Kosovo independency

[hajduk]

do you think that Kosovo should get independency?
My oppinion is ambivalent,in one hand for Kosovo is good to get independency becouse Kosovari are been opressed to many times from Serbian radical politicians in a past years,in the other hand Kosovo independency will let the Albanian mob to have own private criminal state which will have entrance directly in European Community
What do you think?

[Whitten]

No, an independent Kosovo would only harm the stability that has build up in the region since the wars.

[spartan]

Kosovo with it's Albanian majority population should have independence or a union with Albania if that is what the majority of people in Kosovo want!

Remember Democracy is majority rule and the last time i checked the majority of people in Kosovo are of Albanian ethnicity who want independence from Serbia so why are some people against this?

The answer to that question of course is that the USA and NATO support the idea of an independent Kosovo as this will give them a key strategic ally in the Balkans to offset the Russian's and the Russian's main ally, in the Balkans, Serbia!

Remember the USA's new missle defence system which the Russians have been complaining about because the USA is setting it up in Russia's old back yard eastern Europe to protect Europe from the "threat" of Iran? A little bit too far away from the middle east and Iran dont you think? :lol:

Anyway what happens in Kosovo will be key to America's plan of gaining a strategic location to stop Russia from regaining it's supremacy again in Europe. Specifically eastern Europe.

[Enragé]

if the majority of kosovarians want independence, yes, if not, no
simple.

[Comrade Rage]

Kosovar independence could harm the region. No.
The problem with independence of provinces into small nations is that it is much less efficient in terms of public services like transport.
It can also cut off segments of the food supply.

[An archist]

Just saw a documentary about the issue.

I'm not sure what should happen, the problem is that in kosovo, you have a serbian minority wich is quite often the victim of attacks by albanians, who are a minority in the whole of serbia.
It's apparently quite a complicated situation with a lot of bullshit nationalism on both sides.
Could you give a bit more information on the subject hajduk?

[RedStarOverChina]

I personally know two Albanians from Kosovo whose entire family was slaughtered...Independence will risk too much bloodshed.

I think some level of autonomy would be much better.

[spartan]

Kosovo should not get independence but should strive to go into union with Albania because that way the racist minority of Serbs who run Serbia will not have the guts to stop the union.

Where as if it was just Kosovo getting independence well then the Serbs could just go in and crush it and we would have a similar situation as in the 90's with the Jugoslavian civil war and i do not think that anyone in their right mind wants that!

[Dr Mindbender]

Montenegro got it, so sure why not. I dont know enough about the politics of the region to criticise the case for or against though.

I'll get me coat... :unsure:

[wogboy]

The Kosovo situation has been heavily nationalised. People on the ground just want to lead normal lives. In the political strata things are said which dont reflect reality.

As an idealist, I would prefer to see the union with Serbia continue. Vojvodina in the north of Serbia does very well and should act as an example of multi-ethnic cooperation. Economically, Serbia is very well connected with Europe (banking, business, finance) and has developed an excellent relationship with Russia. If Kosovo was provided wide autonomy there is scope of greater prosperity under Serbia than alone.

Realistically, the wounds of the Kosovo conflict are still very fresh. The area is already divided. Media is controlled. The social problems are incredible. I do not think these problems could be overcome through a continued union.

Independence wont work. The break up of Yugoslavia showed that peopel in the much less developed regions actually got worse off. Claims to Kosovo's mineral wealth need to be scrutinised-lignite is one of the most cheapest inefficient resources. Kosovo independence will probably not be recognised by most of its neighbours. I do not know how this will affect important things like trade. I can only see the already rich (and corrupt) elite proffiting.

The loosers in all this mess will be those who have already forgone the best part of 30years cought in the political storm. It will take decades and decades of development to reverse the damage. Given an open passport to anywhere, I would be surprised if the population remained at half of what it is right now.

[hajduk]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2007 06:36 pm
Kosovo with it's Albanian majority population should have independence or a union with Albania if that is what the majority of people in Kosovo want!

Remember Democracy is majority rule and the last time i checked the majority of people in Kosovo are of Albanian ethnicity who want independence from Serbia so why are some people against this?

The answer to that question of course is that the USA and NATO support the idea of an independent Kosovo as this will give them a key strategic ally in the Balkans to offset the Russian's and the Russian's main ally, in the Balkans, Serbia!

Remember the USA's new missle defence system which the Russians have been complaining about because the USA is setting it up in Russia's old back yard eastern Europe to protect Europe from the "threat" of Iran? A little bit too far away from the middle east and Iran dont you think? :lol:

Anyway what happens in Kosovo will be key to America's plan of gaining a strategic location to stop Russia from regaining it's supremacy again in Europe. Specifically eastern Europe.
how Albanian mob fit into it?

