EJ: Pentagon Aims to Take Kosovo Under It's Wing

Supply of weapons will make peace impossible

Tamara Zamyatina, RIA Novosti

MOSCOW - Predictions made by experts before Kosovo's illegal declaration of independence are coming true -- the territory seized from Serbia is turning into a big military base of the United States and NATO.

Thus, George W. Bush ordered arms shipments to Kosovo. Because of this, Moscow insisted on an emergency session of the NATO-Russia Council -- it was held in Brussels last week.

Incidentally, Bush issued this order two days after the Moscow visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who urged Moscow to promote co-operation, expand consultations and display more openness in general.

The haste with which the Pentagon is trying to take the fledgling Kosovo under its wing demonstrates the West's lack of confidence that peace will come to the Balkans after Kosovo's cessation. But the West was actively using this rhetoric -- the need to put an end to the Yugoslav crisis -- in order to justify its support for the Kosovo separatists.

There can be no peace when one side is being equipped with weapons against the other. This means pouring more fuel on the fire.

The Serbs have already got the message. In the city of Kosovska Mitrovica (in northern Kosovo), they desperately rushed to defend their last shelter -- a courthouse. Previously, it was the venue of Serbian justice, but now it is occupied by international lawyers who will turn it over to their Albanian colleagues.

Blood was spilled there during clashes with peacekeepers. There are numerous rallies in Belgrade supporting the Serbian minority in Kosovo.

The city divided into Albanian and Serbian parts by the Ibar River will be a bone of contention for a long time to come. Belgrade has already sent an appeal to the United Nations, demanding that Kosovo's northern region adjacent to Kosovska Mitrovica with a compact Serb population be returned to Serbia.

These people primarily need physical protection, but the advocates of Kosovo's independence are not likely to be worried about that. In the first half of the 1990s, western countries shut their eyes to the expulsion of 300,000 Serbs from Croatia.

They won't bother about a mere hundred thousand. People in Belgrade say that if 300,000 birds suddenly left a region, the world would be alarmed, but it did not even notice the Serbian tragedy.

One of the reasons behind Washington's decision to supply Kosovo with arms is its intention to keep Kosovska Mitrovica in Kosovo, because it is a turbulent and strategically important Serbian city. But the main goal is to give Kosovars carte blanche to suppress the protests in Serbian enclaves on Kosovo's entire territory.

This opinion is held by Yelena Guskova, head of the Balkans Crisis Centre at the Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Arms shipments to Kosovars are designed to legalize future Albanian efforts to oust the Serbian minority from the province. In other words, the Kosovars are given a chance to complete what they have started -- drive non-Albanians out of the province, but with their own hands so as not to cast a shadow on the NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers, not to mention the United States.

Under NATO protection

It seems that Kosovo will be the first state under NATO's complete protection. The KFOR peacekeepers have been a guarantor of order in the province for nine years now.

Considering the intentions of Albania, Macedonia and Croatia to join the North Atlantic alliance at its summit in Bucharest on April 2-4, Kosovo may become NATO's most powerful support in the Balkans.

The Pentagon has already built the world's biggest military base on its territory -- Camp Bondsteel. Now it has started the construction of a second military base, Guskova said.

Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, is convinced that Washington, at least under the current administration, does not need stability in the Balkans or the rest of Europe: "The United States cannot influence events in a stable situation. If it is calm in Europe, the United States has nothing to do there. U.S. political strategy is based on control through chaos."

He mentioned that as far as he knows, initially Washington will supply Kosovo with small arms and armoured vehicles without heavy equipment. Subsequently the Albanians will be trained for air force and tank units.

Under the circumstances, there is little Russia can do. Guskova and Ivashov believe that in addition to humanitarian aid to the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo, the Kremlin could suggest bringing Russian peacekeepers into the district of Kosovska Mitrovica.

Russian experts are actively discussing the introduction of Russian peacekeepers into Serbia's southern regions bordering on Kosovo. But pro-western President Boris Tadic is not likely to turn to Russia with such a request. Hence, Russia will have to use only diplomatic levers. As for economic levers -- Kosovo's participation in the South Stream gas project -- Russia either did not want to use them, or failed to do so.

Tamara Zamyatina is an international commentator for the Russian News and Information Agency Novosti; website: http://en.rian.ru/. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

AP: Kosovo Albanian gets 20 months for terror plot on Fort Dix

GEOFF MULVIHILL
March 31, 2008 2:26 PM

CAMDEN, New Jersey-A man who admitted letting a group of accused terror-plotters shoot his guns at a firing range was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Monday.

Judge Robert Kugler said Agron Abdullahu, who is originally from Kosovo, deserved more than the 10 to 16 months that sentencing guidelines call for because he knew the men who were talking about violence against Americans.

"I am convinced that he is not as innocent as he'd like us to believe," Kugler said before handing down his sentence. "This is not a common, ordinary, technical violation of the law."

However, the sentence was less than half the five-year maximum allowed.

With time served and credit for good behavior, it's likely he will be free before the end of the year, though he could face deportation.

Abdullahu said he was sorry that he let his friends use his weapons at a firing range in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania on trips there in 2006 and 2007, and said he discounted their tough talk about hurting America. "Not at any moment did I think they were actually going to do what they said," he told the judge.

Abdullahu, 25, was arrested last May along with five men who are charged with conspiring to kill soldiers at Fort Dix.

Authorities said the other men, all of them, like Abdullahu, foreign-born Muslims in their 20s, were planning to sneak onto Fort Dix and attack soldiers there. No attack occurred at the New Jersey base, which is used mainly to train reservists heading to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The group was dubbed "The Fort Dix Six," and Abdullahu, a supermarket baker whose ethnic Albanian family escaped Kosovo when he was a teenager, was charged with letting brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka shoot two weapons that he owned legally. It is a crime to allow illegal immigrants like the Duka brothers to possess guns.

Deputy United States Attorney William Fitzpatrick said no grand jury was ever asked to consider charging Abdullahu with conspiring with the others to kill soldiers.

A secret recording made by a government informant captured Abdullahu saying it would be "crazy" to attack soldiers and urged some of the other men to think about their families.

Kugler said his sentence was harsher than it could have been partly because of drawings found etched into the door of Abdullahu's cell at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia. One had a gun pointed at the words, "FBI."

While the judge was disturbed by that behavior, as well as Abdullahu's interest in making bombs, he seemed to struggle with finding an appropriate sentence.

"There's too much good in this man," Kugler said, to give him the maximum sentence the government sought.

Abdullahu's public defender, Richard Coughlin, said his client was grateful the judge considered his good traits along with his mistakes.

Letter from an American in Russia: "Americans Are Not Stoopid"

Various Russian commentators expressed irritation or dismay earlier this month when a Pew Research Center survey indicated that a majority of U.S. citizens could not name the province that had just proclaimed independence from Serbia. You can see why this rankled. The Kosovo issue is important to many Russians -- historically, politically, even emotionally -- and the United States has played a key role in its divisive endgame. But for Russians, the Pew story actually got worse. Fully 9 percent of the U.S. respondents believed that this newly self-proclaimed ex-Serbian republic was called, um, Chechnya.

To Russians tempted to denounce Americans as stupid, let me offer some conciliatory advice: Bite your tongue, take a number and get in line. Denouncing American ignorance is a venerable tradition among many peoples of the world, especially Americans. And this Kosovo-Chechnya gaffe is, trust me, small potatoes.

Consider some other recent survey data: 20 percent of U.S. adults think that the sun revolves around the Earth. And 25 percent of U.S. teenagers, fresh from studying their nation's history, believe that Columbus arrived in the New World after 1750. Even allowing for the absurdities often produced by multiple-choice polling formats, the obtuseness of America's vox populi, smugly belittled for centuries by elite Europeans, may now be reaching truly awesome proportions.

Media accounts of a new wave of "serious intellectual trouble" and "stunning ignorance" among the rising generation point out that President George W. Bush's ill-conceived education program, called No Child Left Behind, has predictably left most children behind. It does not require schools to test pupils in "noncritical" subjects such as geography and history.

What has this produced? A lot of dumbness, as an internationally popular YouTube video -- with nearly 13 million viewings and a rising ranking among the most-discussed videos in history -- deftly illustrates. Ironically titled "Americans Are NOT Stupid," the clip features deadpan Australian "reporter" Julian Morrow intoning, "A lot of people give Americans a bum rap for being stupid and knowing nothing about ... the very world their country runs." Morrow then "refutes" this canard by posing questions to random Americans on the street.

Asked to name a country that begins with the letter U, these citizens of the United States answer Yugoslavia, Utah and Utopia. One young fellow can't name the location of the Berlin Wall; another can't identify the religion of Buddhist monks (after first guessing Islam); a third maintains that Fidel Castro is a singer; a fourth locates Italy in the Middle East. A nice middle-aged woman recalls that the United States won the Vietnam War. Asked how many sides a triangle has, a thoughtful gent answers four, which is later disputed by an even more thoughtful teenager who initially claims none and then settles on one.

Now, would anyone else like to share dismay over Americans' confusion about Serbia, Kosovo and Chechnya?

Lest you fear that these responses signal a U.S. breakaway in some imagined "Cold War II" stupidity race, let me remind and reassure you of Russia's many demonstrations of ignorance as strength. This country celebrated its national reincorporation in 1922 by expelling 160 of its finest philosophers, scientists, scholars and writers, thus becoming the first modern state to voluntarily lower its national IQ.

That this end had been well met was impressed on me in 1978 and 1979, when I spent seven months on a U.S. cultural exhibition here talking daily with thousands of average Soviet citizens -- the late-'70s Russian equivalent of Morrow's interviewees. Having weathered comments from them about the Americans faking moon landings, wearing transparent blue jeans and dressing cows in pajamas during cold weather, I know from stupid Russians.

As to the new millennium variety of Russians, whose vast majority either blandly acquiesces or positively revels in a "sovereign democracy" -- now famous for its phony parliament, phony judiciary and phony elections, all glowingly hyped in phony newscasts -- would you call this a nation of rocket scientists?

That said, I remain confident of America's near-term superiority in dumbness. While it would be, well, stupid to blame our tsunami of young dullards solely on one old one, consider the wise Russian saying, "The fish rots from the head." For another eight months, America will be guided by one of the stupidest fish heads ever washed up by the Potomac.

Of course, I could be wrong about Bush. I'm an American and may well be stupid.

Mark H. Teeter teaches English and Russian-American relations in Moscow.

Too Stupid for Words: "Bush hopes Serbia will help Kosovo secede"

8 March 2008 | 09:06 | Source: Beta

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President George Bush says that supervised independence was the best solution for Kosovo. George Bush (Tanjug) It has the best prospects of leading to peace in the region, said Bush, and expressed hope that the Serbian government "will realize this". In a brief interview with Croatian national television in Washington, ahead of his visit to Zagreb, Bush said Kosovo "represented the last chapter in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and an end to a very difficult period". "Kosovo has a chance with supervised independence. I support this decision because I believe this is best for the region and there are greater prospects of peace," the U.S. president said. "I hope the Serbian government will realize that the Serbs in Kosovo are treated with respect as a minority, and that it will in time help Kosovo separate, instead of trying to prevent its secession," Bush was quoted.

Terror plot thwarted in Bosnia

The dots begin to connect in a radical network that reaches from Bosnia across Western Europe as police in Bosnia arrest five suspected of plotting to attack Catholic and EUFOR objects, Anes Alic and Damir Kaletovic report for ISN Security Watch.

By Anes Alic and Damir Kaletovic in Sarajevo for ISN Security Watch (28/03/08)

In the second major anti-terrorism operation in Bosnia in three years, Bosnian police have arrested five men and seized anti-tank mines, laser sights, electronic equipment, topographic maps and bomb-making manuals.

The ongoing investigation shows so far that the group involved in the alleged plot is connected with earlier terrorism-related arrests in the country, and that the network extends to Western European capitals.

Bosnia and Herzegovina's Federation Anti-Terror Unit on 20 March arrested five men: Rijad Rustempasic, Muhamed Meco, Abdulah Handzic and Edis Velic, all in their early thirties and from Sarajevo, along with Muhamed Ficer, from the central Bosnian city of Bugojno, who was released from custody after questioning.

The four arrested in Sarajevo were members of the local Wahhabi movement - the Saudi-based and financed order following a strict interpretation of Islam. Some of the suspects were already well known to the police for their radical activities. The group had been under surveillance for several months by the Federation Anti-Terror Unit and the State Prosecutor's Office.

Federation Anti-Terror Unit and the State Prosecutor's Office have strong evidence that Rustempasic's group was planning attacks on Catholic Churches and international forces within the country during the Easter holidays.

According to the authors' source from the Federation police, who are running the investigation, the alleged leader of the group is Rustempasic, who was born and raised in Bugojno but moved to Sarajevo four years ago.

On condition of anonymity, the police source said that Rustempasic was one of the most notorious and most violent Bosnian radical Muslim they had so far investigated, and that the suspect has managed to evade prison thanks to the tolerance of the local authorities in Bugojno.

The key suspect

Since the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in December 1995, Rustempasic's name has appeared in connection with several investigations related to the terrorism and radical Islam.

During the Bosnian 1992-1995 war, Rustempasic was a member of the El-Mujahid unit, headquartered in central Bosnia. The unit was under the official jurisdiction of the Bosnian Army during the war, though it operated autonomously and was comprised of foreign fighters from Islamic countries. The author's police source said it was during that period that Rustempasic developed his bomb-making skills.

Federal police suspect that Rustempasic was responsible for mining the tower of the Catholic Church in the village of Humci, near Bugojno, in July 1996. No suspects were ever arrested in connection with the attack. Police also suspect that Rustempasic was behind numerous threats against Bosnian Croat returnees to Bugojno and other central Bosnian cities where there is a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) majority.

In 2004, Rustempasic was arrested by NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) troops in Bosnia for illegal possession of weapons and suspicion of terrorist-related activities. The international forces had found nearly five kilograms of explosives in his possession. For that crime, the court in Bugojno sentenced him to five months parole, during which time he relocated to Sarajevo.

Easy supplies

"In Rustempasic's apartment we seized a hand-made explosive device hidden in a book … and when someone would open the book, the device would be activated," the source said.

The police source said Rustempasic had a couple of supply chains for bomb-making equipment. He would go to the war-time frontlines and dig up anti-tank mines to remove the explosives from inside. Each anti-tank mine contains around 3 kilograms of explosives - enough to cause massive damage.

"We also have evidence that from the money he would get from [sources] in Western Europe, was buying explosives and other equipment on the illegal market here. Also, we have reason to believe that some of the seized materials arrived from other countries in travel bags," the police source said.

The group came under closer scrutiny by the Anti-Terror Unit and the Bosnian State Intelligence Agency (OSA) after an intercepted telephone conversation between Rustempasic and another arrested member of the group.

"Christmas passed and we didn't do anything," one of the group's members told Rustempasic late on 25 December 2007, alerting the authorities.

Federal police had reason to believe that the next opportunity to attack would be the next Catholic holiday, Easter. Analyzing intercepted communiqués, police concluded that would be targets of the group are Sarajevo central Cathedral and Franciscan Monastery in Central Bosnian city of Fojnica.

Aside from Catholic institutions, police also have reason to believe that the group was planning to sabotage electricity supply stations and launch attacks against European Forces (EUFOR) Liaison and Observation Team (LOT) here.

EUFOR has 45 LOTs stationed across the country. One of the intercepted telephone conversations between Rustempasic and another group member mentioned international community targets and talked about locations where international soldiers were based, particularly those coming from countries involved in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

European connections

Most of the weapons seized during the raid on six locations were found in Rustempasic's apartment in Sarajevo's old town, where he lives with his family.

According to Muhamed Ficer - Rustempasic's brother-in-law who was arrested and released in connection with the plot - the weapons found in the apartment did not belong to Rustempasic but to his brother, currently living in Austria.

Following his release, Ficer told local media that the electronic equipment seized by the police and suspected of being used for bomb-making had actually been found at a garbage dumb and they had planned only to repair and resell it.

According to Ficer, Rustempasic is unemployed (along with the others arrested), and depended on financial assistance from his "brothers" (Wahhabi's) from Austria.

According to Rustempasic's neighbors from Sarajevo suburb of Sedrenik, the house in which he has lived for free for the last four years is owned by Bosniak Deso Karisik, who lives in Germany.

Rustempasic also sparked the authorities' interest during clashes last year between radical and moderate Muslims in Sarajevo and two cities in the country's north. Rustempasic was a close associate of the late, self-proclaimed sheik, Jusuf Barcic, the leader of the local Wahhabi movement. In March last year, Barcic, an aggressive preacher calling for a return to traditional Islam, and his followers tried to forcibly enter several mosques to preach wahhabism, but were prevented by locals. Barcic died in the car accident a month after those incidents.

Another member of the arrested group, Edis Velic, also has a criminal past. According to the police source, Velic spent some time fighting in Chechnya several years ago. Last year, he was fired from a Sarajevo-based private security company after a shooting incident in which Velic shot the owner of a second hand stall in the open market in the legs.

Velic and another detainee, Abdulah Handzic, were present at the recent protests against the deportation of foreign mujahideens and against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Notably, police spotted Velic and Handzic burning US and EU member country flags at the protests.

Ongoing investigation

The arrests on 20 March was the second major crackdown on Bosnian Wahhabis suspected of terrorism in the last three years.

In October 2005, Federation police arrested five men, three of whom were indicted and later convicted on a string of terror charges.

Mirsad Bektasevic, a Swedish national from Serbia; Danish-born Turkish citizen Abdulkadir Cesur; and Bosnian national Bajro Ikanovic were arrested in late 2005 in two Sarajevo suburbs. The three were found guilty of "intending to carry out a terrorist act" in Bosnia or another European country with the aim of forcing the withdrawal of troops from Iraq or Afghanistan.

During the raid on the home of Bektasevic and Abdulkadir police found a suicide bomb belt, nearly 20 kilograms of explosives, guns and a bomb-making video.

