory. Within only two generations (1929-1980) from 15 percent of Kosovo population, Albanians reached 80 percent; the Serbs declined from 60 percent to 18 percent in the same period. This is a clear-cut example of what open borders, a high birthrate and wrong politics can produce. After Serbia was bombed to submission in a "humanitarian" war in 1999, Kosovo was given to the United Nations for administration � with catastrophic results. Quickly, the province was methodically and ethically cleansed. It is now monoethnic. More than 150 Christian churches and old monasteries have been destroyed, while some 200 new mosques and a number of schools for the young were feverishly built by Wahhabi funds. Violent and corrupt, Kosovo has become a den of thieves, arm smugglers and white slavers and the key narcotics transfer point to Europe. Threatening violence, the Islamists demand independence from Serbia. America and Europe are seriously considering forcing Serbia to cede her land in contravention to all international norms and laws and U.N. Resolution 1244. This would be the second Moslem sovereign state created in the Balkans in one decade by the international community. As correctly asserted, "even as Western societies worry about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the international community's ill-conceived policies for Kosovo...may prove to be directly responsible for production of Europe's own Taliban." Independence for Kosovo will likely pave the tormenting road to "Greater Albania," thus assuring a permanent instability and turmoil in the Balkans. The idea of a "Greater Albania" is essentially a mono-ethnic nationalistic construct originated in 1878 by the Albanian League. To many Albanians, an independent and monoethnic Kosovo is nothing but a phase of the process leading to fulfillment of these nationalistic aspirations. Of course, changing the now existing borders of four sovereign states in the volatile Balkans is nothing short of creating conditions for permanent instability and new cycles of wars. These conflicts would readily and easily be exploited by outside parties, particularly terrorists and international criminal networks. So long as we fail to recognize Serbia's legitimate interests and continue to violate the moral norms and international legal system, the Kosovo problem cannot be solved. As Ambassador Jack Matlock correctly concluded in the New York Times in 1999: "Neither partition nor independence nor indefinite foreign occupation will win in the long run without the acquiescence of the Serbian people." As the Serbs have already waited five centuries to regain the cradle of their civilization and identity, they will certainly try to do so again, and in much shorter time. Part I Michael Djordjevich, an American of Serbian origin, founded and served as the first president of the Serbian Unity Congress.

 

Balkans

Latest video shows alleged Balkan war crimes

Another video has been broadcast in the Balkans which purports to show war crimes committed against ethnic Serbs in Croatia in 1995. It appears to show members of Bosnian paramilitary groups brutally interrogated a Serb prisoner who is later killed. The fighters are also shown vandalising an orthodox church.

This latest images - from nearly two hours of videos - were broadcast by Croatian television. The previous amateur video, allegedly involving Croatian fighters as well as those from Bosnia-Herzegovina, was transmitted by Serbian TV last week.

The violence took place in the self-declared Serb republic of Krajina when a Croatian military offensive was launched in 1995 to retake contested territories from Serbs. Hundreds of Serbs were killed and around 200,000 thousand fled into Bosnia and Serbia. Both Bosnia and Croatia have opened war crimes inquiries after receiving copies of the video that was broadcast by Serbian television last week.

http://euronews.net/create_html.php?page=detail_info&article=374383&lng=1

Print this damning and timely report  (PDF link below) and send it to all those who built their political lives on "humanitarian intervention"!


"Nowhere in Europe is there such segregation as Kosovo.
Thousands of people are still displaced and in camps.
Nowhere else are there so many ‘ethnically pure’ towns and villages scattered across such a small province. Nowhere is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed simply for who they are. And perhaps nowhere else in Europe is at such a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring in the near future – or even a risk of genocide."