[hajduk]

this is one albanian forum where they discuse on english
http://www.albanian.com/community/vbl/arch...php/t-2790.html (http://www.albanian.com/community/vbl/archive/index.php/t-2790.html)

here you got more information about this issue
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faco...for-kosovo.html (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101facomment84603/charles-a-kupchan/independence-for-kosovo.html)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6496417.stm
http://news.google.com/news?q=kosovo+indep...snum=4&ct=title (http://news.google.com/news?q=kosovo+independence&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=news_result&resnum=4&ct=title)
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-yugo...kosovo_4044.jsp (http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-yugoslavia/kosovo_4044.jsp)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/30/news/kosovo.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7031200972.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/12/AR2007031200972.html)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...l?nav=rss_world (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801440.html?nav=rss_world)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2099981,00.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/826...EC6C3DB99C1.htm (http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/826133F9-71AB-4BAC-B970-4EC6C3DB99C1.htm)
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?...897720&fsrc=RSS (http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=9897720&fsrc=RSS)
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9909/24/kosovo.us/
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/i...084481120070608 (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL084481120070608)
http://www.state.gov/p/us/rm/2007/83120.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/world/eu.../27nations.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/world/europe/27nations.html)
http://www.euractiv.com/en/enlargement/ser...-166689?Ref=RSS (http://www.euractiv.com/en/enlargement/serbia-warns-eu-kosovo-independence-declaration/article-166689?Ref=RSS)
http://www.huliq.com/36017/serbia-again-of...ts-independence (http://www.huliq.com/36017/serbia-again-offers-kosovo-wide-autonomy-rejects-independence)
http://www.tiraspoltimes.com/node/837
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070730/69966421.html
http://www.serbianna.com/news/2007/02606.shtml
http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=23418
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?News...Cr=albania&Cr1= (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=24044&Cr=albania&Cr1=)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/110...sovo_Talks.html (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Britain_Kosovo_Talks.html)
http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/archive/20...-07-12-voa2.cfm (http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/archive/2007-07/2007-07-12-voa2.cfm)
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/mb/053.shtml
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Oct09/0,4...voTalks,00.html (http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Oct09/0,4670,BritainKosovoTalks,00.html)
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?News...eral&Cr1=debate (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=24024&Cr=general&Cr1=debate)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0928/p99s01-duts.html
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/east-green...S24PFN2R5EE1BO1 (http://www.topix.com/forum/city/east-greenbush-ny/TAS24PFN2R5EE1BO1)
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-artic...90&nav_id=43402 (http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2007&mm=08&dd=31&nav_category=90&nav_id=43402)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...ticle703448.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article703448.ece)
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/11/i...-of-kosovo.html (http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/11/independence-days-future-of-kosovo.html)
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=14825
http://www.dtt-net.com/en/index.php?page=v...le&article=2896 (http://www.dtt-net.com/en/index.php?page=view-article&article=2896)
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtm...7/20/feature-01 (http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2007/07/20/feature-01)
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900S...34?OpenDocument (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/KKEE-6HKU34?OpenDocument)
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2359807,00.html
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0704/S00264.htm

this will be enough i think for further discuse

[hajduk]

this link is about future in Kosovo and its wery interesting becouse content been written by one albanian specialist in Pristina

http://www.forumi2015.org/home/images/stor...modern_tale.pdf

[Demogorgon]

Well Kosovo pretty much has de facto independence anyway. I think full legal independence will be an inevitability

[Eleftherios]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2007 03:08 pm
I think some level of autonomy would be much better.
I agree. A semi-independent Kosovo is the best solution.


Kosovo should not get independence but should strive to go into union with Albania because that way the racist minority of Serbs who run Serbia will not have the guts to stop the union.

And what about the minority of Serbs living in Kosovo? They have been victims of anti-Serb riots in the past. It sounds to me like you're favoring one nationality over another.

I suggest you take a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_unrest_in_Kosovo

[spartan]

Alcaeos:
And what about the minority of Serbs living in Kosovo? They have been victims of anti-Serb riots in the past. It sounds to me like you're favoring one nationality over another.
You could say the same for the minority of pro Apartheid whites in South Africa or the whites in Rhodesia.