Prior to his arrival to Sarajevo, Bektasevic was active in trying to recruit Jihadists through internet sites, using the codename "Maximus." Correspondence between Bektasevic and some Islamists in Denmark led to further arrests and prosecutions. Bektasevic was in contact with Abdul Basit, also known as Abu-Lifa, sentenced by a Danish court in February last year to seven years in prison. He was believed to be a financier of Bektasevic's group.

Having previously been marked as potential militant by Federation and international authorities, Rustempasic appeared even in this case. According to the police source, Bektasevic was also in contact with Rustempasic in the two-month period between his arrival in Bosnia and his arrest.

According to the source, at the time Rustempasic was questioned by police and prosecution investigators and gave very valuable information regarding Bektasevic's case. Investigators had no evidence to charge Rustempasic in that case.

After Rustempasic's group was arrested on 20 March, local authorities discovered several locations, in almost unapproachable mountainous parts of Bosnia, with cottages where military equipment was held and the surrounding area used for military-style exercises. Those locations were discovered after analyzing a map found in Rustempasic's apartment.

They also found another map containing coded signs. Police believe, once decoded, the map will lead to more hidden sights or even potential targets.

"But now we are troubled with the fact that four days prior to Easter, and one day ahead of the group's arrest, a duffle bag containing military equipment arrived in Sarajevo from a Western Europe country, and could be linked to the group," the police source said.

The whereabouts of the bag is still unknown, and police are focusing their investigation on this, hoping for cooperation from those arrested.

A source from the prosecutor's office told ISN Security Watch that in the coming days the investigation into Rustempasic's group will be expanded beyond the borders of Bosnian. It is clear, the source said, that the group is receiving financial and logistical support from wahhabi figures in Western Europe.

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Anes Alic, based in Sarajevo, is ISN Security Watch's senior correspondent in Southeastern Europe and the Executive Director of ISA Consulting.

Damir Kaletovic is Sarajevo-based investigative reporter for Federal Television's (FTV) "60 Minutes" news program.

GOP USA: "McCain Supports Radical Muslims In Kosovo"

By Cliff Kincaid
March 27, 2008

If the media are on the lookout for gaffes by the presidential campaigns, they missed a big one on Wednesday, when Cindy McCain met with Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci in Kosovo's capital Pristina, while her husband was giving a major foreign policy speech calling for "new foundations for a stable and enduring peace." Kosovo's declaration of independence, which McCain accepts and was implicitly recognized by Cindy McCain's visit to Pristina, is a major threat to global peace and security. It could spark a U.S. war with Russia.

It may be asking too much, however, for the media to cover a gaffe like this. The Kosovo policy is a bipartisan blunder. For the liberal media, Iraq, where McCain differs with Hillary and Obama about the length of stay of the U.S. military, seems to be the only foreign policy issue worth talking about. But the U.S. faces other major problems.

We need to recall that the war against the former Yugoslavia was depicted by the liberal media as a worthwhile humanitarian intervention. But it was waged on the basis of Clinton Administration lies of a "genocide" being waged against Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. In fact, the Clinton Administration's NATO war against Yugoslavia probably cost more lives than were lost in the civil war in Kosovo. Serbian troops were forced to withdraw in exchange for an international guarantee that Serbia would retain sovereignty over Kosovo but the province would get substantial autonomy. The U.S. agreed to that, but that agreement was violated when the Bush Administration, with backing from McCain and Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, recently recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia.

Sending his wife to Kosovo confirms that McCain accepts Clinton's fraudulent version of what happened there and that he agrees with Bush's "solution," which can only make the situation worse.

Conservatives should contemplate what is happening here. McCain, who says he wants to wage a vigorous war against Islamic radicals worldwide, is prepared to let Muslim extremists come to power in Kosovo and even have their own sovereign state. This is itself a major gaffe. But McCain compounded it when he gave a speech urging the building of "international structures for a durable peace," including strengthening NATO. This sounds good, except that McCain has to know that recognizing Kosovo's independence has split Western nations and even NATO itself. It is a major foreign policy blunder that the next administration, Democrat or Republican, may never recover from. It represents a direct threat to the international order of nation-states. That is why many nations have not recognized this new state of Kosovo. They realize that Kosovo's independence could spark other groups to wage wars against established regimes around the world.

This is not to say that some territories under the control of internationally recognized regimes do not deserve their independence. Tibet, under Chinese Communist occupation, deserves its freedom and sovereignty. And Taiwan should become an independent state as well. China's communist rulers, who opposed Kosovo's independence because they fear it could serve as a precedent for Tibet and Taiwan, are the illegitimate ones. The regime in Beijing should be undermined. But China, which supplies so many of our products and invests so much in our economy, is too big an adversary to pick a fight with. This shows the fallacy of claims of the U.S. being a "superpower." We are at the mercy of China, and the presidential candidates of both major political parties know it. Only a commentator like Lou Dobbs of CNN dares to address the controversy on a regular basis.

Atrocities occurred on all sides as the former Yugoslavia went through disintegration. But Serbia was involved in trying to hold the former Yugoslavia together when outside powers, including various Arab and Muslim states, were trying to carve the nation up. Kosovo's Muslims, who are a majority, may not be as radical as those in other Arab states. But wait until the radical Mosques that are being established around the territory, with the financial assistance of Saudi Arabia, begin to exert their influence on the next generation. They won't be waving American flags out of gratitude for NATO waging war on Serbia. Meanwhile, many Christian churches In Kosovo have been destroyed, and many Serbs, who are Christians, have fled the province. No wonder Serbian demonstrators recently burned the U.S. embassy there. And yet McCain says he wants to repair America's bad image in the rest of the world. Start with reversing the disastrous Kosovo policy, Senator McCain.

Conservatives should be concerned about the Kosovo policy for another reason. In his Wednesday speech to the World Affairs Council, McCain talked about the security of the state of Israel. He doesn't seem to realize that recognition of Kosovo is a precedent for the creation of another Muslim state, Palestine, in the heart of the Middle East, which could end up being just as much of a threat to the Jewish state as a nuclear Iran. Israeli analysts have recognized this threat. They know that Kosovo is to Serbia what Jerusalem is to Israel. Bush, of course, is the first U.S. president to campaign for the creation of an Arab/Muslim Palestinian state. He encouraged the elections that brought the terrorist group Hamas to power in the Palestinian territories. Does McCain favor this suicidal approach for the state of Israel? Or does Israel's security lie in asserting its own sovereignty and building a border fence? McCain, of course, seems to have an aversion to border fences, at least when they are on the U.S. southern border.

Hillary Clinton was accused of lying about her visit to Bosnia when she was First Lady. The more important controversy is why the U.S. was militarily involved in Bosnia in the first place. The record shows that her husband approved the shipment of Iranian arms to the Bosnia Muslims so they could fight the Christian Serbs. Clinton then expanded that policy to helping the Muslims in Kosovo. So the Iranian influence that McCain warned about in his World Affairs Council speech has already been brought into the Balkans by the Clintons, in a policy that he supported all along.

If you have noticed the evidence that the Arab/Muslim bloc of nations benefited from the Clinton policy in the former Yugoslavia, then you have grasped an essential truth about what has led to the current precarious state of affairs. It should be noted that Osama bin Laden, who was accused of supporting the Muslim extremists in Bosnia and Kosovo, would go on to order an attack on the U.S. on 9/11, killing nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens. So he is clearly not grateful for the U.S. helping his Muslim brothers.

The lesson, which McCain says he recognizes in Iraq, is that the terrorists cannot be appeased. But he wants to appease the Muslim extremists, backed by bin Laden, in Kosovo.

The mystery is why President Bush, who authorized our soldiers to fight Muslim extremists in Iraq, embarked on this policy to accommodate them in Kosovo, and why McCain backs this wrong-headed approach. Some may see a conspiracy in this, but I prefer the stupidity theory of history. I don't think our foreign policy elites, and the politicians they control, are that smart about what constitutes the national security interest of the U.S. Bush may be under the manipulation of career bureaucrats in the State Department. They seem to have an inordinate influence on McCain as well.

Since the Democrats won't quarrel with McCain or Bush on this unfolding catastrophe, it is up to what used to be called an "adversary press" to raise this uncomfortable foreign policy problem. It is an emergency because another war could be on the horizon. This "adversary press" now includes, more than ever, conservative commentators and bloggers. But some of those blogs seem to be running more and more "McCain for President" advertisements. This is a bad sign.

McCain, in his Wednesday speech, seemed to go out of his way to offend the Russian government, making it clear that he doesn't regard the regime there as a democracy. He even wants to exclude Russia from the G-8 group. Russia, McCain said, does not qualify as a member of what he proposes as a global "League of Democracies." But how can democracies survive if their countries face dismemberment by groups of nations and alliances acting outside of established and acceptable modes of conduct? How does it benefit the U.S. to increase the membership of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) by adding states such as Bosnia and Kosovo?

Russia, which is promising to go to the aid of the Serbs remaining in Kosovo, has recognized the danger to its own territorial integrity. It doesn't want to see Chechnya, another potential member of the OIC, inspired to more violence in order to attract recognition as an independent Muslim state like Kosovo. A war with NATO forces in Kosovo cannot be ruled out.

Then the situation may get some serious media attention.

If foreign policy is McCain's strong suit, we are in serious trouble. His policy is the same as that of Democrats Hillary and Obama. And yet McCain says that Russia has a deficit of democracy.

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SerbBlog:

More on the McCain's support for the KLA and how his "generosity" was repaid with campaign cash, out of the mouths of Albanians:

"John McCain’s 24-hour detour from Florida netted $1 million at this Manhattan (Albanian) fund raiser.

Joesph Di Guardi: "Since 1998 when we had the problems with Milosevic, McCain has supported everything that we have asked him to do for the Albanian people, including to arm the KLA."


Here are a few of the KLA's little "antics":

1. Decapitation
   
2. Church Bombing
3. and Burning, then taking photos to show their friends while they urinate on the destroyed churches
   
4. Ethnic Cleansing of over 200,000 non-Albanians
   
5. Kidnapping & killing Serbs to sell the organs for transplants
6. Human Trafficking, including sex slaves
7. Drug Trafficking
   

Filing under, "Oh, the irony!": Right after the the UN declares that Kosovo is the heart of the Balkan drug route, McCain's wife and admitted ex-drug addict, Cindy McCain decides that she just has to take a trip to Kosovo, to be photographed with war criminal and mafia don -- excuse me -- "Prime Minister" Hashim "The Snake" Thaci.

Want drugs for free so that you don't have to steal them from your own "humanitarian" aid agency, Cindy? I am sure that Thaci is just the guy to help you out! After all your husband did for Thaci, I am sure that he will give you a very good price -- and if, (God Forbid) you make First Lady, I am sure that Thaci will keep you supplied for free!

My God, what country am I living in that the McCains have even the vaguest hope at the White House?

UN: Kosovo heart of Balkan drug route

NEW YORK -- The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has released a new report.

It warned that the axis between South American drug cartels and the Albanian mafia have reached "alarming proportions", while reports by several intelligence agencies show that Kosovo is a distribution center on the crossroads of global routes and pathways of drug trafficking.

This presents reason for concern, primarily because of the new pathways of drug trafficking, and "inclusion of cocaine in the range of products offered by the groups that are active along the Balkan drug route", the UNODC annual report for 2007 said.

The Albanian mafia has recently begun taking over the control of ports in Romania, in addition to the already solid network existing in Albania and Montenegro, the report said.

This warning by UNODC is the latest in a series of alarming reports by a number of agencies in charge of fighting organized crime, including the FBI, Interpol and Europol, which state that the Albanian mafia is the most serious criminal organization in Europe because it controls a huge part of the heroin trade in a number of European state - Switzerland, Greece, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Norway, and, recently, in Great Britain.

The western European heroin market, of which 40 to 75 percent is controlled by Albanians, brings annual earnings of around USD 7bn, which makes the trafficking in this type of narcotic by far the most profitable activity in the Balkans, western intelligence services have reported.

The territory that includes Albania, Kosovo and western Macedonia is a huge drug warehouse. Its contents are drugs measured not in kilograms, but in tons, a western diplomat posted in the Balkans said in a statement for Tanjug new agency, explaining how intelligence sources estimate that there are at least seven tons of heroin in this region at all times, ready to be moved to the West.

Former official of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Michael Levine has said that one of the wings of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was "linked with every known narco-cartel in the Middle East and the Far East", and that almost every European intelligence service and police has files on "connections between ethnic Albanian rebels and drug trafficking".

"Albania and Kosovo are the heart of the Balkan drug trade route which links Pakistan and Afghanistan with Europe. That route is worth around USD 7bn annually and around 80 percent of the heroin intended for the western European market is smuggled along this route," said a report presented to the U.S. Congress.

International representatives in Kosovo complained in the recent years that it is "difficult to estimate, in the complicated relations on the political scene of the Kosovo Albanians and ethnic Albanians in Macedonia or southern Serbia, whether politics controls organized crime or the mafia controls politicians".

The agency says it its report that it is "also possible, however, that organized criminal groups in Kosovo in fact have no influence on the authorities because they are actually those who are in power, as Italian General Fabio Mini said on his departure from the post of commander of KFOR, the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo".

IW: "Sorb-eee-Yhuh!"

It took me a while to discover where the guttural cries were coming from. The sounds in the air during the women’s final between Ana Ivanovic and Svetlana Kuznetsova were incomprehensible, but consistently so: something like “sorb-ee-yhuh!!!” was being hollered over and over, at different pitches and volumes. Then I glanced up to the very top of Indian Wells’ Stadium 1 and understood. There a small pack of wild youths had taken over a section of the cheap seats and unfurled the red, blue, and white flag of Serbia (“sorb-ee-yhuh!!!”). A few glances later I noticed a second, smaller, black flag beneath them that read, “Kosovo is Serbia.”

The soccer-match intensity and nationalist fervor was jarring in an arena filled with the docile, golf-hatted tennis fans of California. Needless to say they weren’t going to be any match for the Serbs, even if some of them harbored a deep, previously unrevealed passion for Kuznetsova. It was also hard to connect the Serbian fans with the object of their affections at the bottom of the stadium. Ana Ivanovic’s personality can be described in many ways, but “guttural” is not one that comes immediately to mind.

That doesn’t mean she isn’t tough. You know how some athletes are described as “sneaky fast”? Ivanovic is “sneaky tough.” Her walk is delicate, her speech guileless, her fist-pump less-than-terrifying, and she’s wilted under pressure in the past. Today Ivanovic played a cagey match, a scrappy match, a veteran match. When she missed, she went right back with a big shot in the same direction; if that didn’t work, she bailed herself out with clutch serving. She took her time between points and never looked anything other than composed, even at her worst moments.

After another scratchy, momentum-less, hit-and-miss start—is this an Ivanovic specialty?—the Serb decided to take a step forward and create a little momentum at just the right moment. With Kuznetsova serving at 4-4, Ivanovic let fly with a backhand winner for 15-30, drilled a forehand winner for 30-40, and then moved into the court and put together a pretty one-two forehand combo, first crosscourt and then down the line for the break. It was the first moment of strategic focus in the match that had been sustained for longer than a single point.

Contrast it with the play of Kuznetsova, who, as you may have heard, has now lost eight of her last nine finals. This was the first time I’d watched her at length this week, and I’d forgotten how messy her game can be. Nobody makes as many athletic moves as Kuznetsova; the problem is, she makes so many of them in the wrong direction. How many times have you seen her go for the corners while falling backward or sideways onto her back foot. She always seems to be in her own version of no man’s land; she has the shots to dictate every point, but she never settles down and takes over the center of the court, which is what Ivanovic did at 4-4 in the first.

We’ve learned three things about Ivanovic this week: She can win a big tournament as a No. 1 seed and favorite; she’s entrenched herself at No. 2 in the world; and, most important, she’s learning, rapidly, how to win. That doesn’t just mean hammering winners at 4-4. It means saving a break point with a service winner, getting a return in the court at 30-30, and following up a break by winning the first point of the next service game, which Ivanovic did at 5-4 in the first set. She went on to hold at love and never lost focus after that.

By the time the Serb fans' second hero, Novak Djokovic, took the court, they were a bit more subdued (they would take down the “Kosovo is Serbia” sign at the tournament’s request; it gave us too much to consider on a hot afternoon in the desert, I suppose). Djokovic, of course, didn’t need any fans. He came out in his usual flawless way, his clothes and hat brilliant white, his wristbands fastidiously mismatched, and his pinpoint game perfectly organized.

I’ve always liked a fast starter, a guy who comes out having already found his range by the end of the first point. Nadal is like that, and Djokovic even more so. Today he won eight of the first nine points, quieting a pro-Fish crowd and heading off any thought in his opponent’s head that he could ride the momentum he had going yesterday.

But Djokovic is different from champions like Federer, who, once they get you down, step on the gas and offer no hope whatsoever. The Serb often mysteriously stalls just when you think he has the match in his grasp. It happened today when he was up a set and serving at 4-2 in the second. He chose that point to miss three backhands and double-fault to give the break back (in the presser afterward he said he was “really nervous”). Suddenly Fish found the momentum he had lost from the previous day. The forehand winners were back with a vengeance and Djokovic found himself in a third set.

It got worse in the first game, when he went down 0-40 on his serve. While Djokovic is not a supreme front-runner yet, he chose this moment to remind us of what type of champion he is and will continue to be: The kind who hits three aces in a row to stop his opponent’s momentum in it tracks. Some romantics of sport might say this is the time when the great ones “raise their games,” as if these things are done by choice. I would say that Djokovic is simply the type of player who can hit three aces in a row at a moment when all signs say he shouldn’t. Djokovic is not a momentum-rider, he’s a momentum-stopper. Better, he’s able to ignore momentum altogether, which requires a deep confidence that can’t be shaken from one game to the next.

The missiles had been fired, the message had been sent, and the match was over in three swings. Fish never seriously threatened again. Even when he was smoking service returns deep into the court, Djokovic parried them with his fast-handed open-stance defensive forehand (another form of momentum-stopper). The gates were closed for good.