http://www.minorityrights.org
http://www.minorityrights.org/admin/Download/pdf/MRGKosovoReport.pdf
Press release
http://www.minorityrights.org/media_centre/media_press/media_centre_press_ko
sovo.htm
Failure by international community to protect minorities in Kosovo could lead to renewed conflict Embargoed for release Monday 7th August 2006 at 10:30 a.m.
7 August 2006
After seven years of UN and international governance the situation in Kosovo is 'little short of disastrous' and there is a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring again, according to a new report by Minority Rights Group.
The report titled Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule launched today, criticizes the UN and international community for failing to protect the rights of Kosovo's minority communities. It describes how the situation of minorities in Kosovo remains the worst in Europe, and highlights the danger of these mistakes being repeated in Iraq.
"The authorities have allowed a segregated society to develop and become entrenched, and thousands of minorities remain displaced," the report says.
"Nowhere (in Europe) is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be harassed or attacked, simply for who they are or what language they speak," it adds.
According to the report, the short term measures of separating Kosovo's two main communities, Albanians and Serbs, has disastrous long term implications.
Clive Baldwin the author of the report, says: "The reality is that segregation is entrenched, creating a society that is so fractured that non of its people feel protected. They live in fear of mass conflict re-occurring in the long term."
The report, which looks at the situation of Kosovo's Albanian, Serb and other communities, including, Bosniak, Croat, Turk, Ashkalia and Roma, argues that problems to do with minorities are not due to lack of resources. In fact, the international administration has been one of the most expensive in UN history.
Instead, the report says a mindset of segregation, a lack of clear accountable government and a lack of any real protection of human rights and the rule of law are among the reasons why minorities continue to suffer in Kosovo.
It also faults the international community for failing to learn from past mistakes and use the experience and expertise available to them to protect minority rights.
"It is almost incredible is that all these mistakes have been made under an international administration consisting of institutions, notably the UN and OSCE, with a long institutional memory of addressing minority rights,"
Baldwin says.
According to the report the 'future status negotiations' represents both the best hope and the greatest danger and as the future of Kosovo is currently being decided the report calls for a radical move away from the patterns of segregation. It also recommends that minority rights are guaranteed by the rule of law and that all minorities, including minority women, should be consulted on the future of their lives, their property and their country.
"The message is clear to all parties. The Serbs need to realize that the effective protection of all communities in Kosovo in an integrated society is the only long term solution. It is in their best interest," says Baldwin.
"We urge the international community to recognise the damage that segregation can cause. They must realize that the Serbs and Kosovo's other communities, including the Albanians, are not benefiting from the current system. The only long term security for Kosovo will be effective protection for all minorities," he says.
For more information or to arrange interviews with Clive Baldwin, please contact Farah Mihlar on 0207 4224205 (office) 078 70596863 (mobile) or farah.mihlar@mrgmail.org


Notes to Editors
Since 1999 Kosovo has had an interim administration, consisting the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which includes representatives of the EU and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and a NATO-led Kosovo Force.
Clive Baldwin is Head of Advocacy at Minority Rights Group International.
>From 2000 to 2002 he was a member of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo.
Previously, he was a practising human rights lawyer.
Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is a non governmental organisation working to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide.

Read the report summary

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Download the PDF copy of Minority Rights in Kosovo under International Rule English Albanian Serbian = ________________________________________________________________________
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Crossfire War - Serbs in Kosovo Arming Self - Defence Groups
By Willard Payne
Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - Southeast Europe Theatre: Tehran - Belgrade/Pristina - Vienna; Serbs Arming Self-Defense Groups - Former Military and Police Officers
Night Watch: BELGRADE - Reuters reports that the six capitals which make up the Contact Group on Serbia/Kosovo are increasingly concerned at what they call "recent developments". The capitals are: Washington-London-Berlin-Paris-Rome-Moscow. They refuse to specify what the "recent developments" are but ominous reports have been circulating that Serbian communities in Kosovo are strengthening self-defence groups composed of former military and police officers. This is obviously in preparation for the declaration of Kosovo's independence, the majority Albanian Muslim province of southern Serbia. [SWISSINFO]
Serbia Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is on record as saying Monday that when Kosovo independence is declared he will state Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia, which of course gives his and Belgrade's approval for Serbian armed nationalist groups to open fire. Three Serbian urban communities in northern Kosovo, where Serbs are still the majoirty, have severed all contact with Kosovo's capital Pristina, which is controlled by Albanians. The Serbs in the north of the province, north of the Ibar river, are in a much better position, politically and economically since they have a continuous land link to Serbia. It's quite possible the shooting could start even before independence is declared.
The only question is who will the Serbs target first, Albanians or the Contact Group? Encouraging them in this new war is Tehran, which signed a security agreement with Belgrade last January that received a lot of publicity in both countries. Tehran will use the new fighting as a way of silencing Vienna, the capital that houses the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had been investigating Iran's uranium enrichment - nuclear weapons program. Fighting in the Balkans will also end the West's attention on the war in Western Asia (Middle East), which Tehran had Hamas-Hezbollah start against Israel. There will be no more talk of an international peace force monitoring Lebanon led by Europe.
Night Watch Information Service
http://www.crossfirewar.com