[ComradeR]

I'm rather undecided on the whole Kosovo situation, it seems that no matter what happens there is a very good chance that Kosovo is going to plunge into war. If independence is realized ether one (or two) of three things will happen, ether 1) Serbia throws a fit and could cause other separatist movements around the world to become emboldened, 2) Serbia invades and basically have a repeat of the last war, or 3) the ethnic Serbs in Kosovo launch a guerrilla war which could lead to the new Kosovo state to begin a crackdown on the Serbs and even possibly ethnic cleansing (regardless of which one happens it's sure to be the final thing to hurl the west and Russia into a new "cold war"). If it is decided that Kosovo will remain part of Serbia then it will cause the Kosovo Albanian nationalists to launch a new guerrilla war which due to the high ethnic tensions could lead to the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo Serbs.

You could say the same for the minority of pro Apartheid whites in South Africa or the whites in Rhodesia.
This is an idiotic comparison, for one Rhodesia was a colony whereas Kosovo is not, and two the pro Apartheid whites of Rhodesia were colonists whereas the Kosovo Serbs are not.

[Dimentio]

Kosovo is under UN control, not Serbian control.

[spartan]

Rhodesia became a Republic in 1970 and are you telling me that white people who had been living in South Africe for at least a hundred years (Not including the recent emmigrants) were colonists when they were born there?

How about nowadays? Are whites in SA still colonisers?

[ComradeR]

Kosovo is under UN control, not Serbian control.
Right but on paper it is still a part of Serbia and that's all that matters to both the Albanian and Serbian nationalists.

[ComradeR]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 12:33 pm
Rhodesia became a Republic in 1970 and are you telling me that white people who had been living in South Africe for at least a hundred years (Not including the recent emmigrants) were colonists when they were born there?

How about nowadays? Are whites in SA still colonisers?
Of course not, but the situation between SA and Kosovo is very deferent, the Serbs are not some foreign colonizers who merely stayed around after the colonial state was dissolved.

[hajduk]

Originally posted by ComradeR+October 15, 2007 12:52 pm--> (ComradeR @ October 15, 2007 12:52 pm)
[email protected] 15, 2007 12:33 pm
Rhodesia became a Republic in 1970 and are you telling me that white people who had been living in South Africe for at least a hundred years (Not including the recent emmigrants) were colonists when they were born there?

How about nowadays? Are whites in SA still colonisers?
Of course not, but the situation between SA and Kosovo is very deferent, the Serbs are not some foreign colonizers who merely stayed around after the colonial state was dissolved. [/b]
well in Yugoslavia we Yugoslavs think about kosovari like nationalist and terrorist,but Yugoslav Serbs use that to make on Kosovo lot of opressing using police brutality,raping kosovari females and killing those kosovari who whant to make Republic of Kosovo,and idea for R.o.K is made by Enver Hodža who work with albanian mob using Staljin to provide that idea,so in that manner is really hard to separate apartheid in S.A. from apartheid in Kosovo,becouse the methods which use Yugoslav police are the same like in S.A.,also you must know that Albanians are authentic nation on Balkan,becouse slavinians when they came on balkan,Albanians already live here....

[ComradeR]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 01:11 pm
well in Yugoslavia we Yugoslavs think about kosovari like nationalist and terrorist,but Yugoslav Serbs use that to make on Kosovo lot of opressing using police brutality,raping kosovari females and killing those kosovari who whant to make Republic of Kosovo,and idea for R.o.K is made by Enver Hodža who work with albanian mob using Staljin to provide that idea,so in that manner is really hard to separate apartheid in S.A. from apartheid in Kosovo,becouse the methods which use Yugoslav police are the same like in S.A.,also you must know that Albanians are authentic nation on Balkan,becouse slavinians when they came on balkan,Albanians already live here....
Very true, but I think in a way it might actually be more accurate to compare Kosovo to Rwanda then SA.
Also didn't the Serbs migrant to the Balkans (and what is now known as Kosovo) in the 6th century AD? So they can't really be compared in that way to the Europeans who colonized Africa.

[wogboy]

ComradeR>>>>the circumstances are slightly different and I only want to elaborate on your earlier points as to what may happen in Kosovo.

There has been demographic change. Unlike the early 90s (although it was occuring then), towns are not as mixed. The majority serb areas are in the north, and that population sits on vast quantities of some of the wealthiest resources. I do not think Serbia would launch an attack on separatists (the most of which are in Pristina). I think, that if anything, the serbian army would move swiftly into Serb held areas only. I think many factors could be used to justify this also (rising tensions, no clear manadate towards independence etc).