Djokovic came into his presser looking, as always, bigger than you think he is. Big head, big sneakers, lots of hair, long arms—a jock through and through. How did he feel about representing his country and his wild pack of fans in the stands? He said “athletes are the biggest ambassadors for their countries,” but declined to do more politically other than his “job," which is playing tennis. Ivanovic had said much the same thing in her own press conference. She claimed she didn’t know much about politics, but it was important to “represent your country well.”

These might sound like safe answers coming from an American athlete. But they have a different ring coming from Serbians. The faces and names that have come to my mind in recent years when I think of Serbia have been the ones I’ve seen on TV: Milosevic and Karadzic. Now there are new faces—confident, intelligent, youthful, successful faces—from Serbia to put in their place. That's "political" contribution enough in my mind. Djokovic and Ivanovic would be winners wherever they came from and whatever they did. Tennis, with its international, meritocratic nature, should be proud that it has provided the stage for them

‘See you when I return with gold from Beijing’

Serbia’s top swimmer Milorad Cavic’s suspension imposed be the European Swimming Federation (LEN) on the swimmer at the European Championships in Eindhoven, Holland has been lifted. The federation disqualified the Serbian swimmer for wearing a T-shirt at the medals ceremony that read “Kosovo is Serbia”. The rationale behind the ruling is yet to be made officially announced, while the 50-metre European record holder in the butterfly event is anxious to be informed of the LEN’s verdict.


- “The suspension has expired and I can continue competing. Gross injustice was done to me in Eindhoven, but what matters now is that it’s all behind me and that I can resume my preparations for the Beijing Games. It’s really important to me that the truth become known and I hope it happens soon. I would be most pleased if the suspension was overturned,” said Milorad Cavic during his reception at the office of acting Belgrade mayor Zoran Alimpic.
Cavic leaves for the USA, where he is to continue with his preparations for the Olympic Games. His primary goal remains a medal at the Beijing Games, followed by the swimmer’s celebrations of the silverware with the fans in Belgrade.

- “I have seen on TV many times before how our national teams were welcomed outside the Belgrade City Hall after winning tournaments, and I truly hope I’ll be in their shoes one day. I think I have realistic chances of winning a medal in Beijing,” adds Cavic.

Zoran Alimpic, acting Belgrade City mayor, granted the European swimming champion a book on Serbian history and promised him a reception outside the Hall on his victorious return from the Olympic Games.

- “European Swimming Federation have made a dreadful mistake when they suspended Milorad. The writing on his shirt that read “Kosovo is Serbia” is more of a geographic than political message, as Kosovo is part of Serbia. I trust Milorad will soon forget all about this incident and focus on his preparations for the Olympics. If he wins a medal we will most definitely organize a marvellous reception for him,” says Alimpic, who announced that the City of Belgrade will financially support all Serbian Olympic athletes with 40,000 Dinars of monthly reward.

What will Belgrade do to provide training conditions worthy of a 100-metre butterfly world record holder?

- “We can’t talk about conditions for a single athlete but of improvement of sports facilities for all our athletes. We are aware the conditions aren’t the best there are, but we hope they will improve in time,” concludes acting Belgrade mayor Zoran Alimpic.

Ninth Anniversary of NATO attack on Serbia

BELGRADE -- Today marks the ninth anniversary of the start of the 1999 NATO attacks on Serbia.

May 7, 1999, Niš (Tanjug, archive)

The bombing campaign, officially against then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ), was conducted by 19 armies of the Alliance's member states.

The sustained attacks lasted for 11 weeks, or 78 days, killing between 1,200 and 2,500 people, according to different estimates.

Official data shows that 1,002 members of then Yugoslav Army and Serbian MUP were killed, along with around 2,500 civilians, including 89 children. 10,000 people were wounded.

Serbia's infrastructure, commercial buildings, schools, healthcare institutions, media outlets and monuments of culture sustained heavy damage during the war.

The targets included the state television, RTS, when on April 23, 1999, 16 employees were killed in an airstrike.

The attacks began on March 24, 1999, a little after 20:00 CET, after then NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana gave the order to start the bombing.

The government in Belgrade declared the state of war the same night.

The bombing campaign, that the SRJ authorities but also numerous legal experts said was aggression on a sovereign country, started after failed talks in Paris between ethnic Kosovo Albanians and Belgrade authorities.

April 4, 1999, Novi Sad (Tanjug, archive)

Estimates differ as to the material damage done to Serbia. The government of that time asked for compensation of damages that it said ran into about USD 100bn. But G17 Plus economists believe the number is at USD 30bn.

NATO's war against Serbia ended on June 10, when the United Nations adopted the still valid Resolution 1244.

NATO used aircraft carriers, four air force bases in Italy, and also bases in Western Europe and the United States to carry out the attacks.

Germany, France, the U.S. and Italy participated with most soldiers.

UNHCR data shows that after the arrival of the NATO ground forces in the province, some 230,000 Serbs and Romas fled to central Serbia, escaping ethnic violence against them perpetrated by Kosovo's Albanians.

Another wave of violence and ethnic cleansing took place on March 17-19, 2004, when 4,000 Serbs were also exiled from their homes.

At the end of the war in 1999, as the Serbs were driven out, some 800,000 Albanians, who left the province after the start of the bombing to escape the war, returned to their homes.

Numerous incidents that followed against Serbs and other non-Albanians resulted in the kidnapping and murder of some 1,500 people. Albanian sources put this number at 500.

UNHCR data presented by the government in Priština also said that 16,500 of those driven out have since returned, 45 percent of them Serbs.

Victims' families, associations, politicians mark the day

Samardžić, Koštunica arrive at St. Marko's church (FoNet)

Leading Belgrade City Hall officials, representatives of political parties and veteran associations Monday commemorated nine years since the beginning of the NATO campaign of air strikes on the country, by laying wreaths at monuments and paying tribute to the victims.

President Boris Tadić and Defense Minister Dragan Šutanovac also honored the victims at different memorials in the capital.

Acting Deputy Mayor of Belgrade Radmila Hristanovi, laid a wreath at the grave of Milica Rakić, a three-year-old killed in her home by a piece of shrapnel from a bomb dropped on Belgrade's northern suburb of Batajnica.

Belgrade Assembly Deputy President Milorad Perović was at a monument dedicated to seven Guard Brigade members and three patients killed by a bomb that hit the Dr. Dragiša Mišović Clinical and Hospital Center of Belgrade.

Representatives of the Association of 1990s War Veterans, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and the Belgrade Municipality of Rakovica, laid wreaths at a monument on Straževica Hill, southern Belgrade.

Hrustanović, and Šutanovac, were also honoring the Air Defense soldiers killed in the defense of Belgrade.

Acting Mayor of Belgrade Zoran Alimpić laid a wreath at the monument to the Serbian Radio Television, RTS, employees killed at their place of work during the NATO campaign.

"This is yet another anniversary of the bombardment of Serbia, and in Belgrade we are marking that day by placing wreaths at places where our fellow Belgraders were killed," Alimpić said on that occasion, adding that everyone should "do everything so that such things are not repeated ever again."

A service for all the victims of the NATO air campaign was held at St. Marko's Church in central Belgrade, attended by Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica.

Belgrade was attacked on the very first day of the NATO bombing, on March 24, 1999. Bombs were dropped on the suburb of Jakovo and on the airfield in Batajnica.

During the 78 days of this NATO campaign of air strikes, the capital suffered with almost all RTS transmitters destroyed, as was the TV tower on Mt. Avala, the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the building of the Yugoslav Army General Staff, and, two hours after midnight on April 23, bombs hit the RTS building in central Belgrade, killing 16 employees and inflicting grave injuries on four others.

Commemorations are ongoing in other cities and towns throughout the country.

Former Kosovo Peacekeeper Becomes a Voice for Persecuted Christians

PEACE SEEKER Massillon, OH resident D. Hunter Haynes, a former police officer and a United Nations peacekeeper in Kosovo, is founder of the Orthodox Christian Advocacy Institute, which seeks to investigate incidents of religious persecution around the world. Haynes said thousands Christians are killed every year in persecutions. REPOSITORY PHOTO MICHAEL S. BALASH

MASSILLON, OH - D. Hunter Haynes said when he traveled to Kosovo in 2000, he was seeking adventure. What he found was a personal mission to raise awareness of religious persecution around the world.

Haynes, 41, who went to Kosovo as a U.N. peacekeeper, said at least 150 Orthodox churches have been systematically destroyed or profaned there; the result of fighting between Serbs, and Albanians, Kosovo's majority population.

In response, he started the Orthodox Christian Advocacy Institute, a company that investigates incidents of religious persecution — particularly involving Orthodox Christians — around the world.

"I've thought about doing this for a couple of years," said Haynes, who has a tiny office in downtown Massillon decorated with Orthodox icons, maps, and books from his great-grandfather's library. Haynes moved his family to Massillon after graduating from Ohio State University in January. His wife, Valerie, is from Waynesburg.

A lifelong Presbyterian, Haynes said that what he witnessed in Kosovo, led to his conversion to Orthodoxy.

"With my experience, I thought, 'How can I benefit the church?'" he said. "I felt responsible to do some kind of human-rights work."

HOT SPOTS

A former Marine, and a police officer and sheriff's deputy for 12 years, Haynes was recruited for the U.N. peacekeeping force by DynCorp, a private contractor, for the U.S. Department of State. From September 2000 through Sept. 19, 2001, he was a precinct captain at one of 34 police stations in Kosovo.

"After the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999, the United Nations set up an interim government in Kosovo," he explained. "They wanted a civilian police force, but how do you do that? They decided to import veteran officers for training. It sounded like a worthy cause. I believe it was."

Haynes said there remains a disconnect about religious persecutions, even among Western Orthodox Christians

"Kosovo's just the top of the iceberg," he said. "In at least 12 hot spots around the world where Orthodox churches are present, where people are being killed daily."

'STILL GOING ON'

Because Serbs are a minority in Kosovo, Haynes said many live in heavily fortified enclaves. "They were basically unprotected. The Albanian paramilitary attacked them. The most disturbing thing we found out is that after we were on the ground, that's when the killing of Serbs began and the churches were destroyed. It's still going on."

When Kosovo emerged in 1999 after war unraveled Yugoslavia, the U.N. and NATO placed the region under the sovereignty of Serbia. On Feb. 18, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. The U.S., Great Britain, France, Italy, Turkey, Albania and Germany recognize the new Republic of Kosovo. Serbia, Russia and Spain contest it.

Haynes said his goal is to provide information so that church authorities and human-rights advocates can voice their concerns to policy makers, who can exert economic and diplomatic pressure on governments.

"The international laws are on the books," he said. "They just need to honor them. That hasn't been done."

ACCOUNTABLE TO LAW

Haynes plans to submit his findings to Christian periodicals, government agencies and human rights groups. Every year, the federal government publishes the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

"But there isn't a lot said about Kosovo," he said, "But this isn't just about Kosovo. I won't hesitate to speak out about persecution of other religions.

"This is an issue that affects everyone on certain levels. Everybody has a right to religious freedom. ... My goal is to visit 50 churches per year and do two overseas investigations per year."

Haynes doesn't charge a fee for his services, but does accept donations, explaining that OCAI isn't nonprofit because the Internal Revenue Service restricts what representatives of nonprofits can say politically.

He says that 170,000 Christians are killed every year for their beliefs.

"The facts are not a secret," he said. "We need to wake up and be vigilant and hold governments and officials accountable to the law."

For information, visit www.ocai.info

Bush's failed Kosovo policy

Published: March 20, 2008 at 12:23 PM

By ROBERT M. HAYDEN
PITTSBURGH, March 20 (UPI) -- Fighting in northern Kosovo this week between Serbs and NATO-led troops shows that the independence engineered by the Bush administration for the breakaway Balkan province is not going according to plan.

When U.S. officials encouraged the unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia by Kosovo's Albanians Feb. 17, we were told that an EU mission would replace the United Nations in Kosovo, and everyone would then build a multiethnic, democratic society with respect for rights of the Serbs, a minority in the province as a whole.

That is not happening.

The Serbs of northern Kosovo, where they are a majority, believe that they have little future in an Albanian state. They have resisted its imposition on them, mainly through peaceful means, except for destroying the control posts on the border that they do not recognize despite U.S. insistence that they must.

The protests turned violent when U.N. police with NATO backing forcibly broke up the peaceful occupation of a government building Monday -- and the ensuing fighting left hundreds of Serb civilians, U.N. police and NATO-led troops injured, some critically, and one U.N. policeman dead.

The EU mission cannot enter northern Kosovo and the United Nations was forced to pull out, leaving NATO troops to guard a border that has no status under international law and that is rejected by the people living on both sides of it.

The problem is not that "Serb nationalists" are resisting "the West," as it is put by those U.S. journalists who honor the First Amendment by parroting the State Department, but rather that the Bush administration has attempted to force a military solution to a political problem, in violation of the U.N. charter and the most basic principles of international law.

This is not the first time they have done so, of course, and if the scale of violence in Kosovo is less than that in Iraq, the possibility of destabilizing another region -- this time the Balkans -- is just as grave.

Kosovo really was the birthplace of the Serbian nation 800 years ago, and was included in Serbia after the Ottoman Empire was forced out in 1912. But Albanians also always lived there. Demographic changes in the 20th century (some caused by ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the region during Italian occupation in World War II) led to a heavy ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo by the 1980s, and Serbia's continued control over the province required a police state.

But the Serbian hand in Kosovo was no heavier than Britain's rule of Ireland in the decades before Irish independence in 1923, or Israel's occupation of the West Bank until the Oslo accords, or Turkey's continuing control over the Kurdish-majority regions in eastern Turkey. And these situations usually end when the governing state realizes that maintaining control is too costly, in financial, political and even moral terms, and seeks a deal to permit withdrawal.

Such a deal could have been reached with Serbia, but neither the Clinton administration nor that of George W. Bush wanted one. Both saw Kosovo as an opportunity for isolating Russia from the Balkans for the first time in more than a century, since Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, never one of the world's great strategic thinkers, had chosen to ally Serbia with, first, the Soviet Union and then with Russia. Further, with the apparent end of the Cold War, NATO needed a job, since the alliance had been formed to keep the Soviet Union from invading West Germany. Attacking Serbia to "liberate" Kosovo was meant to transform NATO from a purely defensive alliance into a more proactive or offensive one, contrary to NATO's own charter, but responding to a certain realpolitik.

The most basic principle of international law since World War II, however, and the most fundamental principle of the U.N. system, is that aggressive wars are banned -- that was the justification the first George Bush gave for attacking Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the whole world except for North Korea agreed with him. But attacking a sovereign state in order to occupy part of its territory and ultimately change its borders is another story. Unfortunately for international law and international stability, NATO's action against Serbia in 1999 was just such a war of aggression, waged without U.N. Security Council approval.

And it did not go as planned. As the State Department itself admitted in May 1999, once NATO attacked Serbia, Milosevic's forces turned what had been "selective targeting of towns and regions" suspected of armed Albanian resistance into a campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Albanians. This is worth repeating -- the 1999 NATO war against Serbia was not in response to ethnic cleansing but rather provoked it, which then made it necessary to carry the war on for three months in order to reverse the consequences of the NATO attacks themselves.

The 1999 war only ended when the Clinton administration went back to the U.N. Security Council that it had ignored in starting it. The resulting U.N. resolution recognized Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo. Since Russia does not feel obligated to assist the United States in isolating it from the Balkans, that resolution cannot be changed.

And rather than try to negotiate a solution, the Bush administration chose to try to impose one, in part to show the weakness of Russia.

But Kosovo is not recognized by most countries, or by the United Nations, or even by the European Union. Kosovo cannot achieve true independence unless and until the Kosovo Albanians reach a deal with Serbia -- exactly the course of action that the Bush administration has made more complicated than ever. Meanwhile, the whole system of international law is threatened, as is local peace in Kosovo and stability in the Balkans.

Kosovo can be settled if the Bush administration returns to the United Nations and engages in honest negotiation with the Serbs and the Russians. More fundamentally, stability in the international system can only be restored when the United States once again honors the fundamental principles of international law that it violated by attacking Iraq in 2003, and in recognizing Kosovo in 2008.-

(Robert M. Hayden is professor of anthropology, law and public & international affairs and director of the Center for Russian & East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.)

Bosnia arrests five Wahhabis for suspected terrorist activity

Sarajevo, 21 March: Five persons suspected of trafficking weapons, military equipment and planning acts of terrorism have been arrested in Sarajevo, the BiH [Bosnia-Hercegovina] Prosecution has confirmed for SRNA.

Acting on the Prosecution's orders, anti-terror officers from the BiH Federation MUP [Interior Ministry] searched four premises in Sarajevo and two in Bugojno, and arrested five people on suspicion that they were trafficking arms and military equipment, but there is also indication that they were planning acts of terrorism.

The Federation MUP has finished dealing with the suspects and today they are expected to be handed over to the BiH Prosecution for questioning. The Prosecution has 24 hours to decide on whether to remand them in custody.

According to unconfirmed information, all the suspects are Bosnian citizens and members of the Wahhabi radical Islamic movement.

Federation MUP spokesperson Robert Cvrtak has announced that a statement will be issued later on today on this highly risky operation.

The Prosecution and the MUP have declined to reveal the identity of the arrested persons with the explanation that the police action is not over yet.

EarthTimes: "Serbia's Euro-champ suspended over Kosovo shirt"

Belgrade - Belgrade said Friday the European Swimming Federation (LEN) decision to suspend the Serbian champion Milorad Cavic over a shirt with a political message was "scandalous."

"Great injustice was inflicted on our swimmer after he revealed his opinion ... that Kosovo is a part of Serbia," Sports Minister (Ms.) Snezana Samardzic-Markovic told the Tanjug news agency.

Cavic was suspended from the rest of the European Swimming Championship in Eindhoven, Holland, because he wore a shirt saying "Kosovo is Serbia" after winning the 50-metre butterfly race, setting a new European record.

The decision has ruled out Cavic's bid for gold in 100m butterfly and freestyle races. The decision could not be appealed, reports said.