Copyright � 2006, NewsBlaze, Daily News

(Funny! I haven't heard a word from these people! Stella)
********************************************************************
Newsweek
Letter to the editor(s)
3 August 2006
The authors of Bosnia Reborn, (7 August) make Sarajevo sound like Paradise. If this is true, then why are Croatians and Bosnian Serbs making noises that they want to separate, each wishing to join their mother countries? While the US administration was supporting the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic, his Vienna embassy issued a passport to Osama bin Laden in 1992. In his "The Islamic Declaration, Izetbegovic writes, "There can be no peace or coexistence between Islamic faith and non-Islamic faith political institutions....The Islamic movement must and can take place as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the non-Islamic one, but to build up a new Islamic one."
"We came here to die in the service of Islam. This is our duty. No infidel force will tell us how to live or what to do. This (Bosnia) is a Muslim country which must be defended. (Islamic fighter as quoted by The New York Times and reprinted in The Sunday Telegraph, London, Dec. 10, 1995). Does this sound like Paradise?
Furthermore, the 200,000 killed was discredited when BBC reported in 2002 that the total number of deaths came to 40,000 while other Bosnian experts put the figure at between 20,000 and 70,000.
Stella L. Jatras
************************************************************************
letters@newsweek.com


Copyright 2006 Newsweek
All Rights Reserved
Newsweek
August 7, 2006
International Edition

Bosnia Reborn
Europe's one time wasteland, devastated by war, ideology and ethnic hatred, is staging one helluva comeback
By Ginanne Brownell; With Kris Anderson in London