The Serbian nationalists in Kosovo could start a gurilla war, although they are heavily outnumbered. I do not think (after the sanctions in 92-95) and NATO bombing 98-99 that Belgrade would support such a move. Belgrade could use this as a pretext to protect its population in Kosovo but I do not think you would see a full scale assult on Kosovo. Remember also, that now all western institutions are present in Kosovo (including NGOs) so it would be difficult to move into a conflict situation without being perpetrated as the aggressor.

The ethnic Albanian Nationalists will go to extreme lengths to claim Kosovo. They also operate accross the border with Macedonia, so Macedonian diplomacy becomes important. Also, there is international peacekeepers in Kosovo, so you would essentially have more than one army in a contested territory. Under such conditions, it isnt very easy to seize the whole territory. It is virtually impossible for one group (except perhaphs the west) to do so.

Finally, there is also the area of ethnic albanians which borders Kosovo, but is still today in Serbia. This is geographically a very big problem and was 3 or 4 years ago the centre of armed uprising. Any conflict in Kosovo would surely have a deep impact here.

At the moment I myself see a division of Kosovo. I think Belgrade would be satisfied, but any such division severely undermines what would be declared a state of kosovo. This is why the largest cries against division come from the Kosovo albanian camp.

[hajduk]

Originally posted by ComradeR+October 15, 2007 01:23 pm--> (ComradeR @ October 15, 2007 01:23 pm)
[email protected] 15, 2007 01:11 pm
well in Yugoslavia we Yugoslavs think about kosovari like nationalist and terrorist,but Yugoslav Serbs use that to make on Kosovo lot of opressing using police brutality,raping kosovari females and killing those kosovari who whant to make Republic of Kosovo,and idea for R.o.K is made by Enver Hodža who work with albanian mob using Staljin to provide that idea,so in that manner is really hard to separate apartheid in S.A. from apartheid in Kosovo,becouse the methods which use Yugoslav police are the same like in S.A.,also you must know that Albanians are authentic nation on Balkan,becouse slavinians when they came on balkan,Albanians already live here....
Very true, but I think in a way it might actually be more accurate to compare Kosovo to Rwanda then SA.
Also didn't the Serbs migrant to the Balkans (and what is now known as Kosovo) in the 6th century AD? So they can't really be compared in that way to the Europeans who colonized Africa. [/b]
you can compared with S.A. becouse like i told you Albanians already live on balkan when slavinians (not Serbs) came to this land,and slavinians are all nations which live now on Balkan

[wogboy]

Hajduk>>>there are very big differences between Albanians in Albania and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Whist mutual sympathy does exist, there are thorny issues between the two and in many cases, Albanians from Albania view the ones from Kosovo as trouble makers. Ive encountered the same types of views from Serbs in Belgrade commenting on Serbs from Bosnia. Croats from Croatia will at times, pass the same judgement on Croats in Mostar....

[ComradeR]

wogboy>>I completely agree with what you said and I believe I made my post a little to simplistic. The fact is that because the Kosovo Serbs control the vast quantities of resources, added to the fact that the ethnic tensions are still very strong makes a ethnic and nationalist fueled conflict a very real possibility.

[ComradeR]

you can compared with S.A. becouse like i told you Albanians already live on balkan when slavinians (not Serbs) came to this land,and slavinians are all nations which live now on Balkan
Well Slavic people (which includes Serbs) and Albanians have been living side by side in the Balkans for the better part of two thousand years, so I would say that does not make Serbs colonists like the Europeans who colonized Africa.

[hajduk]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 01:43 pm

you can compared with S.A. becouse like i told you Albanians already live on balkan when slavinians (not Serbs) came to this land,and slavinians are all nations which live now on Balkan
Well Slavic people (which includes Serbs) and Albanians have been living side by side in the Balkans for the better part of two thousand years, so I would say that does not make Serbs colonists like the Europeans who colonized Africa.
i think it does, becouse slavinians are different tribe then albanians,i dont speak about nation like that term use today,i speak about tribes,so albanian tribe been native tribe and they already live on balkan when slavinians tribe came here,so in that manner do you think Comrader that Serbs have right to opress the Albanians,like colonist in S.A. have right to opress native africans?

[spartan]

Albanians are thought to have been related to the ancient Illyrians so the Albanians are not a Slavic people like most peoples in the Balkans and are completly unrelated to the Slavs.

The Slavs only started pouring into the Balkans around the 6th or 7th century when the Byzantine Empire started having trouble with them.

Other peoples that the Byzantines were having trouble with at this time were the Huns who were a Mongol people and the Bulgars (Modern day Bulgarians who nowadays are wrongly regarded as Slavs) who were a Turkic people amongst others such as the Avars and the newly Islamic Arabs.