"He is particularly disappointed because he has been feeling so well," his manager Petar Popovic said, describing the LEN decision as "unsensible and unexpected.""

He is in excellent form and hardly anybody could have resisted him," Popovic said.
"it was implied that Cavic was politically active, but I think it is LEN dabbing in politics much more," the manager said. "I wonder what they would have said if he wore a shirt saying 'Free Tibet'."

He was also fined 7,000 euros for violating security and safety rules prohibiting political activity in sports, Tanjug quoted LEN as saying.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February and was recognized by leading Western nations. Serbia rejects the independence and is backed by many of its athletes, such as tennis star Novak Djokovic.

Target America: Global Jihad and the Planned Destruction of National Sovereignty

By Cliff Kincaid

(Excerpt) The recent burning of the U.S. Embassy in Serbia was a response to the Bush Administration recognizing Kosovo’s separation and independence from Serbia. Kosovo represents the religious heritage of Serbia's Christians and many Christian churches have already been destroyed by Muslim extremists there. Taking Kosovo from Serbia is comparable to taking Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people, from Israel.

President Bush said that Kosovo, in its declaration of independence on February 17, had “willingly assumed the responsibilities assigned to it under the Ahtisaari Plan.” President Bush said that the United States formally recognized Kosovo as a sovereign and independent nation. But who is Ahtisaari? Martti Ahtisaari is the United Nations envoy who arranged for the process that led to Kosovo’s independence. But he was accused of taking bribes to bring this about. The charges have not been investigated by either the U.N. or the U.S. State Department.

Analysts Greg Copley and Dr. Marios Evriviades have coined terms for two of the phenomena which we are witnessing today: cratocide, the murder of nations; and cratogenesis, the birth of nations. Copley says, “That’s what we will see increasingly over the coming few decades as the world re-defines its structures: nations disappearing and appearing.”

Hillary Clinton didn’t mention Kosovo in her February 25 foreign policy speech at George Washington University, except to say it was one of the “challenging spots” on the “global map.” However, the attendance of her “long time friend” General Wesley Clark at the event spoke volumes. Clark ran her husband’s illegal war there, on behalf of Muslim extremists, and she supported it.

Clark, who insists that the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq was a misjudgment based on scanty evidence, ran Clinton’s NATO war against Yugoslavia on behalf of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Thousands of innocent people in Serbia, Yugoslavia’s main province, were killed to stop an alleged "genocide" by Yugoslavia against Kosovo that was not in fact taking place. Investigations determined that a couple thousand had died in the civil war there..... (Read the Rest at usasurvival.org PDF file)

Kosovo and Washington’s Strategic Agenda for Europe and Eurasia

By F. William Engdahl, 3 March 2008

The declaration of Kosovo independence has been rapidly greeted with official diplomatic recognition by Washington and select EU countries including Germany. That independence and its recognition, unfortunately, openly violate UN resolutions for Kosovo and make a farce of the entire UN rule of international law. The new regime is headed by man identified by Interpol as well as German BND intelligence reports as a criminal, a boss of Kosovo organized crime responsible for drug running, extortion and prostitution. The important question is why Washington has pressured Europe into accepting the travesty now called the Republic of Kosovo?

Kosovo is a tiny parcel of land in one of the most strategic locations in all Europe from a standpoint of US military objectives of controlling oil flows and political developments from the oil-rich Middle East to Russia and Western Europe. The current US-led recognition of the self-declared Republic of Kosovo is a continuation of US policy for the Balkans since the illegal 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Serbia, a NATO “out-of-area” deployment never approved by the UN Security Council, allegedly on the premise that Milosevic’s army was on the verge of carrying out a genocidal massacre of Kosovo Albanians.

Some months before the US-led bombing of Serbian targets, one of the heaviest bombings since World War II, a senior US intelligence official in private conversation told Croatian officers in Zagreb about Washington’s strategy for former Yugoslavia. According to these reports, communicated privately to this author, the Pentagon goal was to take control of Kosovo in order to secure a military base to control the entire southeast European region down to the Middle East oil lands.

Since June 1999 when the NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) occupied Kosovo, then an integral part of then-Yugoslavia, Kosovo has been under a United Nations mandate, UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Russia and China also agreed to that mandate, which specifies the role of KFOR to ensure cessation of inter-ethnic fighting and atrocities between the Serb minority population, others and the Kosovo Albanian Islamic majority. Under 1244 Kosovo would remain part of Serbia pending a peaceful resolution of its status. That UN Resolution has been ignored by the US, German and EU parties.

Germany’s and Washington’s prompt recognition of Kosovo’s independence in February 2008, significantly, came days after elections for President in Serbia confirmed pro-Washington Boris Tadic had won a second four year term. With Tadic’s post secured, Washington could count on a compliant Serbian reaction to its support for Kosovo. To date that seems the case.

Camp Bondsteel

The US strategic agenda for Kosovo is primarily military, and its prime focus is against Russia and for control of oil flows from the Caspian Sea to the Middle East into Western Europe. By declaring its independence, Washington gains a weak state which it can fully control. So long as it remained a part of Serbia, that NATO military control would be politically insecure. Today Kosovo is controlled as a military satrapy of NATO, whose KFOR has 16,000 troops there for a tiny population of 2 millions.

US-NATO military control of Kosovo serves several purposes for Washington’s greater geo-strategic agenda. First it enables greater US control over potential oil and gas pipeline routes into the EU from the Caspian and Middle East as well as control of the transport corridors linking the EU to the Black Sea. It also protects the multi-billion dollar heroin trade, which, significantly, has grown to record dimensions in Afghanistan according to UN narcotics officials, since the US occupation. Kosovo and Albania are major heroin transit routes into Europe. According to a just -released 2008 US State Department annual report on international narcotics traffic, several key drug trafficking routes pass through the Balkans. Kosovo is mentioned as a key point for the transfer of heroin from Turkey and Afghanistan to Western Europe. Those drugs reportedly flow under the watchful eye of the Thaci government.

Since its dealings with the Meo tribesmen in Laos during the Vietnam era, the CIA has protected narcotics traffic in key locations in order partly to finance its covert operations. The scale of international narcotics traffic today is such that major US banks such as Citigroup are reported to derive a significant share of their profits from laundering the proceeds.

Immediately after the bombing of Serbia in 1999 the Pentagon seized a 1000 acre large parcel of land in Kosovo at Uresevic near the border to Macedonia, and awarded a contract to Halliburton when Dick Cheney was CEO there, to build one of the largest US overseas military bases in the world, Camp Bondsteel, with more than 7000 troops today.

Recognizing a mafia state?

One of the notable features of the indecent rush by Washington and other states to immediately recognize the independence of Kosovo is the fact that they well know its present government and both major political parties are in fact run by Kosovo Albanian organized crime.

Hashim Thaci, President of Kosovo and head of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, is the former leader of the terrorist organization which the US and NATO trained and called the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, or in Albanian, UCK. In 1997, President Clinton’s Special Balkans Envoy, Robert Gelbard described the LKA as, “without any question a terrorist group.” It was far more. It was a klan-based mafia, impossible therefore to infiltrate, which controlled the underground black economy of Kosovo. Today the Democratic Party of Thaci, according to European police sources, retains its links to organized crime.

A February 22, 2005 67 page German BND report, labeled Top Secret, which has been leaked, stated,

“Über die Key-Player (wie z. B. Haliti, Thaci, Haradinaj) bestehen engste Verflechtungen zwischen Politik, Wirtschaft und international operierenden OK-Strukturen im Kosovo. Die dahinter stehenden kriminellen Netzwerke fördern dort die politische Instabilität. Sie haben kein Interesse am Aufbau einer funktionierenden staatlichen Ordnung, durch die ihre florierenden Geschäfte beeinträchtigt werden können.“

(OK=Organized Crime; Translation: “Through the key players—for example Thaci, Haliti, Haradinaj—there is the closest interlink between politics, the economy and international organized crime in Kosovo. The criminal organizations in the background there foster political instability. They have no interest at all in the building of a functioning orderly state that could be detrimental to their booming business.”)

The KLA began action in 1996 with the bombing of refugee camps housing Serbian refugees from the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. The KLA repeatedly called for the “liberation” of areas of Montenegro, Macedonia and parts of Northern Greece. Thaci is hardly a figure of regional stability to put it mildly.

The 39 year old Thaci was a personal protégé of Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during the 1990s, when he was a mere 30-year old gangster. The KLA was supported from the outset by the CIA and the German BND. During the 1999 war the KLA was directly supported by NATO. At the time he was picked up by the USA in the mid-1990s, Thaci was founder of the Drenica Group, a criminal syndicate in Kosovo with ties to Albanian, Macedonian and Italian organized mafias. A classified January 2007 report prepared for the EU Commission, labeled “VS-Nur für den Dienstgebrauch” was leaked to the media. It detailed the organized criminal activity of KLA and its successor Democratic Party under Thaci.

The question then becomes, why are Washington, NATO, the EU and inclusive and importantly, the German Government, so eager to legitimize the breakaway Kosovo? The answer is not hard to find. A Kosovo run internally by organized criminal networks is easy for NATO to control. It insures a weak state which is far easier to bring under NATO domination.

The Thaci dependence on US and NATO good graces insures Thaci’s government will do what it is asked. That, in turn, assures the US a major military gain consolidating its permanent presence in the strategically vital southeast Europe. It is a major step in consolidating NATO control of Eurasia, and gives the US a large swing its way in the European balance of power. Little wonder Moscow has not welcomed the development, nor have numerous other states. The US is literally playing with dynamite in the Balkans.

No "Freedom of Speech" for Serbs on Kosovo

EINDHOVEN, Netherlands - A Serb swimmer could face disciplinary action for wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "Kosovo is Serbia" during the gold-medal ceremony at the European swimming championships.

Milorad Cavic, an American-born Serb, said Thursday he was just trying to send "positive energy" to the country he represents as he accepted his medal Wednesday night for winning the 50-metre butterfly in a European record time of 23.11 seconds.

European swimming's governing body LEN said in a statement that Cavic had been called to face a disciplinary hearing Thursday night.

"I'm afraid of the worst," Cavic told The Associated Press. "A suspension is the worst they can do to me. That is the death sentence."

A suspension would disrupt Cavic's preparations for the Beijing Olympics.

Photos and images of Cavic in his red T-shirt were carried by Serb television stations, but the emphasis was more on his victory and record than his T-shirt. The country's president and prime minister congratulated Cavic on his win.

"I didn't do it to provoke anger, I didn't do it to provoke violence," Cavic said. "The country is torn apart and . . . my goal was just to uplift them."

Kosovo, a former Serbian province with an ethnic Albanian majority, declared independence Feb. 17 and has been recognized by countries including Canada, the U.S., Japan and powerful European Union nations.

However, Belgrade strongly objects to losing a province many Serbs consider the historical cradle of the nation. The Serbian government says the independence declaration was illegal and recalled ambassadors from nations that have recognized Kosovo as a new nation.

Kosovo had not been under Serbian control since a NATO force moved in on the heels of massive air strikes in'99 that ended a brutal Serb crackdown on secessionist rebels in the province.

Cavic, who trains in the United States, said his red T-shirt, with the text written in the Cyrillic alphabet widely used in Serbia, was just sending a message of support to the country he swims for, not making a political statement.

"What is my wearing a shirt going to do to change the minds of the United States, United Nations or European Union," he said. "This is already a done deal. All I wanted to do was uplift my people. My only role here was to be a leader and transfer positive energy."

Note: An interview with Milorad "Mike" Cavic last month is here

Global Research: Correspondence between German Politicians Reveals the Hidden Agenda behind Kosovo's "Independence"

Or: How NATO broke international law in drive to match Rome’s “greatest territorial expansion”

by Aleksandar Pavić

To all those still trying to get at the bottom of the recent US-led unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s “independence” completely outside of the UN framework and America’s willingness to destabilize not just relations with Russia but the entire international order, no document provides a clearer or more cogent explanation of the entire process than the following piece of correspondence.

In a strikingly frank letter to then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, of May 2, 2000, in the form of a report from a State Department/American Enterprise Institute-sponsored conference in Bratislava, Slovakia (“Is Euro-Atlantic Integration Still on Track? Opportunities and Obstacles,” held on April 28-30, 2000), Willy Wimmer, then member of the German Bundestag and Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), succinctly lays out the causes of NATO’s 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, the purposes behind NATO’s further enlargement toward the borders of Russia, and, most importantly from the aspect of global security, the US aim of undermining the international legal order as part of its vision of succeeding the Roman Empire at the height of its territorial expansion.

The conference itself was held at a very high level, with several prime ministers, foreign ministers and defense ministers from Central European countries in attendance, along with high-level State Department, OSCE and NATO officials, and representatives of high profile international NGO’s and think tanks

(see http://www.aei.org/research/nai/events/pageID.440,projectID.11/default.asp for a complete list of participants and http://www.aei.org/research/nai/events/pageID.439,projectID.11/default.asp for the conference agenda), including Richard Perle and Daniel Fried, current U.S. Assistant Secretary of State.

The fact that the correspondence between two of Germany’s and Europe’s highest officials pertains to a conference that took place almost 8 years ago does not make it any less relevant. Quite the contrary. Looking back at the events that have taken place since, and especially having in mind the “Kosovo parliament’s” “Declaration of Independence” of February 17, 2008, and the subsequent lightning-quick recognition of the new “state” on the part of the US and its closest, mostly Western allies, Willy Wimmer’s letter is not just a prophecy, but a roadmap, both of certain key events in Europe of the previous 8 years (expanding NATO to Rumania and Bulgaria “in order to secure a land connection with Turkey,” “permanently excluding Serbia out of European development,” establishing an unhindered US military presence in ex-Yugoslavia – Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo – etc.) and of events (soon?) to come (“undermining the international legal order,” “favoring peoples’ rights to self-determination over all other provisions or rules of international law,” etc.) on the international scene, including, most likely, a descent into disorder on a global scale.

In a subsequent interview given to a German foreign policy magazine (an excerpt of which was translated into English and posted on the site of New Serbian Political Thought, an influential Serbian political periodical - http://www.nspm.org.yu/Prikazi/nspm_on_english/2008_wimer1.htm), Wimmer further elaborated on the points made in his letter, revealing, among other things, that the US is using the Balkans to cushion the fallout with Muslim states over its Mid-East policies, but also, following in Bismarck’s footsteps, to keep the rest of Europe off balance by encouraging unrest in that region, which, as an added bonus, is a good way to spoil European-Russian relations.

If there were any doubts as to the aggressive nature of the US-led policy regarding Kosovo (and Europe as a whole), the following letter will almost certainly dispel them. The same applies to all doubts as to whether the case of Kosovo’s secession and its US-led recognition as an independent state represents not just a grievous but a deliberate violation of international law and the wrecking of the post-World War II European and global order.

---

Mr. Gerhard Schröder

Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

Bundeskanzleramt
Schloßplatz 1
10178 Berlin

Berlin, May 2, 2000

Highly esteemed Mr. Chancellor,

At the end of last week I had the opportunity to attend a conference in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, jointly organized by the American State Department and the American Enterprise Institute (the foreign policy institute of the Republican Party). The main topics of the gathering were the Balkans and NATO enlargement.

The conference was attended by very high level political officials, as witnessed by the presence of a large number of prime ministers, as well as foreign ministers and defense ministers from the region. Among the numerous important points of discussion, certain themes deserve special mention:

1. The conference organizers demanded the speediest possible international recognition of an independent state of Kosovo within the circle of the allied states.
2. The organizers declared that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia lies outside of any legal framework, before all outside the Helsinki Final Act [on the inviolability of state borders – trans. note].
3. The European legal order presents an obstacle to carrying out the plans of NATO. In this sense, the American legal system is more suitable for application in Europe.
4. The war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was waged in order to rectify General Eisenhower’s erroneous decision during World War II. Therefore, for strategic reasons, American troops must be stationed there, in order to compensate for the missed opportunity from 1945.
5. The European allies participated in the war against Yugoslavia in order to, de facto, overcome the obstacle and dilemma that appeared after the adoption of NATO’s “New Strategic Concept” in April 1999, that is, the Europeans’ efforts to previously secure a UN or OSCE mandate.
6. Without denigrating the importance of the Europeans’ after-the-fact legalistic interpretation, namely that the expansion of NATO’s tasks beyond the treaty’s legal domain in the war against Yugoslavia was just an exception, it is nevertheless clear that this represented a precedent, to be invoked by anyone at any time, and that many others will follow the example in the future.
7. It would be good, during NATO’s current enlargement, to restore the territorial situation in the area between the Baltic Sea and Anatolia such as existed during the Roman Empire, at the time of its greatest power and greatest territorial expansion.
8. For this reason, Poland must be flanked to the north and to the south with democratic neighbor states, while Romania and Bulgaria are to secure a land connection with Turkey. Serbia (probably for the purposes of securing an unhindered US military presence) must be permanently excluded from European development.
9. North of Poland, total control over St. Petersburg’s access to the Baltic Sea must be established.
10. In all processes, peoples’ rights to self-determination should be favored over all other provisions or rules of international law.
11. The claim that, during its attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, NATO violated all international rules, and especially all the relevant provisions of international law – was not disputed.

After this conference, at which discussion was quite candid and open, it will not be possible to avoid the importance and long-term ramifications of its conclusions, especially having in mind the competence of the participants and organizers.

It seems that the American side, for the sake of its own goals, is willing and ready to undermine, on a global scale, the international legal order, which came about as a result of the two world wars in the previous century. Force is to stand above law. Wherever international law stands in the way, it is to be removed.

When the League of Nations experienced a similar fate, World War II was not far off. The manner of thought that takes into regard solely its own interests can only be referred to as totalitarian.