Elvir Causevic left sarajevo in 1990, just before the war engulfed Bosnia and smashed it to smithereens. Now 33 and educated in America, a member of Yale University's research staff, he recently moved back --and continues to be amazed at the town's transformation. The city he had seen so often on TV during the dark years was devastated, full of scarred and burned-out buildings, bereft of its once vibrant cosmopolitanism.
But no more. Sarajevo today is the very image of a thriving European capital, chockablock with chic restaurants and upscale art galleries. Cranes punctuate the skyline, erecting offices and putting a new face on, among many other things, Bosnia's postmodern Parliament, ruined during the war. Strolling the cobbled streets of the capital's ancient Old Town--a twisty maze of bars and tourist shops selling everything from Turkish coffee sets to T shirts reading i 'm muslim, don't panic--Causevic is positively boosterish. "Now is the time for this country," he exults. His plan: to set up branches of his New York medical-instruments company in Sarajevo and Tuzla--a great investment, he thinks, because of Bosnia's strong engineering tradition and still inexpensive work force. He's already hired 12 employees and expects to grow to 100 within a couple years. "I see a real enthusiasm here," he concludes, reflecting national optimism.
It's hard to believe this is Bosnia--the place that introduced the world to the term "ethnic cleansing." A decade after its brutal war ended, the country is finally emerging from the wilderness. A recent World Bank report touts it as "a post-conflict success story." And it certainly looks that way. "Our economy used to be entirely dependent on international aid," Prime Minister Adnan Terzic tells NEWSWEEK. But these days, he enthuses (somewhat nerdily), the signs all point to "serious sustainability." Bosnia's GDP has tripled in the last decade.
Exports, including steel and timber, are up by 50 percent. The government has successfully privatized banks. Foreign direct investment has tripled since 1999 to �750 million in 2004--and the trend is fast accelerating upward. Unlike neighboring Croatia and Serbia, also part of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has practically no external debt. At 2 percent, inflation is lower than Britain's.
"I think boardrooms would be well advised to have a look at Bosnia," says Dirk Reinermann, the World Bank's country director.
It's been a long time since boardrooms bothered with Bosnia, a country roughly the size of Denmark with a population of 4 million. The fighting that raged from 1992 to 1995 killed 200,000 people, made refugees of 2 million more and destroyed almost 90 percent of the country's infrastructure. War damage totaled more than $60 billion--a magnitude of collapse not seen in Europe since World War II. Bosnia's three main ethnic groups (Roman Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians, more commonly known as Bosniaks) turned on each other savagely, despite decades of intermarriage and living peaceably together. Rape, torture, mass killings--Bosnia was a Balkan slaughterhouse, ending only with the
U.S.- brokered 1995 Dayton peace accords. That agreement became the country's constitution and set up two quasi-autonomous "entities"--the Republika Srpska (usually referred to as the RS) and the Federation, a shaky alliance between Bosnia's Croats and Muslims. A weak national government is overseen by a U.N.-appointed High Representative.
As those awkward arrangements suggest, Bosnia's troubles are hardly over. In the central and southeastern parts of the country, Muslim schoolchildren are segregated from Catholic kids in 52 schools. (When administrators in one such district tried to integrate a school playground, they received so many threatening phone calls that they scrapped the plan.) In the RS, whose population is 90 percent Serb, there have been rumblings of holding a referendum on independence. (With United Nations negotiations underway in Vienna on Kosovo 's independence, this isn't an entirely idle threat.) Even beer drinking can still become political. In north-central Vitez, whether you order a pint of Bosnian-brewed Sarajevska or a Croatian Karlovacko depends on which part of town you live in. With 20 percent of the country's population living below the poverty line, those in rural areas barely scrape out a living. Drug trafficking, organized crime and illegal logging are epidemic. Membership in NATO will remain a pipe dream until war criminals Radovan Karadic and Ratko Mladic, who may be hiding in the RS, are arrested.
Nonetheless, by the end of the year, Bosnia is expected to sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement, a big step toward EU eligibility. For most of the past decade, each of its factions had their own courts, customs and tax services; now the federal government has taken control. Three years ago, according to a Western diplomat, "Serbs would have laughed you out of the room if you told them they'd be serving in an integrated army." Today, they're doing just that. In June, Bosnia was awarded control of its airspace for the first time in more than a decade.
In Sarajevo, especially, you can see the country's ethnic groups reknitting old ties--not necessarily warmly, but with a heartening mutual acceptance. Many of the Serbs who fled the capital during the war are returning to visit. The ski slopes of Mt. Igman (remember the 1984 Olym-pics?) are becoming more culturally mixed, as are Sarajevo's packed caf�s and concert halls. Earlier this summer, throngs came out to hear a popular Serbian turbo-folk singer, Jelena Karleusa.
Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim religious leaders meet regularly and often go on walkabouts together in towns across Bosnia. "It is a much more pragmatic and much less ideologically nationalistic country than it was several years ago,"
says journalist Allan Little, coauthor of "The Death of Yugoslavia."