With friendly regards,

Willy Wimmer

Member, German Bundestag and Vice President, Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE

(Note: a facsimile of the original letter, in German, can be found at http://www.medienanalyse-international.de/wimmer.html

The above translation is from a German-to-Serbian translation by Nikola Živković, which appeared in the Belgrade weekly “NIN,” of February 8, 2007. Another translation, by Andrej Grubacic, preceded by a commentary, can be found at http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/Content/2007-02/18grubacic.cfm)

Introduction and translation: Aleksandar Pavić

Aleksandar Pavić is a political commentator living in Belgrade, Serbia

Kosovo: US weapons plan and neighbours' recognition angers Belgrade

Belgrade, 20 March (AKI) - Serbia reacted angrily on Thursday to the United States' announcement it would send weapons to Kosovo and to the recognition of independence by its neighbours Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria.

Prime minister Vojislav Kostunica said Washington’s decision to supply weapons to the province which declared independence from Serbia last month was “another deeply wrong step by the US after illegal recognition of unilateral independence”.

The US and leading European countries, which have spearheaded Kosovo's independence drive, were among the first to recognise the new state. Serbia’s neighbours Croatia and Hungary recognised Kosovo on Wednesday and Bulgaria was expected to do the same on Thursday.

“There have already been too many weapons in Kosovo and instead of illegally arming ethnic Albanians, the US should return respect for international law and the United Nations Charter,” Kostunica told Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti.

"Kosovo doesn’t need new weapons, but new negotiations on its status," he added.

Serbia and its ally Russia oppose Kosovo's independence and insist on continuing negotiations. But western powers have recognised Kosovo on a bilateral basis after Russia blocked the move in the UN Security Council.

US president George W Bush announced on Wednesday that Kosovo has qualified for the American military aid after acquiring independence.

The US was the first of around 40 countries which have now recognised Kosovo. US flags abounded during the independence celebrations there (photo).

Under the independence plan forged by former UN negotiator Martti Ahtisaari, Kosovo will have a lightly armed 2,500-person security force.

The security force will be supervised and trained by 17,000 NATO troops stationed in the province.

“The decision of the American president causes the greatest concern and only deepens the problems caused by the breach of the resolution 1244,” Kostunica said.

UN Security Council Resolution 1244 placed Kosovo under UN control in 1999, but it is still officially treated as being a part of Serbia.

Serbia has withdrawn its ambassadors to Croatia and Hungary for consultations in protest at their recognition of Kosovo, as it has done with all other countries.

Croatia had delayed recognition of independence because of its small Serb minority and for the fear that its companies and goods would be boycotted in Serbia. But the US put it and other neighbouring countries under great pressure to recognise Kosovo, according to Serb media.

Croatia, Albania and Macedonia are expected to be invited to join NATO at the Bucharest summit. But Macedonia’s entry is conditional on it resolving the country’s 15-year-long dispute with neighboring Greece over its name.

Belgrade daily Politika said Bulgaria and Macedonia were also under strong pressure from Washington, because they would be the first Orthodox Christian countries, like Serbia, to recognise Kosovo, whose majority ethnic Albanians are mostly Muslim.

Bush Provides Arms for Kosovo Albanian Muslims to Kill More Christians

"The White House said Bush's move would strengthen U.S. security relations with Kosovo, promote security and stability throughout the Balkans and improve Kosovo's capacity to take part in peacekeeping activities, deter terrorists and deal with humanitarian emergencies."

President Bush just doesn't get it -- these Kosovo Albanians ARE terrorists!

UNMIK administrator in controversial resignation -- A US Diplomat with a Conscience

19 March 2008 | 19:19 -> 23:52 | Source: B92, Beta KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- Regional UNMIK chief Gerard Galluci has resigned, but the UN HQ has not accepted his resignation.

The U.S. diplomat in charge of the UN operations in Kosovska Mitrovica was asked to withdraw his resignation.

This is what an anonymous diplomatic source told Beta news agency tonight, adding that Galluci was "currently on vacation, and will resume his duties once he returns".

Earlier today, KIM Radio reported that Galluci, who is currently abroad, opted for this move because of the differences he has with Priština.

KIM's sources with the UN mission in the province's capital confirmed this.

"Galluci has resigned because, compared to Priština, he has a different approach to the situation in Kosovska Mitrovica, when it comes to the international community's policy and attitude toward the problems in this town," the unnamed diplomatic sources have said.

UNMIK's spokesman Alexander Ivanko would not deny or confirm the news today.

He told KIM that these are "internal UNMIK matters".

Asked where Galluci was and whether he was performing his duties, Ivanko said, "As far as I know and last I heard he is in Mitrovica. I cannot say anything else on this issue, this is an internal UNMIK matter."

Also Wednesday, one of the Kosovo Serb leaders, Milan Ivanović, gave journalist a report about Monday's violence submitted by Galluci.

The report says that the raid was a "badly planned operation to restore law and order in the north, which has led to the disappearance of law and order".

"The choice of the date – March 17 – the fourth anniversary of the last episode of the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo Serbs, and the decision to arrest and transport the Serbs to Priština looks as if it was created in order to inflame the Serb feelings," Galluci adds.

"If, on some other day, the police simply asked the people to leave the premises before trying to arrest them, perhaps we could have announced a victory without a price tag," the report said.

"One positive aspect is that during the events Monday, Serbs did not disturb or attack Albanians in northern Mitrovica, and they cooperated with UNMIK during the evacuation of our civilians," Galluci said.

Some Albanians live in the north of the divided town, while there are no Serbs in the southern, Albanian part.

"Our credibility and relations necessary for our peacekeeping role in the north have been seriously, perhaps irreversibly jeopardized. Now we can all see that Serbs have a clear goal, that they are well organized and well armed. The Serb community in the north, regardless of whether people like Marko [Jakšić] and Milan [Ivanović], will gather around their 'radical' leadership, if it is directly provoked. The reaction to any attempt to arrest them would be fierce," the paper, entitled, "The report after defeat", says.

"All in all, it must be clear that the use of force to achieve political goals related to the status will not work. Just as we have said many, many times before… the use of force will only lead to violence that will probably accelerate the partition or will lead to new ethnic cleansing and conflict. This must be kept in mind when future decisions are made about UN courts, railways, electricity."

Galluci also suggested that UNMIK must "admit its mistakes and repent for what has been done" in order to continue communicating with the Serbs in the north.

"Albanians must be made to understand clearly: leave the north to us, live in peace and stop threatening with violence. We heard that Premier Thaci's been telling people he's been "having trouble controlling the Drenica boys". We did not annul the unilateral declaration of independence because we could not stop it. By the same token, we cannot force those who reject it to accept it. Not only have we no moral or legal basis to use force, but it yields no results," Galluci concludes his damning report.

Belgrade daily Politika says that the report, likely to put him in Kosovo Serbs' good books, raises the issue of whether his behavior in fact led to the escalation of the crisis.

"He has not had good cooperation with UNMIK in Priština for months, and before the courthouse was taken last Friday, he was in intense consultations with the leaders of the Mitrovica Serbs. Some sources even say he indirectly encouraged them to take over the premises that have no key significance," the newspaper says.

Politika then adds that "diplomacy is apparently not the only of Gallucci's occupations", and says he was in "another conflict zone of interest to the United States" – Sundan.

"As the U.S. charge d'affaires, Washington's top representative in that country, he was in charge of – monitoring the fighting in Darfour," the daily says.

Galluci, a former U.S. State Department diplomat, was working in northern Kosovo since 2004.

His resignation comes two days after violence flared up in the town between UNMIK and KFOR troops and local Serb civilians, killing one, and injuring more than 100 people.

JWR: Republican Jewish Coalition must pull its endorsement of Chicago Congressional candidate (Steve Greenberg)

By Julia Gorin

(Excerpt) Unbeknown to the Republican Jewish Coalition, which stands against jihad, terrorism and bigotry, a Chicago candidate for Congress, a Jewish Republican for whom they are the second-largest contributor is enabling jihad terror and alienating a group that has stood on the front lines against it while being its most brutalized victims in the Balkans.

Using the "Barack Hussein Obama" template, a news release from Chicago District 8 candidate Steve Greenberg recently referred to his Democratic opponent, incumbent U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL), as "Melissa Luburich Bean," sneeringly stressing her Serbian maiden name. Comically, the release blasted Bean for not standing with the Bush/Clinton administration in supporting the illegal creation of the terrorism-won, threats-against-the-West achieved, narco-mafia state of Kosovo. He also criticized Bean's backing by pro-Serbian organizations (as opposed to the standard backing by the al-Qaeda-trained Kosovo Liberation Army that backs the rest of Congress via groups like the National Albanian American Council, top fundraiser to the campaign of future U.S. president John McCain).

Greenberg's Feb. 27th statement was titled "Melissa Bean places the interests of radical foreign nations above Freedom and Democracy," and read:

Serbian Caucus Co-Chair continues support for anti-American Serbian fundamentalists and is getting paid for it…Melissa Luburich Bean stands against Kosovo's freedom and independence. Last May Bean introduced H. Res. 445, which affirms Serbian control over Kosovo…Through her continued support of her resolution, Melissa Bean chooses to side with Serbian criminals who attacked America by breaking into and setting ablaze the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade last week while the Serbian government stood by and did nothing.

Bean's support for anti-American Serbian fundamentalists runs even deeper; she has taken over $24,000 from members of the Serbian Unity [Congress] which "strongly denounces Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence as well as America's subsequent recognition of it." Bean even sent a letter to President George W. Bush urging him to not recognize Kosovo as an independent nation.

Melissa Bean chose to side with oppression and anti-American fundamentalists, instead of freedom and independence…She must denounce the Serbian violence against Americans at our embassy. She must stand on the side of freedom and withdraw her sponsorship of controversial H. Res. 445 which does not support the American policy of recognition for Kosovo. Finally she should return all money sent to her by the Serbian Unity [Congress]."

The "controversial" Resolution 445 was co-sponsored by three Republican Congressmen including Dan Burton, who co-chairs the Serbian Caucus and who last year wrote in the Washington Times:

[O]ur policy is in contravention of international laws and will create a dangerous precedent. Also…[t]errorist and organized crime influences, already rampant in Kosovo, would be granted a consolidated haven for their operations. Independence would likely be followed by renewed anti-Serb attacks....Unrest in neighboring Albanian-dominated areas of southern Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, even Greece, could be reignited. [Hold your breath.]

What makes 445 "controversial" is that rather than a unilateral approach to please exclusively the side that has been threatening and using violence against international troops and administrators (which includes our National Guard) in the event that the West secures any less than all of Kosovo for it, the resolution takes a more balanced approach to settling the issue, one that asks the U.S. to honor the legally binding UN Res. 1244 that the U.S. agreed to in writing, and one that prudently considers the ramifications of another Muslim state within Europe's borders. It calls for "a mutually agreed upon solution for the future status of Kosovo" and rejects an imposed solution. That's what makes it so offensive to the majority of our lawmakers and, in this case, wannabe lawmakers.

By projecting words such as "radical", "foreign", "fundamentalist", "criminal" and "anti-American" onto the side he has no fear of because it has never threatened America, tough guy Greenberg is engaging in a 1999 replay of the way our leaders thumped their chests at a Christian straw man to appease the trigger-happy Albanian side in the conflict. It helps camouflage the American cowering that guides our Balkan policies, which we are imposing because our new Albanian masters are imposing it on us. He pretends to shudder at "Serbian fundamentalism" and thinks his constituents should as well, when in fact among Albanians, Bosnians, Croatians and Serbs, only Serbs have never perpetrated terrorism against Americans. If this is the future of the once hawkish Republican Party, then our future is the same as Serbia's present, and we can look forward to eventually saying good-bye to chunks of our own territory.

Anyone who doesn't want to see Kosovo turn into "a weak state susceptible to radical Islamist influence from outside the region, with the support from some Albanians," as John Bolton summed it up, or "a way station toward an anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Christian 'Eurabia…if allowed to consolidate," as James Jatras explained, would support 445. In short, anyone who opposes this Munich Pact redux, a surrender in which America shines the way, would support 445.

Yet the illegal detachment by rule of might-makes-right (ala the Elian Gonzales seizure without due process) "seems to be something that Mr. Greenberg advocates so vociferously that he feels any and all dissent…should be silenced, or else labeled 'Serb fundamentalist'", writes Melana Pejakovich of Serbblog, Rush Limbaugh's go-to source during the Fort Dix news. "If that's the case," she continues, "then Mr. Greenberg will also need to shut up prominent Republican[s] like John Bolton and Lawrence Eagleburger, who also thought that recognizing 'Kosovo independence' was a terrible idea! But maybe Bolton & Eagleburger are closet 'anti-American Serb fundamentalists' too, Mr. Greenberg?"

Read the Rest at Jewish World Review

RR: Military Reporter Scott Taylor Speaks at Serbian Rally in Toronto

(Excerpt)

Canadian army veteran and miltary reporter Scott Taylor made a short speech over the weekend addressing a Serbian crowd protesting the Kosovo theft. Taylor was the reporter who wrote the well-circulated articles “Bin Laden’s Balkan Connections” and “Ceku Must Face Justice“.

It’s also worth posting most of Taylor’s August 2001 piece from a Emperors-Clothes.com reprint:

Terrorist Thug Boasts “Thanks to Uncle Sam, Macedonians are no match for us!”
Eyewitness report by Scott Taylor, retired Canadian military man, author of ‘Inat’ and ‘Tested Mettle’ and editor of Esprit de Corps Magazine......(The Rest at Republican Riot)

No US consideration of Serbian sacrifice

By Wes Johnson, New Europe.
March 10, 2008

Today there seems to be little if any national memory of history to influence the foreign policy of the American super-power – merely what appears to be the most expedient at the moment, whether it conforms to international law and a United Nations organization established to act as a moderating force among nations, or not.

How else to view Washington’s latest project to foist a second Albanian state on the international community: Kosovo, which has been torn out of Serbian territory rich in historic meaning and tradition to a Slav Orthodox Christian people who consider it to be the very heart of their ancient patrimony?

Consider for a moment this small nation, that in World War I, was attacked by Austria, Germany, and then Bulgaria, that fought with the Allies against the Central Powers bravely and brilliantly against overwhelming odds; that at the end of that conflict had lost 1,264,000 people out of a population of 4,529,000 – a quarter of its total.

Then, again in World War II, the Serbians stood with the Allies and formed the backbone of Tito’s Partisan guerrillas. Dozens of German, Italian and Bulgarian divisions were tied down fighting Tito’s forces throughout the war. Including genocide against the Serbians in Bosnia by the Croat Ustashe – and similar depredations by the Albanians in Kosovo who had been formed into a SS unit by the Germans – Yugoslavia lost 1,700,000 people.

During that conflict, Mihailovich and Tito both had collaborated with the British Special Operations Executive and the American Office of Strategic Services. Additionally, 512 downed Americans and 84 British and Canadian airmen were sheltered and rescued mainly by Serbian villagers at the grave risk of their own lives.

After Tito broke with Stalin in 1948, Yugoslavia remained Communist; but it insisted on its independence along its road of post-war reconstruction toward achieving socialism. At various times it accepted material support, including even some military assistance, along with financial aid through international loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. It was one of the first charter members of the United Nations.

The US had even tolerated Yugoslavia’s leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement knowing that, if it had to, Belgrade would fight the Soviet Union and its satellites.

In NATO circles, a commonly-accepted scenario for the start of World War III had the Soviet Union attempting to overthrow Tito. Much of the Yugoslav National Army’s own planning revolved around that threat possibility. Even as late as 1980, when Tito died, some thought that Moscow might attempt to force the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into conformity with the Bloc.

It’s true that at the end of World War II Tito suppressed remnants of fascist Albanian groups in Kosovo in months of fighting. He subsequently built up a loyal Albanian Communist party structure that had considerable leeway – rewarding it with provincial autonomy.

In 1974, Kosovo’s autonomy was widened even more by the SFRY’s new constitution – and Albanian leaders began the long process of discriminating openly against its Serb population. Many Serbs moved out as more and more Albanians moved in. By 1981, a year after Tito’s death, students began to protest against conditions at their university and the lack of job opportunity.

When Milosevic attempted to re-integrate Kosovo into Serbia in the late 1980s, the province was financially bankrupt. Its Albanian leadership disadvantaged the Serbs while failing its own people. Oppositionists led by Ibrahim Rugova declared themselves to be a “Republic” of virtual “independence.”

No Americans had even heard of Kosovo except for Senator Robert Dole and a few congressmen who began to rant against Milosevic; fueled, some say, by Albanian “contributions” to their US political campaigns.

Kosovar separatism was indeed repressed!!!

By 1997, armed Albanians were conducting pinprick attacks against Serb police and militia outposts. A year later, the Kosovo Liberation Army was in open revolt and had seized control of almost half of the province. Milosevic, in turn, fended off western criticism and began to roll up the KLA. NATO, ordered by US President Clinton and UK Prime Minister Blair, in effect intervened on behalf of the KLA; and, in a devastating bombing campaign, forced Milosevic to pull his Yugoslav forces out of the province.

What has followed has been years of NATO-UN Mission in Kosovo bureaucratically- administered failure – during which hundreds of Serbs were murdered and some 200,000 left the province for good. For this, and the threat to take up arms again, the Albanians have been rewarded with independence. The UN, the EU, and NATO have been intimidated by the threat of renewed conflict.

So what kind of state might we expect from a poverty-stricken entity known to be a center of narcotics trafficking?

Popular ex-Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is now on trial at The Hague for war crimes committed during the 1998-99 conflict.

The present Prime Minister, Hisham Thaci (a favorite of ex- US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) has been accused of having ordered the murder of several KLA rivals during that same conflict. He now presides over a country with a 50 percent unemployment rate and rampant corruption.

The US, opportunistically, has called for a donor’s conference to help fund the country’s near empty budget and is turning “supervision” of Kosovo over to the EU It has need for its troops elsewhere.

Many say that an independent Kosovo will set an unfortunate precedent and feed separatist movements around the globe.

The Bosnian Serbs are already saying that they should be permitted to join Serbia. Armenians also point to Kosovo and claim that their ethnically Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan – Nagorno-Karabakh - should be given international recognition. Even Russia, which must feel that Washington has tossed a delayed action cluster bomb into its backyard, might be tempted to support the breakaway tendencies of ethnic-Russians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, a NATO aspirant and the transit site of a strategic petroleum pipeline out of the Caspian Basin.

However, the fact that Russia recently fought a barely-resolved war to keep Chechnya may stay its hand.

Moscow has not been reluctant to back Serbia on Kosovo and says it will deny it UN membership. Russia also reminded us that it is back in the Balkans by recently signing agreements for Gazprom to purchase Serbia’s NIS Petroleum and Srbijagas natural gas monopolies and to bring its South Stream natural gas pipeline through that country en route to Western Europe. Senior US officials continue to criticize Gazprom’s rapid expansion and have made it clear they consider South Stream to be an unwelcome competitor to the EU’s planned Nabucco pipeline.

Future historians may very well conclude that an important ingredient to the many “Wars of Yugoslavian Succession” was for control of energy avenues from the Caspian out to the west.

The many sacrifices made by Serbians on the battlefields of the past have been forgotten.

Wes Johnson is the author of Balkan Inferno: Betrayal, War, and Intervention 1990-2005.

How About When Hell Freezes Over, Mustafa?

Muslim Cleric Urges Montenegro Apology

Sarajevo _ Reis Mustafa Ceric, the religious leader of Bosnian Muslims, has demanded an apology from Montenegro for the 1992 killing of Bosniaks, Sarajevo daily Dnevni Avaz reported Thursday.

In a letter to Montenegro’s President Filip Vujanovic, Ceric said “it is unbearable that the families of 86 killed Bosniaks are pursuing a long civil lawsuit against the state of Montenegro and you are doing nothing to prevent the hindrance of the process.”

Ceric referred to Bosniaks, or Bosnian Muslims, who fled to Montenegro during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War only to be deported back there and killed. Some were allegedly killed in Montenegro as well.

The letter followed an informal meeting of Islamic leaders from the Balkans in Montenegro on March 9 under the Vujanovic’s patronage.

Ceric refused to attend in a sign of solidarity with the families of the killed.

But he sternly criticized Vujanovic for telling the gathering that “Montenegro was the second home” for the Bosniaks who fled the war.

“Mr Vujanovic, a man can sometimes live with an injustice but a man can never live with an untruth. And what you have said in Podgorica was unbearably untrue,” Ceric wrote in the letter that was handed to the Montenegro Embassy in Sarajevo.

Ceric also reminded Vujanovic about several demands by the Association of Deported Bosnian Refugees sent some time ago, asking Podgorica to officially apologise for the crimes committed against Bosniaks in Montenegro in 1992; to put on trial and convict all those responsible; to regularly pay tribute to the victims; to erect a monument for them in the coastal town of Herceg Novi where they where kept in a facility before deportation to Bosnia and that Montenegro's government stop obstructing the legal proceedings by victims’ families against the Montenegrin Interior Ministry.

Source: Dnevni Avaz / Balkan Insight

SerbBlog: My suggestion would be to take a sword, slaughter a pig with it, then clean the sword with a copy of Alfred Lord Tennyson's Montenegro Poem and then send that bloody copy to Mustafa Ceric and the Association of Deported Bosnian Refugees ! But, hey, that's just me!

Terrorism Expert, Alexander del Valle on Kosovo, the Albanian Narco-Terrorist State.

And the reality of what del Valle describes -- see what fascist Muslim Albanians have done to Christian Churches & Monasteries in Kosovo. Click on a link for the "before and after" of 20 of the over 150 churches destroyed under NATO & the UN's watch since 1999 in Kosovo.

• 1. THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY VIRGIN, Musutiste near Suva Reka
• 2. ST MARK'S OF KORISA MONASTERY, in Korisa near Prizren
• 3. ST GABRIEL'S MONASTERY, in Binac near Vitina
• 4. DEVIC MONASTERY, near Srbica
• 5. THE CHURCH OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE HOLY VIRGIN in Dolac near Klina
• 6. ST NICHOLAS' CHURCH, in Slovinje near Lipljan
• 7. THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER and PAUL, in Suva Reka
• 8. THE HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, in Petric near Pec
• 9. THE HOLY TRINITY CATHEDRAL, in Djakovica
• 10. ST ELIJAH'S PARISH CHURCH, in the village of Zegra near Gnjilane
• 11. THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY HEALERS COSMAS AND DAMIAN, village of Novake near Prizren
• 12. ZOCISTE MONASTERY AND THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY HEALERS COSMAS AND DAMIAN
• 13. THE PARISH CHURCH, in Grmovo near Vitina
• 14. THE CHURCH OF ST KNEZ LAZAR, in Piskote near Djakovica
• 15. THE MONASTERY AND THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY ARCHANGEL, Gornje Nerodimlje
• 16. The Cathedral
• 17. The Church of the Holy Saviour
• 18. The Diocesan Administration in Prizren

And President Bush gives the Albanians in Kosovo "independence" (and a second "Albania") as a reward for this kind of behavior? Sick!

German Anti-Semitic Rap Takes a Peculiar "Albanian" Turn

(Excerpt)
by Lizas Welt (translated from the German by John Rosenthal)

When an unknown assailant fired four bullets at German rap star Massiv in Berlin in mid-January — one of them grazing the rapper’s right arm — the initial outrage soon gave way to questions. Was the episode really an attempted murder, perhaps the opening salvo in an emerging turf war among rival rappers, or had Massiv staged the attack himself as a publicity stunt? Threats of violence are, in any case, commonplace among rivals in the German rap scene. Among Massiv’s most adamant foes, for instance, is the Stuttgart-based rapper Bözemann [roughly, “Badman”], who likes to appear in the persona of an armed Albanian guerrilla fighter and who makes a point of his Muslim faith, as does Massiv.

....The pride expressed by Bözemann in the alleged exploits of his grandfather — namely, while fighting with Nazi Germany as a member of the Albanian SS division “Skanderbeg” — was likewise of no interest for Spiegel-TV. “MY GRANDPA WAS ALSO THERE!!” Bözemann has been cited as having written on a “pro”-Skanderbeg division MySpace page, “LONG LIVE THE 21. SS SKB [Skanderbeg] DIVISION!”....Pajamas Media

SerbBlog: Here are some photos of WWII SS Skenderbeg Division Nazi Albanians in Kosovo. The last photo is of the murder of a Serbian Orthodox priest.

Kosovo and the Myth of Serbian Depravity

by Jonathan Davis

(Excerpt) On the night of Thursday, February 21, 2008, a rabble attacked the U.S., German, British, and Croatian embassies in Belgrade, Serbia. Less than a mile away over 200,000 people, peacefully protesting against Kosovo’s declaration of independence, were praying in and around St. Sava Cathedral, completely oblivious to the violence being committed in their name. That protest was ignored; the riots commanded the world’s attention.

The embassy attacks were rightly greeted with condemnation, especially in Serbia itself. The following morning the air of Belgrade was blue with curses of ordinary Serbs damning those who had attacked the embassies and brought shame to Serbia.

The people of Belgrade were particularly hurt by the events of that night. Belgrade’s growing reputation as “Europe’s best-kept secret” was in tatters. The jewel of Eastern Europe, the London of the Balkans, a Mecca for clubbers and in-the-know travelers, was now just another Balkan trouble spot.

Serb-hating pundits were now triumphantly touting the riots as evidence that Serbs were unfit to govern Kosovo and that nothing had changed since the time of Milosevic. Serbs, it was argued, are violent, murderous thugs and the riots prove it.

That violent night was a grim micro-history of post-Cold War Yugoslavia. Yet again the wrongful acts of an unrepresentative minority of Serbs had commanded the attention of the entire world and generated undeserving condemnation of the people of Serbia. Serbophobia — a virulent, truth-resistant strain of racist chauvinism and bigotry that riddles the American and European body politic — was given a powerful boost that night.... Pajamas Media

Interview with Willy Wimmer: " Americans are Recommending Themselves as the Successors of Rome"

September, 2001

Excerpt of Interview with Willy Wimmer -- Former member of the German Bundestag, ex-German Deputy Defense Secretary and ex-Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

The Strategic Framework of the Balkan Conflict

“The interests of the United States are obviously different from those of Europe. We are increasingly coming to the conclusion that the events in the Balkans developed in such a way so that Washington could establish a dominant presence in the region, which was not the case after 1945. We should not lose sight of the fact that it was precisely Germany that started this unfortunate game, championing ethnically-based national states in the region. We should remember that Germany was the first to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. What still remains to be solved is why the Americans subsequently took up the German ethnic strategy. I might say that, in the case of Germany, there was a sort of an aggressive laziness to genuinely deal with the situation in Yugoslavia and the Balkans. The cause probably lies in the simple fact that, in this way, without truly delving into the genuine state of affairs, people were able to, quite easily, without much effort, establish who was friend and who was foe. In addition, there is no doubt at all that the United States decided very early on to support the Albanian side. This is also born out by the fact that Washington established its Information Office in Pristina [the provincial capital of Kosovo – trans. note] in 1997, contrary to the will of Belgrade. Here we should also remember the long years of activity on the part of Republican senator Bob Dole….

At the end of April 2000, I personally attended a conference in Bratislava, where the highest American officials discussed their future strategy in the Balkans. The conference organizers were the American State Department and the Republican Party's elite American Enterprise Institute. Among the conference participants were prime ministers, foreign ministers and defense ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria, and the personal representative of the NATO commander. Among these was a future American Assistant Secretary of State [Daniel Fried – trans. note]. The following was clearly stated there:

First point. The reason why we are in the Balkans today lies in our missed opportunity after 1945, when General Eisenhower made a mistake and did not station American land troops in that part of Europe. Now we must correct that error at all cost. Why? The reason lies in the very nature of land troops. The complete control of a territory is possible only if our land troops are present. Full control cannot be established with aircraft or ships alone.

Second point. I am surprised that the American side is discussing issues of European security, as evidenced by the example of Bratislava, in the tone of: “God is with us.” The consequence of such a relationship is that any attempt at a European, autonomous thinking is criticized or even labeled as anti-American. As a European, I must ask myself the following question: am I supposed to accept the Bratislava conclusions as the Laws of Moses or do I still have a right to think about my own interests.

Third point. The Americans see themselves as the successors of the Roman Empire. Their motto is: The Romans saw the Mediterranean as Mare nostrum. We Americans see the Atlantic as our own Mediterranean, as our own sea. For this reason we must draw a line of our interests, which is to extend from the Baltic Sea by Leningrad [present-day St. Petersburg – trans. note] to Odessa on the Black Sea, and on to Istanbul and Anatolia. Everything lying east of that line – these are now my own words – does not interest us. We must possess and secure a land communication on our own [sic!] territory, extending from Anatolia, i.e. Turkey, to Poland.

There are many indications that, for the Americans, the situation in the Balkans is a sort of compensation for the Middle East. They use the Balkans to compensate for failures in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Washington 's motto goes: the Israeli and the Palestine side will not be able to achieve a peace agreement. And, so as not to ruin chances at accord with the Islamic world, the Americans are now trying to offer concessions to the Muslims in the Balkans, the ones in Bosnia and Kosovo. In a word, to Washington the Balkans are serving as a reserve territory or a testing ground where, they believe, they might still be able to reach agreement with the Islamic world.

Whatever “Big Brother” says must be carried out unconditionally. I took this gathering in Bratislava seriously enough to inform Chancellor Schröder about it in a letter. My main motive was to prevent any future breech of international law. May the case of Serbia be the last such case. For, if I believe that I can ignore international law whenever it stands as an obstacle to my interests, then I am leaving the door wide open to a new war in Europe.

After Serbia, i.e. Kosovo, we had clashes in Macedonia. Until then, we were constantly showering Skoplje [the capital of the FYR Macedonia – trans. note] with praises. They disciplinedly carried out all our demands. And then the West suddenly changed its policy and extended support to the Albanian armed rebellion. What message were we sending to the Macedonian government? That violence pays off.

Let us return to Kosovo. As both member and Vice President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, I can claim with full responsibility that, in the summer of 1998, 90% of us were against the use of any kind of military force against Belgrade outside the provisions of the UN. What remains for us after the bombing of Serbia? To choose: either to bring down the edifice that has secured the peace for us in Europe since 1945 – which is precisely what the Americans are doing, either alone or with the help of the British, or to say: my dear good people, we must seek to return to the rules of behavior provided by the UN.

In a word, it occasionally appears to me that the Americans are now acting in the same way that the German statesman Bismarck did. On one occasion he said that Balkan unrest and conflict were in the German interest, as this kept German adversaries in a constant state of tension. Is not Washington 's present aim identical, namely, to interfere with European efforts at creating an autonomous, independent European policy?

Finally, some mention should be made here of the relations between Western Europe and Russia. In the case they are normal and good, then that would raise the question of NATO's continued existence. The Americans invented the conflict in the Balkans in order to prevent the Europeans from thinking that NATO is no longer needed. There are people at important positions in the EU who think that there is a constant in American, and possibly British, policy, that, within the European Union – as well as Turkey – power must never come into the hands of people who might bring into question Washington's direct influence on Europe….”

Who is Blackmailing Who?

Macedonia 'Waiting' Over Kosovo Border

11 March 2008 Skopje _ Macedonia is still awaiting a response from Kosovo's authorities on demarcating their border, government spokesman Ivica Bocevski told media Tuesday.

The government has “officially contacted Pristina” about its proposal for a joint commission that would supervise the demarcation, Bocevski told media, explaining that it should start work “as soon as possible.”

The demarcation of the border was envisaged under the so-called Ahtisaari Plan, the blueprint detailing Kosovo's 'supervised independence,' devised by former United Nations envoy in the Kosovo dispute, Martti Ahtisaari.

According to the document, the joint commission should be formed within the first 120 days of Kosovo’s independence.

Its demarcation however is hampered by the fact that Macedonia has not yet recognised its northern neighbour, since it declared independence from Serbia on February 17.

In late February Kosovo’s deputy Prime Minister, Hajredin Kuki said his country will not be blackmailed over the border issue and argued that demarcation will commence after Skopje recognises Pristina. Read more at http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/8272/

Shortly after, Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski commenting on Pristina’s refusal to negotiate the demarcation said it is a “bad start for Kosovo's relations with Macedonia.”

Skopje signed a United Nations-verified agreement for border demarcation with Belgrade in 2001, since at the time Kosovo was legally part of Serbia.

However with Kosovo being administered by the UN, Pristina and Belgrade disputed who had the right to sign the agreement with Skopje and the border was effectively left unmarked.

Meanwhile Skopje’s Foreign Minister on a visit to the Netherlands on Tuesday said Macedonia’s recognition of its recently independent neighbour is not a simple matter.

“We are Kosovo’s neighbour and we wish to build good relations for decades to come but recognition should happen when all the preconditions for that are met,” Milososki said.

Macedonia claims it will closely monitor European Union and NATO positions, both organisations the country aspires to join, before making its own decision on recognition.

Government Falls in Belgrade

(Excerpt)
by Srdja Trifkovic

Far from indicating Serbia’s readiness to cower into the vivisection kennel, Tadic’s victory on February 3 was the last chance for the U.S. and the EU to stop the Kosovo trainwreck. Both Washington and Brussels decided to play va banque instead. Serbia’s resulting anger against the West will translate into the well-deserved demise for the DS and other “pro-Western democrats” at the parliamentary election on May 11.

The collapse of Serbia’s government on Saturday was unsurprising and necessary. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica finally stated what we’ve known for months: that his coalition government “has no united policy any more on an important issue related to the future of the country, on Kosovo as a part of Serbia.” The immediate cause of the split was the refusal of two pro-Western parties in the coalition to support Kostunica’s position that Serbia would only seek to be integrated into the EU if it can be so in its entirety, including Kosovo. ... Chronicles

United American Committee Protest Against Kosovo Independence

Watch the after-action video report of the March 9th Los Angeles rally against the independence of the Islamic terror-linked state of Kosovo.

Donate to or join the United American Committee!

Catholic Herald: "The West will live to regret its betrayal of the Serbs"

An independent Kosovo offers a European foothold for jihadists, argues Hermann Kelly
7 March 2008

(British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown's support for Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence should surprise and disappoint people in equal measure. Surprise because, as Prime Minister, he failed to discuss the matter in any depth in the Parliament before he made this announcement. And disappoint because this ill-thought-out move breaks international law, creates a dangerous precedent and gives succour and hope to every crackpot secessionist group in the world.

This latest Government move has sent out the message that if secessionists fight hard enough or are successful in their work of ethnic cleansing, they will be rewarded at the EU diplomats, table. Mr Brown is basically saying that the most violent bullyboy wins and the last military victor takes all; but what he should be telling the Albanians and the Serbs is that Kosovo's status should be resolved by negotiation and under international law.

The Government doesn't seem to realise what it is walking into in Kosovo. The Balkans area is covered by a volcanic range of simmering hostilities which have erupted and can erupt again at any time. Conflict is this area is not new, for hostilities between Christian Serbs and Albanians (the vast majority of whom are Muslims) have been ongoing in Kosovo for many centuries.

The peoples of this region have intermittently lived at peace and enmity for the best part of 500 years. No side in this affair has clean hands but that is no reason for the British Government to reward the latest and most successful perpetrator of ethnic cleansing in Europe, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

The Serbs have been in Kosovo since the seventh century. It is is the geographical cradle of their civilisation, attested to by the plethora of Christian monasteries and churches which dot its landscape. And what about the Serbs who lived here? They have fought for centuries to defend European and Christian civilisation. It was at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 that they fought (70,000 of them to the death) to keep the Islamic Ottoman Empire from rolling over the rest of Europe. The Serbian people have been a bulwark against Islamic expansion into Europe for many centuries. It was the Serbian people who opposed the aggression of Germany in the First World War and the rise of Nazism in World War II.

They made British victories possible but what thanks do they now get for their efforts? Betrayal by the Western elites who care little for their struggle, and revenge from Germany which now takes its opportunity to put the boot into the Serbs.

While some may point that 90 per cent of Kosovo are currently Albanian, after the Great War the majority of the Kosovan population were Serbian but they have been pushed out by violence or the threat of violence as well as being simply outbred by Albanian Muslims, who have the highest birthrate in Europe.