The picture is harsher outside the capital. Along the road from Sarajevo to Zenica (a new four-lane highway is slowly being built) the scars of war are still evident: carcasses of burned houses, villages that feel far emptier than they should. Yet the signs of progress are obvious here too. The vast majority of Bosnia's battered towns and villages have been rebuilt; according to government figures, 98 percent of properties illegally seized during the fighting have been returned to their rightful owners or their surviving kin. The ethnic mix of some places has changed. Many Serbs, Croats or Muslims have sold houses in areas where they might feel uncomfortable and bought another where they are in the ethnic majority. But others have returned to places they were driven from, if only because they are their homes.
Visit the Bosniak village of Ahmici, reduced to rubble by Croat forces in April 1993. The local mosque's white minaret, toppled during a massacre that claimed 118 lives, is back. A high-tech stereo blasts the call to prayer five times daily. A second mosque, up the hill from the outdoor basketball court, is being built. Its skeletal bricked interior is a Sunday-evening hangout for preteen girls, some wearing fashionable head scarves and flirting with boys.
Along the curving, pine-forested roads of the RS, where signs are infrequent and marked only in Cyrillic, minarets and Catholic crosses can be glimpsed rising in the distance.
If any place testifies to how far Bosnia has come, it is the northern town of Brcko, hard on the Serbian and Croatian borders. This heavily contested bit of territory was the "bridge" linking the western reaches of the RS to the east and Serbia proper. To this day, Brcko is administered separately from the other Bosnian entities, with an American supervisor appointed by the U.N. The region experienced some of the most intense fighting of the war--and some of its fiercest ethnic hatred. Yet former Army barracks have been transformed into a grassy quad of brightly painted government buildings. Citizens have moved forward, together. Unlike much of the rest of the country, schools in Brcko are mixed. So are the police force and the District Assembly. "Most people here wanted to live again in a multiethnic society, so we all fought really hard to make Brcko work," says Ivan Krndelj, the Croat deputy speaker of the Assembly.
You readily see that at Zitopromet, a food-processing firm with an ethnically mixed staff who work together in two shifts baking 10,000 loaves of bread and pastries a day. In offices fragrant with the smell of croissants, the company's Bosniak director, Bahrija Agic, says he was surprised how quickly people came together. "In the beginning, two employees left, saying they had problems working for a Muslim manager," he told NEWSWEEK. "But there just aren't tensions like that anymore."
More and more, that describes the atmosphere across Bosnia. British Brig.
Nigel Alwyn-Foster, deputy commander of the 6,200 troops of the European Union Force that took over from NATO in 2004, describes his theater of operations as "calm and stable." The garrison atmosphere of the immediate postwar years has disappeared. Bases have shut down and many EUFOR troops are living in local accommodations among the people. In leafy Bihac, to the west, Canadian M/Cpl.
Tom Robinson is on his third tour of Bosnia. He's amazed by how much has changed. "In 1996 Bihac was a ghost town," he says, strolling past a new multiplex cinema showing the latest Hollywood flicks. "My time here has gone from being like a parent saying 'No, you can't do that' to being like an older sibling standing on the sidelines offering advice when asked." The city, which saw heavy fighting, has a trendy new mall with clothing shops like Stefanel. Its border crossing with Croatia is a modern complex equipped with the latest EU customs technology.
That's a metaphor. Bosnia is clearly prepping for EU membership. The country 's newest high representative, German diplomat Christian Schwarz-Schilling, recently announced that he would also be the last. Next summer, he will relinquish his role as Bosnia's de facto head of state and become the mere "EU representative" to Bosnia--a job that's essentially monitoring Bosnia's progress toward joining Europe and that returns full responsibility for the country's affairs to the central Bosnian government. "This is a serious change of the political agenda," says Schwarz-Schilling.
There are other signs of political maturation. In April, the Bosnian Parliament, usually split ethnically, rejected reforms to the Constitution that would have strengthened the central government. The good news is that the measure lost by only two votes. Says NATO's senior officer in Bosnia, U.S. Brig.
Gen. Louis Weber: the fact that parties sat down together to reach consensus is huge. "In every sphere you want to measure Bosnia, from the military to the social to the political, it is on a positive slope."
Perhaps most noteworthy is the way Bosnians--Muslim, Croat and Serb--are slowly coming to terms with the past. This spring, a Sarajevan movie named "Grbavica" won top honors at the Berlin Film Festival. Directed by Jasmila Zbanic, it portrays a Bosniak woman, raped by Serb soldiers, who is forced to tell her daughter how she was conceived. The movie has helped drive forward legislation for things like compensation and health care for civilian victims of war. Pirated copies have been selling like hot cakes in the RS capital, Banja Luka. In June, after a tip-off by locals in the Serbian village of Serovici about a nearby mass grave containing the remains of 35 men--probably Muslims killed during the infamous massacre at Srebrenica--the RS and Federation officials have been working together to solve the crime. That wouldn't have happened just a short time ago, says Tuzla prosecutor Emir Ibrahimovic, watching as pathologists carefully unearthed clothed skeletons from the sodden dirt.
"These days, we're seeing lots of cooperation."
Biljana Josic, a fashionably dressed Serb translator who works for the European force, sits in a caf� in Banja Luka. "I love this country," she says.
"Change takes time but we are getting there." Back in Sarajevo, Elvir Causevic stops outside Hacienda, a Tex-Mex bar throbbing with Europop music. "Look, we're transforming into a market economy, dealing with the legacy of a horrific war and learning how to be an independent country all at the same time." Hitting that trifecta, today Bosnia has become a different kind of model for Europe--and the world.
LOAD-DATE: August 1, 2006