During the 1990s Albanian and Islamic militias crossed over the border from Albania into Kosovo, murdering and pushing out the Serbs while at the same time destroying their churches and monasteries. The 200,000 Serbs who have been pushed out of Kosovo in the past two decades must have their right to return vindicated in law and, in fact, before EU foreign ministers speak any more on the subject.

There needs to be a recognition that Serbia has also changed. The Communist war criminal Slobodan Milosevic is long gone and replaced by people who support democracy.

The United States is supporting Kosovan independence in the belief that the Kosovan people, who are mostly Muslim, support America, but it is very naïve to think that a majority Muslim population will love America for very long. Eaten bread is soon forgotten; the Kosovans have taken what they can get from America and NATO and will no doubt look to Saudi Arabia and other Islamic states which already have a strong economic and religious interest in the new statelet.

The US government should remember that both the Mujahideen of Afghanistan and Saddam's henchmen in Iraq were happy to take dollars and arms when their interests dictated they do so. Then, their power intact, they quickly turned on the United States. Indeed, the Afghans are currently shooting at American helicopters with US rocket launchers. Once the Albanian Muslims of Kosovo are secure in their state, just watch things swiftly change.

Kosovans are not a nation, so why should they have a nation state? Nor is it a multi-ethnic state where the rights of all are respected. It is small, economically unviable, unstable political entity which arouses great enmity from its neighbours and can act as a base for organised crime in the future. Already Albania is a hub of drug trade, processing heroin from Afghanistan, and a centre for human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution; and if you want a cheap stolen Mercedes, Albania is also the place for you because it is a lawless centre of organised crime.

Another problem is that Kosovo has the potential to become a foothold in Europe for Islamic militants. Yes, Britain and America are facilitating the emergence of a base for radical Muslim jihadists right under their noses. We know already that jihadists from Yemen and Chechnya have fought for the KLA and that Saudi Arabia has pumped huge amounts of money into building mosques and religious centres there.

Albanian militants sought to organise an attack on a US army base in New Jersey last year. Unless they are dealt with very differently there is a danger that Kosovo will become a beachhead of Islamic terrorism in Europe. Al-Qaeda has already gained a position there and is unlikely to give it up for obvious strategic reasons. The American people will quickly find that betraying the Serbian people of Kosovo as a PR exercise in Islamic countries will backfire on them.

We know of Serbian anger over the loss of Kosovo, and can be sure that this dispute will come back again until resolved. The anger of a dispossessed Serbian people awaits us unless the situation is dealt with in a different fashion.

When a NATO commander ordered the British Army to prevent Russian planes from landing in the Kosovan capital in 1999 General Sir Michael Jackson refused, saying: "Sir, I'm not starting World War III for you."

Before Britain goes any further it is important to address some of the difficulties which will arise from Kosovo's break from international law. Otherwise this regional dispute will fester until the inevitable happens. The First World War began with a single shot in Sarajevo, just up the road from Kosovo. Gordon Brown should learn from history or repeat its mistakes. He must swiftly change tack on Kosovo.

Kosovo's women suffer (Enslaved in the Household or Sold as Prostitutes)

(Albanian) Women used to be relegated to restrictive lives at home, guarded behind the high-walled compounds that traditionally housed extended ethnic Albanian families, or clans. It wasn't freedom, but it was out of the reach of outside exploitation. Traffickers brought women from elsewhere, such as Moldova and Romania, initially to be shuttled to Italy or other parts of Europe and, after the war, to remain in Kosovo to "service" a growing international population.....

...After a brutal crackdown by Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, Kosovo came under the stewardship of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations. During the years since, Kosovo evolved from a transit point into both a source of and destination for trafficked women. Often, Kosovo officials and former guerrilla commanders were complicit in the lucrative trade -- and the resident international community, including peacekeepers and civilian consultants, its market.....

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...

Kosovo: A New Versailles?

The torching the U.S. embassy in Belgrade was a violent sideshow during the massive peaceful demonstrations against Kosovo’s declaration of independence in the Serbian capital on February 18th. Few approved of these thuggish acts, either in Serbia or in the wider world. But the vandalism distracts from more significant facts about the Belgrade demonstrations and the Kosovo declaration that sparked them. The U.S. embassy was not a random target; nor was it the only target. Protesters had already marched toward the U.S. embassy on the first day of the protests. When police blocked their way, they headed instead toward the Slovenian embassy, which was not guarded, and vandalized it. That was not a random target either.

It is not difficult to understand why the protesters directed their anger at both the United States and Slovenia. Government officials of the two countries have made it sufficiently clear during the past year that they actively support the independence of Kosovo. But public anger, particularly in Serbia, has escalated over a report of a December meeting between U.S. and Slovenian officials that was published in January both in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana, and in Belgrade. The publication caused furor in Slovenia, outrage in Serbia, and disappointment among the EU political elite. The document was not meant for the public, but the public did not fail to note the clearly stated American political agenda it contained and the role of Slovenia in its execution.

This behind-the-scenes collusion revealed two violations with regard to Kosovo. The United States, with Slovenian assistance, sought to circumvent the European political process — not to speak of the UN. And Kosovo itself, by unilaterally declaring independence, violated international law. These two violations – of a political process and of the rule of law – will come back to haunt Europe and the United States in the coming months and years.

The Slovenian Role

Slovenia plays a disproportionately important role in this story because it assumed the European Union presidency on January 1, 2008. A week before, on December 24, a meeting between representatives of the State Department and the Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs took place in Washington D. C. Taking part in the talks were, on the Slovenian side, the Political Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mitja Drobnic and the Ambassador to the United States Samuel Zbogar, and on the American side, Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, his deputy Rosemary DiCarlo, and Judy Ansley, NSA senior director for European affairs. An internal report of this meeting from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was leaked to the Slovenian daily Dnevnik, which published it on January 25. A copy was also obtained and published simultaneously by the Belgrade paper Politika. The published excerpts make it clear that the talks touched upon a number of issues but mainly focused on Kosovo.

The American officials presented a list of demands to their Slovenian counterparts. For example, the Slovenian diplomats were informed of the text of the declaration from the joint US-EU summit scheduled to take place in Ljubljana in June. “We would also like to have a mention of Iraq and rogue states, such as Iran, Burma, and Syria,” the U.S. officials demanded. “President Bush is also worried about the situation in Cuba and Venezuela. He is convinced that support for the opposition in Cuba (just like in Georgia and Ukraine) can bring positive results. The US policy toward Cuba is not a regime change but a desire for democratic transition after Fidel Castro’s death. In the declaration from the EU-US summit, they would also like to have a mention of Cuba and Venezuela. They also want the declaration to mention terrorism and non-proliferation.”

As to Kosovo, the conversation was a careful orchestration of Kosovo’s timetable for independence. Daniel Fried praised Slovenian Foreign Minister Rupel and stated that “it is beyond doubt that the solution of the status is a fact, which will happen under the leadership of Slovenia.” Mitja Drobnic asked for help with obtaining the UN Secretary General’s statement in support of sending the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) mission to Kosovo, “since some EU member states have difficulties with making the decision to send the ESDP without the UN agreement.” Fried responded that “the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is under the pressure of the Russian Federation and thus in a difficult position.” He informed his interlocutors that the United States had assurances that the UN was not going to put restrictions on the sending of the ESDP mission to Kosovo. The United States, he explained, “will help the UN Secretary General in the case of difficulties with the Russian Federation, while RS [the Republic of Slovenia] has to achieve within the EU the sending of the ESDP in the shortest time.”

The decision to send the ESDP mission to Kosovo was of key importance for the United States, since it was replacing the UN mandate over Kosovo with the EU mandate. In pushing that decision through, Fried was clear: “one can ignore the critical positions and statements of the Russian Federation and Serbia.” Rosemary DiCarlo noted that it would make sense, if “the session of the Kosovo Parliament, in which they pass the declaration of independence, were to be on Sunday, since this way the Russian Federation would not have the time to call for the UN Security Council. In the meantime, the first recognitions would already have happened.”

Fried encouraged Slovenia to be the first to recognize Kosovo. The United States expected that although six EU member states would hold back recognition at least 15 out of the 27 member states would recognize Kosovo and that would be sufficient. He also noted that the United States would be among the first to recognize Kosovo. He told the Slovenes that “the US is drafting the constitution with the Kosovars” and that the situation on the ground was “promising.” Fried added, “The US hoped that the Kosovars would not lose confidence in themselves, because that would mean that the US will lose its influence.”

Serbian Reactions

In Serbia, when notes of this meeting were published, the Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, denounced the American administration’s pressure on Slovenia. He regretted that the American superpower was attempting to force EU member states into violations of international law and that Slovenia and the EU were allowing themselves to become instruments for the realization of American interests. He was wrong about the U.S. pressure on Slovenia. The Slovenian Foreign Ministry under Rupel was all too willing to oblige. But the rest of Samardzic’s points seemed to hold currency within the EU. The Austrian Press Agency characterized Slovenia’s EU presidency as scandalous and Rupel’s views as dissonant even within his own government. Der Standard reported a “sharp conflict” in a meeting of EU foreign ministers, where the Slovenian Foreign Minister reportedly was criticized for putting American interests first.

This scenario for Kosovo’s independence bears the hallmarks of “New American Century” misadventures. In Kosovo, the United States has one of its largest military bases, Camp Bondsteel. The human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, Alvaro Gil-Robles, described it a few years ago as a “smaller version of Guantánamo.” Since Romania and Poland have now been censored by the EU for their role in the secret CIA prisons and rendition flights, a new destination might be necessary in the region. More importantly, Camp Bondsteel is set to become the new home for U.S. air operations, moving them from the Aviano base in Italy, where the recklessness and accidents caused by U.S. pilots have worn down the patience of the locals. Kosovo is closer to the Middle East, which has more than one advantage. And Camp Bondsteel also completes the encircling of the Russian western border.

If Kosovo were to remain an UN protectorate, the United States would have less of a free hand there. As an EU protectorate, however, Kosovo will offer the United States more room to operate freely. As an independent state dependent upon U.S. support, Kosovo will probably not refuse to sign bilateral agreements with the United States on the status of forces.

Kosovo’s declaration of independence is a declaration of independence from Serbia. But this alone does not make Kosovo an independent sovereign state. There is a strong whiff of parody in the coordinated action by which a state declares its independence and other states send in missions to create that state. The EU is sending in 1,800 lawyers, judges, police, and administrators, who are replacing the UN mission and whose task it is to set up Kosovo’s “institutions, legal authorities and agencies for law enforcement as well as other executive responsibilities.” The head of the operation, which is to “base Kosovo on the rule of law,” that is, to build a law-abiding and law-enforcing state there, will be French General Yves de Kermabon. Dutch diplomat Peter Feith, who will head up the International Civilian Office, will have the power to overturn legislation and sack Kosovo officials. KFOR, the NATO-led Kosovo force, will stay, which means that 16,000 foreign soldiers will be stationed in Kosovo. Annex 11 to the Ahtisaari plan, the implementation of which was zealously advocated by the United States, gives NATO military supremacy over Kosovo. (In the week following the declaration of independence, when tensions rose on the border with Serbia, U.S. and French troops restored order.) Economically, the EU plans to spend 330 million euros by 2010, in addition to the 2 billion euros it has already spent.

From 1999, following the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Kosovo was a UN protectorate. With the declaration of independence, it has become an EU protectorate that can be more easily shaped by U.S. policy. In real terms, not much has changed. As a commentator in Politika stated: “Neither did Albanians gain much more than they already had, nor did the Serbs lose much more than they had already lost.”

So, if not much was gained or lost, why does Kosovo’s declaration of independence matter?

International Law

It matters, first, because the declaration of Kosovo independence is a breach of international law. A unilateral change of borders – that is, a change that is not based on agreement of all concerned – violates one of the basic principles of the UN charter. Serbia is clearly opposed to this move. If the declaration of Kosovo independence is predicated on the limitation, or loss, of Serbian de facto sovereignty over the region following NATO’s 1999 military intervention, then the change of borders has been accomplished by military means. That runs against both the letter and the spirit of the post-World War Two international legal order. To argue that violations of human rights, such as those committed by Serbia in Kosovo in the 1980s and 1990s, can be the basis on which to erect a new state both lacks legal precedent and confuses law with morality. And when it comes to morality in this context, it is a morality of double standards and selective righteousness, in view both of global politics and of the human rights abuses visited on the Serbian minority in Kosovo.

One could quarrel over the interpretation of UN Security Council resolution 1244, as opponents and advocates of Kosovo independence do, but the unilateral nature of the declaration of independence effectively violates international law. That this argument has been raised by states that fear their own separatist movements does not detract from the argument itself. If the rule of law is considered supreme, it is irrelevant whether abiding or protecting the law is in a state’s own interest.

Historically, the closest parallel in the 20th-century Balkans to Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence was the declaration of the Independent State of Croatia, the notorious NDH, under the tutelage of Nazi Germany during World War Two. Then, as now, the military superpower of the day constructed a state to its own liking and in its own interest. It did so with the collaboration of local politicians, to the relief of parts of the population, and in the interest of the world war it was fighting. In regard of the more recent history, the declaration of the independence of Kosovo is the continuation of the same type of politics that characterized Serbian oppression, repression, and crimes in Kosovo — the continuation of the politics of might, illegality, and lawlessness.

U.S. arbitrariness rather than the will of the people was the constitutive force of the independent state of Kosovo. The UN was conspicuously pushed aside and ignored. Also ignored were the interests of the neighbors and the countries of the broader Balkan region, most of whom oppose the independence of Kosovo. Ignored as well, and in a rather insulting way, was Russia, which for better or worse has played a role in the region for a considerable time. Finally, ignored were the Serbs. The unilateral decision to declare the independence of Kosovo was carried through in a way to ensure that Serbia will for the time being experience no catharsis, no facing and overcoming of the legacy of the criminal wars of the 1990s. Instead, this decision does the opposite by inflaming the very same pathology that drove Serbia and Serbs into those wars in the first place. Has the United States engineered a new Versailles that will in turn generate future wars?

Tomaz Mastnak, a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), is is director of research in the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California at Irvine. He is the former director of the Office of the Alliance of Civilizations of the United Nations.

Samatha Power Resigns From Obama Campaign After Calling Hillary "a Monster"

(Excerpt)
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Barack Obama adviser resigned Friday after calling rival Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster."

Samantha Power, an unpaid foreign policy adviser and Harvard professor, announced her resignation in a statement provided by the Obama campaign in which she expressed "deep regret."

"Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign," she said. "And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months."

Power's interview Monday was published Friday in a Scottish newspaper, even though she tried to keep it from appearing in print.

"She is a monster, too—that is off the record—she is stooping to anything," The Scotsman quoted her as saying...........AP Story

SerbBlog Note: First time that Samantha Power has told the truth, and she gets fired for it!

Serbs Struggle to Understand Western Support for Kosovo Independence

By Ljiljana Smajlovic

BELGRADE, Serbia -- As editor-in-chief of Serbia's oldest and most prestigious daily newspaper, Politika, I am at a loss to explain the West's stubborn support for Kosovo independence to my readers. Only nine years ago, my country was bombed for 78 days by the most powerful military alliance the world has ever seen, and the last thing I want is to pour oil over the fire of anti-Western sentiment. But the truth is, I find myself grappling with the same bitterness and resentment as most of my countrymen.

I was very much part of the democratic upheaveal that rid Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and all Serbia has done since was to mend its ways.

We sought to come to terms with the past, put old quarrels behind us, make peace with our neighbors and become friends with the United States and European countries that bombed us in 1999.

We set up war crimes courts and tried suspected war criminals, while extraditing others to the Hague Tribunal, where we sent a score of ex-presidents, including Milosevic himself, and roughly half of the former Army leadership.

We signed peace and cooperation treaties, invited Western companies to invest in Serbia's economy, and NGOs to monitor our progress in democracy and human rights.

We elected democratic rulers with impeccable anti-Milosevic credentials who carried out responsible and moderate policies, to the applause of Washington and Brussels.

We oppressed no ethnic minorities and violated no universal declarations.

In the meantime, a very different storyline unfolded in our southern province of Kosovo. As soon as Serb forces left Kosovo in June 1999, a massive campaign of reverse ethnic cleansing against 200,000 non-Albanians took place under the noses of 50,000 NATO troops.

Rather than the multi-ethnic democracy U.S. President Bill Clinton invoked on the day he dispatched the bombers, Kosovo is nowadays one of the most ethnically pure regions in Europe. Hundreds of Serb medieval monasteries, churches and cemeteries have been desecrated, dynamited, burned or razed to the ground. The few Serbs left in Albanian-majority areas live in NATO-guarded enclaves, fearful for their lives. Lawlessness is pervasive, crime is rampant, intolerance is the norm. Compared to Kosovo, post-Milosevic Serbia is a multi-ethnic paradise.

Why, then, the unseemly rush to grant Kosovo independence? Western officials grasp at straws to explain their motives. We are told "Milosevic lost Kosovo", and that we should blame him for the fate of the thousands and thousands of our co-nationals who have been cleansed from the mythical "old Serbia." But Milosevic is six feet under, and in Belgrade we feel as if we're witnessing the resurgence of the notion of "fundamentally evil" groups. If the Serbs' repression of Albanians in the 1990s lost them the right to govern Kosovo, as we were repeatedly told while NATO bombs rained on our heads, surely the Albanians lost political and moral high ground through ruthless discrimination against Serbs, Roma and other minorities?

Whatever Milosevic's transgressions, the Albanians' radical nationalism should neither have been encouraged nor rewarded in Kosovo. I am particularly disappointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's championing of Kosovo's unilateral independence.

German history shows that radical solutions to the national question cannot be good, even when discontent is justified and minorities have legitimate grievances. It does not do to encourage secession or advocate annexation. Turning Kosovo into an independent state, with its half-terrorist, ultra-chauvinist leadership and its mono-ethnic population, is a radical event in European history. Of all countries, Germany should have opposed hasty independence for Kosovo.

Intellectually and morally, I do not know how to come to terms with Western democracies' support for Kosovo secessionists. For once, Serbs and their leaders did everything by the book. All they set out to do was to preserve their country's territorial integrity and sovereignty, guaranteed under Security Council Resolution 1244, which ended NATO's bombing. Serbia agreed to permanent international guarantees of Kosovo's political autonomy within the formal territory of Serbia, Kosovo's membership in international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and Kosovo's right to enter different types of international agreements. Its leaders presented only legal arguments and negotiated peacefully under international auspices.

It did them no good. International law was broken. Under the pretext that Serbia's late dictator had been a terrible person, Serbia's Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt have been denied and scorned, while the leader of Kosovo's brutal guerrilla army, the KLA, is being hailed as a democrat and a statesman.

And no, I am not proud that hundreds of angry demonstrators went on a rampage in Belgrade last Thursday, shouting anti-American slogans, burning embassies and pillaging shops. But just like my fellow countrymen, I cannot help but note the irony in Washington's outrage. The Bush administration angrily denounced Serbia for failing to uphold its responsibility under international law to protect embassies.

The Belgrade rally that turned violent had been called to do the very same thing: chastise countries who conveniently ignore their responsibilities to protect sovereignty guaranteed under the U.N. Charter. The last time I checked, international law was also supposed to protect small countries.

Ljiljana Smajlovic is the editor in chief of the Belgrade-based daily Politika. Her article "The Story of Kosovo" first appeared in German in the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.

Illinois Candidate Steve Greenberg's Racist Slandering Make Him Unfit for the US House of Representatives

Recently, Republican Steve Greenberg of Illinois running against incumbent moderate Democrat, Congresswoman Melissa Bean for the US House Seat in District Eight, crossed that line to where no American politician has a right to go --accusing an opponent of connections to "terrorism" just by virtue of their ethnic heritage and (Christian) religion.

I really do not know what Greenberg thought that he could accomplish with such a vicious and uncalled for attack on Congresswoman Bean. But if I weren't personally an American Republican supporter of Israel and my last name wasn't once "Goldfarb", I'd say that Greenberg was trying to call attention AWAY from the fact that he has no political experience; that he can't hide his Jewish last name; or the fact that his second largest campaign contributor is the Republican Jewish Coalition--something that would have otherwise been met with a big "so what?" among most voters, had not Greenberg attacked Melissa Bean in this way. Instead, Greenberg, using reverse discrimination, went on the attack citing Congresswoman Bean's maiden name (Luburic) and outing her as (Oh my God!) of "Christian Serb" ethnic heritage and then connected the dots in some weird backward-ass way to recent events overseas and Bean's position on the issue of Kosovo independence.

But how would Mr. Greenberg feel, if without evidence, I categorizing his benefactors, the RJC, as "a bunch of wild-eyed, right-wing Zionists, bent on sacrificing America to save Israel and Mr. Greenberg as their willing accomplice by taking money from them? Doesn't matter if it is or isn't true -- that is precisely the kind of calumny that Mr. Greenberg slapped onto to the Serb Unity Congress with no proof -- just to create an enemy that doesn't exist.

Steve Greenberg's cheap shot against Congresswoman Bean was so slipshod and vicious that he didn't even get the name of the organization right -- he called it the "Serbian Unity Conference" (no such organization even exists, although many pro-Albanian propaganda websites have also made that same name mistake), instead of correctly calling it the "Serbian Unity Congress". The Serb Unity Congress that Steve Greenberg condemns as "anti-American Serb fundamentalists", are anything but that!

Back in the 1980's, when the Serbian Unity Congress was being organized, it was a mom and pop ethnic heritage group just like hundreds of other ethnic heritage groups in the US. The SUC had no real US "political agenda", because Serbian Orthodox Christians in the US are raised to be politically "Americans first". Besides which, how could American Serbs have a crystal ball to know that the Balkans were going to eventually explode and the US was going to turn on Serbs -- their Allies in two World Wars? The formation of the SUC was just a way of preserving the Serb heritage in the diaspora. For God sakes, who in their right mind would name an organization with the acronym, "SUC" -- rhyming with "suck" -- if were going to be used for serious American PR propaganda purposes? It's nuts!

Unfortunately, in the 1990's, when the Balkans broke up, the SUC stood alone as the only group to which Serb Americans could rally round to try and counter the anti-Serb, racist propaganda that pervaded the news. ("Christian Serbs"were being characterized as "pigs" and "dogs" in political cartoons -- something that should sound familiar to Jews -- except that this was happening in America to Serbs, Mr. Greenberg! Did you expect all Serb Americans in the US to shut up and take it? )

Unlike the other ethnic groups in the Balkans -- Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians and Albanians -- who politically used America for their own purposes, the only thing that the SUC has ever advocated -- or that any American Serbs have advocated-- has been for the US to stay out of taking sides in Balkan politics, quit playing the ethnicities off of one another, and quit sacrificing America's honor and American lives to please Arab Islamic oil interests. (Those same "Arab oil interests" who also want to use Kosovo independence as a model for an independent Palestine --a fact that you might want to let your RJC benefactors in on, Mr. Greenberg!)

Melissa Bean's introduction of HR 445 (along with five other co-sponsors, three of whom were Republicans) was nothing more than asking the US Congress honor the terms of UN Resolution 1244, which the US and Serbia had already agreed to, and that both the Albanians and Serbs come up with a mutually agreed upon solution to the Kosovo issue -- in short, HR445, said that America was just going to honor its word and be fair. Wow, what a revolutionary idea!

Instead, Bush with his ham-fisted neo-conquistador hubris, decided to back Albanian Kosovo independence without Serbia's agreement and hack off a piece of Serbia, thereby dragging the US into violating the Helsinki Final Act and virtually every international law all the way back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Bush's decision on this was and is insane! Besides provoking Russia, recognizing an independent Kosovo has provided secessionists everywhere with a renewed excuse for violence to get what they want, which is why 100+ other nations (including Israel) haven't recognized Kosovo independence -- but Greenberg thinks that the eighteen countries who have are the only ones who count!

Also, Mr. Greenberg-- like President Bush-- apparently suffers from amnesia or else he would remember that Kosovo Albanian Muslims already "thanked America for saving them" by providing four members of the "Fort Dix Six" who tried to kill as many Americans as possible on American soil! What in the heck are we doing supporting these people?

The fact remains that had Mr. Bush followed Ms. Bean's course of action in HR 445, instead of sponsoring Kosovo's unilateral independence declaration, there would never have been "an attack on the US Embassy in Belgrade", by those who just saw a dear piece of their country ripped away from them by President Bush and America! Far from proving Ms Bean's position to be wrong, the resulting attack on our Embassy proved that Melissa Bean's approach to the Balkans was exactly right and President Bush was wrong!

Yet Bush's "international law-breaking" seems to be something that Mr. Greenberg advocates so vociferously that he feels any and all dissent (like Congresswoman Bean's) should be silenced, or else labeled "Serb fundamentalist"? If that's the case, then Mr. Greenberg will also need to shut up prominent Republican like John Bolton and Lawrence Eagleburger, who also thought that recognizing "Kosovo Independence" was a terrible idea! But maybe Bolton & Eagleburger are closet "anti-American Serb fundamentalists" too, Mr. Greenberg?

As an American, I say that Steve Greenberg ought to go back to playing hockey , where cheap shots like this one on Congresswoman Melissa Bean are a dime a dozen and sometimes tolerated. Politics may also be a "dirty game" but racist slander like this Greenberg attack on Melissa Bean are even beyond the pale for anyone considered for a position as responsible as the US House of Representatives. The fact is that Steve Greenberg is "way out of his league", even though he is afraid to admit it -- or maybe he just did, with this stupidity.

If Republicans can't do better than a sorry excuse of a candidate like Steve Greenberg for the US House, then they might as well throw in the towel in Illinois Eight District. Because no amount of sickeningly sweet, "Aren't I a pretty Republican white boy with my family?" photos on Greenberg's blog can take away the stink of this gutter-level attack on Representative Melissa Bean!

Even the Serb Dead Are Targets in Kosovo

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, PRIŠTINA, -- On March 1. 2008, Kosovo Serbs marked Zadušnice, a religious holiday dedicated to the souls of the dead.

Orthodox Christian Serbs observe four such days each year, when families visit cemeteries to light candles and say prayers at the graves of their loved ones.

For many Serbs in Kosovo, especially those whose relatives were buried in cemeteries that are now located in ethnic Albanian communities, observing the holiday has since 1999 been a practice that endangered their personal safety, but also brought with it a particular heartbreak – that of finding the grave of a loved one desecrated.

Serb Orthodox cemeteries and chapels located at the grounds are regularly vandalized, with tombstones broken and crosses ripped out, while those visiting the graves are escorted by UNMIK police.

The divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica is one such example – while the northern majority-Serb part has some Albanian and Bosniak inhabitants, no Serbs live in the southern, Albanian part.

But the Serb cemetery is located south of the Ibar River, which divides the troubled town. Yesterday, UNMIK and Kosovo police escorted some 400 Serbs from the north to the graveyard. As has been the case in the past eight years, they found it desecrated and derelict.

Reports said that approximately 80 percent of the Orthodox tombstones there have been vandalized.

"Albanian gravestones look brand new compared to ours, which are almost all destroyed, especially lately. The only reason why a tombstone can bother someone is if they mean to destroy any sign that we ever existed here," Nenad Milenković, a Serb from northern Kosovska Mitrovica, said after visiting the graves of his parents.

Bisenija Kovačević, who lost her husband 12 years ago, said that while she used to be able to go to his grave each week, this is now only possible when armed escort is organized.

"What hurts the most is that I can't visit his grave freely when I feel the need to. There's nothing worse than arriving to find a grave that no longer has a headstone," she said.

More that 500 Serb graves have been desecrated since 1999, when the new burials there stopped. The Albanian cemetery in the northern part of the town, agencies reported, is not damaged.

A similar scene is reported in the Serb graveyard in Priština. Some Serbs are considering moving the remains of their family members out of the Priština cemetery and to the places where they can be properly protected.

Only around 20 Serbs yesterday braved visiting the graveyard, to quickly light candles and remove the grass and weed from the neglected graves.

Ilija Trajković of Priština, now displaced and living in the Serb enclave of Gračanica, came to the cemetery in a UN vehicle Saturday. He says the scene he and his wife find each time they arrive is "more and more horrible".

"This here looks horrible. Each time we find new tombstones broken. If you wish to see the degree of a society's development, come to a graveyard, and it will be obvious," he was bitter.

Fear, and the recent ethic Albanians' unilateral declaration of the province's independence, are thought to be the reason why so few Serbs dared to visit the cemetery yesterday.

But some, like Snežana Borović, one of a handful of Serbs who still live in Priština, says she came, because she is "not afraid to die".

The parameter around the Serb Orthodox cemetery in Priština was secured by KFOR soldiers and members of the Kosovo police.

NOVAKE -- Unknown perpetrators Saturday took off the bell from a local church in Novake, the village of Serb returnees.

The locals in the village in Metohija, western Kosovo, are blaming ethnic Albanians for the desecration, which came as the villagers were in a cemetery some two kilometers away, marking Zadušnice (All Souls Day), a religious Serb Orthodox Christian holiday dedicated to the dead.

The bell was later found and recovered by KFOR soldiers in a stream.

Local priest Branko Gligorijevic told reporters that some 30 Serb families, who returned to the village after being driven out by Albanians in 1999 had just come home from the cemetery when they heard a "crashing sound".

"We turned back immediately, only to find that the bell from the church was missing," Gligorijevic said.

According to him, the villagers immediately called in KFOR and a search was organized.

"Sometime after 5 p.m. we found the bell in the stream and KFOR helped us take it back to the village. It is disgraceful that ethnic Albanians are doing this to us on Zadušnice, but the Serb church bell will ring in Novake again," Gligorijevic was quoted.

The Punch: "Djokovic reveals heartache over Kosovo"

By Agency Reporter

Published: Monday, 3 Mar 2008

Novak Djokovic, the newest star of the tennis circuit, talked about the pain he feels at the separation of Kosovo from Serbia, and how he can never accept it.

Novak Djokovic posting with the trophy after victory .

The 20-year-old Djokovic has been the biggest sports star in Serbia ever since he won the Australian Open in Melbourne in January, beating the legendary Roger Federer along the way.

But his heart has been aching with the break-up of his country, especially as his family has cross-border loyalties, his father Srdjan being Serbian, and his mother Dijana, Montenegrin.

“Unfortunately it is something that we predicted,” he said of Kosovo‘s declaration of independence last month. But I will feel like a Kosovan all the time.

“Kosovo is part of Serbia. It‘s part of our country. Can you imagine that in any country that some minority says it wants to be independent. How would that country feel?”

The United American Committee Announces LA Rally Against Kosovo Independence

The United America Committee, a US grassroots organization dedicated to raising the awareness of Americans to threats to America's security and toward America becoming energy independent, has organized a rally in Los Angeles support of Serbia's right to Kosovo and against recognition of the Saudi-backed Islamic State of Kosovo.

RALLY
Against the independence of the new
Islamic state of Kosovo in the middle of Europe

Sunday March 9th
LOS ANGELES
In front of the FEDERAL BUILDING in West L.A.
11000 Wilshire Blvd.

Time: 2:00 PM

Bring American flags and signs showing that
AMERICANS DO NOT SUPPORT KOSOVO INDEPENDENCE!

What will be next?
An Islamic state of Dearborn Michigan?
Or a Mexican state of San Diego?
NO!

Non-Muslims in Kosovo today are being attacked and forced to flee, will regions of America one day suffer the same fate?

SEE YOU ON SUNDAY IN WEST L.A.!

Contact: losangeles@unitedamericancommittee.org for more info or for media requests, or if you wish to join the coalition of organizations organizing this event.


SerbBlog Note: UAC Founder, Jesse Petrilla, journeyed to Kosovo and to Bosnia last year. Immediately after returning from this fact-finding trip, he wrote the following article for FrontPage Magazine.

A "Song of Defiance" by Dobrica Eric

The following is an English translation of the poem, A Song of Defiance", written by Serbian poet, Dobrica Eric in the 1990's.

A Song of Defiance

English Translation

I
the servant of God,
the Serb,
announce willingly
through chains and wires
before the witnesses
Power, Agony and Injustice,
that I am guilty and admit my crime!
I am guilty that I am a somebody
and not a nothing and a nobody.
I am guilty that in a time of general
Serb-hating
I go to an Orthodox Christian church
and make the sign of the cross like this,
with three fingers!
I am guilty of being,
when I ought not to be.
I have been guilty for a long time now
of standing upright
and gazing upon Heaven, instead of the grass.
I am guilty of having stood up to injustice.
I am guilty,
of once again honoring my patron saint.
I am guilty of reading and writing Cyrillic.
I am guilty of singing, of laughing, and
I am guilty, this I admit,
of knowing what I do know,
and knowing what I do not know.
I am guilty, to end with my greatest crime.
I am guilty of being stubborn
and of being an Orthodox Christian
and a follower of Saint Sava and of not believing
in such things as "a holy crime".
I am guilty
then
of existing,
and while already being and rudely standing,
of not admitting that I do not exist.

If I admit that I do not exist
in order to save my head,
I will lose the venerable Cross and my patron saint.
If I do not admit that,
my outlook is bleak,
then the entire world will harass my nation.
Hoards of former people
thieves and vagrants,
packs of robots and other monsters,
will attack my orchards and fields
and my white house along the road
around which, as the loveliest of maidens,
blossom cherries, apples, and plums.

So here,
I admit this too,
for the salvation of my people.
I no longer exist.
Remove me from your list.
I am from now on only
air, light and water,
three useful elements.
And this thing that before you walks and talks,
that is what you have made of me!

My enemy with a thousand hands,
a thousand servants and false handmaidens,
you have plucked my sun as you would an apple
and my joy as you would a poppy among the rye.

My descendents shall drink despair and bitterness.
But yours already drink bitter honey-wine
for the blood money which fills your money belt
from the sale of my ancestral land.
Fate will give you a straight jacket,
and then there will come daylight,
or the planet will burst from shame ,
and bury us all in the abyss!

You must be very important,
you, my dear Land,
and your sisters
Truth and Justice,
since so many powers have arisen against you,
and Untruth and Injustice
stand before you with jaws agape.

Hoards of former people,
thieves and vagrants,
packs of robots and other monsters,
already surround your orchards and fields
and my white house along the road
around which, as the loveliest of maidens,
blossom lindens, apples, and plums.

What do these warriors of jihad,
and of crusade, these farmers
that torture your sons and daughters
seek?
These worldly bands must have heard
that we have golden hearts,
so they are removing them
to transplant them into their own torsos
in hopes that they, too, will become people.

My respected prosecutors,
my judges and executioners,
you have written out your commandments for me
all over your pupils,
of the finest of glass.
The harder it is for me to live,
the easier it will be for me to die.
You have gone too deep into a late dark night,
but you will lynch in vain the most hospitable nation on the planet,
because human hearts,
miracle of miracles,
cannot be transplanted into your inhuman torsos!

We do not fear death,
or the darkness,
but rather we fear a slave's life and lengthy illness.
Death is a frequent occurrence among the Serbs
just like spring, summer, autumn and winter,
and it is no worse,
especially by day,
than drought, floods, earthquakes, and frost,
when a man meets these on his own land
with censed soul and clear conscience.

You who wish us harm,
satiated and mad,
you have forbidden me all in my own home,
but nobody can forbid me
to sing and to laugh while dying,
two things you no longer do
even while celebrating a marriage
or birth of your kind.

Spare me the stake and rope,
and crucify me on a mountain top
just as your forbearer crucified my forbearer,
Jesus Christ the Nazarene.

I shall watch,
but you shall close your eyes,
otherwise they will burst
from the glow of my face.
Just hurry -
because the sooner you crucify me
the sooner I will resurrect.

You can also read the poem and hear it recited by Ivana Zigon in the Serbian language on The Holy Theotokos church website. The video also shows the damage and destruction done both by the Albanians to Kosovo's ancient churchs and the 1999 NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia, along with some songs performed by Ivana Zigon.