"Artemjie, the bishop of Raska and Prizren, the highest Orthodox authority in Kosovo, laments "the inexplicable silence of Christian and democratic Europe in the face of such grave crimes committed against a Christian and European people, which the Serbian people is." And he accuses the Vatican of having been "amply implicated in the events" that produced the current situation."

http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/printDettaglio.jsp?id=7002&eng=y

In Kosovo the Orthodox Church Is Under SiegeTo worldwide indifference, more than one hundred churches have already been assaulted and destroyed. Others are defended by NATO soldiers. The role of the Vatican and the growth of Islamic extremismby Sandro Magister ROMA - During the last week of November, two more Orthodox Christian churches were attacked and damaged in Kosovo - in Gornja Brnjica, and in Susica. Neither was protected by KFOR, the military force under NATO command that maintains order in the region.Since the war ended with the defeat of the Serbs in 1999, more than one hundred Orthodox holy places have been assaulted and destroyed in Kosovo, many of them going back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Earlier, while the Serbian army of Slobodan Milosevic had control of the region, it is calculated that 212 of the 560 Muslim mosques in the area were damaged or razed.In Kosovo today, the Orthodox Serbs are a besieged and endangered minority. Of the roughly 250,000 who fled following NATO�s military intervention, only a few thousand have returned. Together with the 130,000 who remained, they are herded in restricted zones and kept under constant threat. Power rests in the hands of the Muslim Kosovar Albanians. The future status of the region is uncertain. Formally, Kosovo remains an autonomous province of the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro, but resolution 1244 of the United Nations defining its status also refers to the Rambouillet accords of 1999, which appeal to the principle of self-determination of peoples in outlining the definitive arrangement of the area. And the overwhelming Albanian majority has enlisted this point in its bid for independence.The destruction of Christian churches is part of this plan - or, at least, that�s what the local Orthodox community fears. "Either destruction, or transformation into museums," specifies Fr. Sava Janjic, vice-prior of the monastery of Decani.This monastery is one of the masterpieces of medieval art in Kosovo, an historic cradle of Serbian Orthodoxy. It is occupied by 35 monks, many of whom have entered during the last twelve years, in a complete rebirth of monastic life. During the war, they were lavish in their defense of the Kosovar Albanians, threatened with ethnic cleansing by Slobodan Milosevic�s army. But today, it is the monks who are under constant threat. The Italian soldiers of KFOR ensure the defense of the monastery. The monks may not venture beyond the security fence to visit their faithful unless they are accompanied by an armed escort. The condition of the other 25 monasteries and churches under KFOR protection is similar. Among the most precious holy places - and the ones most at risk - are the patriarchate of Pec, the monastery of Gracanica, and the cathedral of the Mother of God of Ljevisa, in Prizren.Artemjie, the bishop of Raska and Prizren, the highest Orthodox authority in Kosovo, laments "the inexplicable silence of Christian and democratic Europe in the face of such grave crimes committed against a Christian and European people, which the Serbian people is." And he accuses the Vatican of having been "amply implicated in the events" that produced the current situation.Fr. Sava specifies that an authentic smear campaign has been unleashed against the Serbian Church: "The schools teach the theory that we did not build most of the Orthodox holy places in Kosovo, but that Roman Catholic Church did, and that they do not belong to us."There are approximately 65,000 Catholics in Kosovo. "We have excellent relations with the Muslims, and the government treats us well," a spokesman for the apostolic administration of Prizen told the Norwegian news agency for religious liberty "Forum 18."But there is a more disquieting reality behind these words. All throughout Kosovo, new mosques and Koranic schools financed by Saudi Arabia are springing up, and the influence of the Islamist currents is growing.This is confirmed by the dangers incurred by Muslims who convert to Christianity.These dangers were almost nonexistent in the past. Islam is generally weakly rooted in the Albanian population, and is accompanied by weak social controls.But now extremist groups have appeared. And life has become difficult for those who convert. Last May 11, in Gnjilane, a convert was brutally beaten and threatened with death as a "traitor."The ones most targeted are the converts to the evangelical Churches, which are the most active in the missions. Many of the newly baptized are forced to keep their conversion hidden even from their loved ones.The Catholic Church has chosen to keep a low profile and not to proselytize, and thus it feels Islamic pressure less. The moderate Muslim leader Ibrahim Rugova recently said that he has come to know the Catholic faith better and that he respects it a great deal.__________The Orthodox monastery of Decani has a website in English that is very rich with information on the present situation in Kosovo:> Visoki Decani Serbian Orthodox MonasteryFrom a neutral source, the most up-to-date news on the anti-Christian attacks in Kosovo are found in these two reports from the Norwegian news agency for religious freedom "Forum 18":> Renewed attacks on Serbian Orthodox, by Branko Bjelajac, 1 December 2003> Religious freedom survey in Kosovo, by Branko Bjelajac and Felix Corley, 9 September 2003Here is a link to a report that appeared in the February, 2003 edition of "30 Days," the monthly directed by Giulio Andreotti:> Kosovo. Dopo le bombe il caosOn the dangers faced by Muslims who convert to Christianity, throughout the Islamic world, see on this website:> "Moderate" Islam - But not for Converts to the Christian Faith (6.12.2003) __________Go to the home page of > www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.Sandro Magister�s e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.itEnglish translation by Matthew Sherry: > traduttore@hotmail.com