[wogboy]

ComradeR>>>>I agree. The nationalist tension is causing huge friction and heightening the possibility of conflict. At the least, such tensions (casued by all those things you just summarised) do very little for progress and a sustainable future.

I myself have never been a supporter of xenophobia (heterogenous states). Nationalist ideology when taken to the extreme promotes nothing but fear and violence. It has no regard for the effects it will have on the greater population in times of escalated conflict or future development.

What you have seen in Yugoslavia is the complete "un-winding" of whatever good was achieved in the past 50 years.

Excuse the passion...I am an idealist at heart ;)

[hajduk]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 01:59 pm
Albanians are thought to have been related to the ancient Illyrians so the Albanians are not a Slavic people like most peoples in the Balkans.
yes that is my point spartan,becouse like i say Albanians are different tribe and they are natives.....

[ComradeR]

i think it does, becouse slavinians are different tribe then albanians,i dont speak about nation like that term use today,i speak about tribes,so albanian tribe been native tribe and they already live on balkan when slavinians tribe came here,so in that manner do you think Comrader that Serbs have right to opress the Albanians,like colonist in S.A. have right to opress native africans?
This is exactly why I said it would be better to compare Kosovo to Rwanda then SA. In Kosovo you have the majority Albanians and the minority Serbs, just like in Rwanda you have the majority Hutu's and the minority Tutsi (the Tutsi used to oppress the Hutu's just as the Serbs oppressed the Albanians), of course it's a given that they're not the same but they do have striking similarity's, much more so then with colonized SA.

[вор в законе]

Colonization is not a ''mass ethnic immigration'', but the the economic and political control of a state of which the surplus value is extracted and expropriated back to the colonial (mother) state.

Hence under this light neither the slavs of the balkans or the whites of south africa today are by any means colonizers.

[ComradeR]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 02:01 pm
ComradeR>>>>I agree. The nationalist tension is causing huge friction and heightening the possibility of conflict. At the least, such tensions (casued by all those things you just summarised) do very little for progress and a sustainable future.

I myself have never been a supporter of xenophobia (heterogenous states). Nationalist ideology when taken to the extreme promotes nothing but fear and violence. It has no regard for the effects it will have on the greater population in times of escalated conflict or future development.

What you have seen in Yugoslavia is the complete "un-winding" of whatever good was achieved in the past 50 years.

Excuse the passion...I am an idealist at heart ;)
Yes it's a sad truth. What kills me is how the Albanians and Serbs fail to see how this ethnic and nationalist bullshit is being promoted (one way or another) and used as a weapon be the imperialists to divide and conquer.

Colonization is not a ''mass ethnic immigration'', but the the economic and political control of a state of which the surplus value is extracted and expropriated back to the colonial (mother) state.

Hence under this light neither the slavs of the balkans or the whites of south africa today are by any means colonizers.

Exactly.

[wogboy]

Red Brigade>>>I would also add to your very good definition:

When the territory is controlled through political and economic means with the future intent to expropriate economic rents from it. The timming is deliberate.

Ive noticed that very many of these Balkan states are in a state you could almost term as frozen. There are very many profitable resources that are not being currently exploited, even though the west has potential to do so. I thought about this for quite some time and my only reasoning was to create a monopoly and kill competition. The home country in this manner preserves its own assets/resources/proffits at the expense of the home country.

[wogboy]

Yes it's a sad truth. What kills me is how the Albanians and Serbs fail to see how this ethnic and nationalist bullshit is being promoted (one way or another) and used as a weapon be the imperialists to divide and conquer.

It shits me also.

But Ive thought...why dont we hear from the moderates? Surely there exist those who see logic, who arnt pulled apart by tablooids, Television and the brick layers newspaper. Im talking about the ones who never asked for trouble, went on living a humble existence but cought up as pawns in the Kosovo crisis.

These ones have no political representation. Thats why we never hear from them.

[hajduk]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 02:41 pm



But Ive thought...why dont we hear from the moderates? Surely there exist those who see logic, who arnt pulled apart by tablooids, Television and the brick layers newspaper. Im talking about the ones who never asked for trouble, went on living a humble existence but cought up as pawns in the Kosovo crisis.

These ones have no political representation. Thats why we never hear from them.
and on the other hand Kosovo could be a good excuse for imperialists to start war beetwen America nad Russia,becouse of,like spartan mentioned,antirocket-defense system which whant put American government in Europe,is already cause tension beetwen this two states with nuclear war heads,and Kosovo is in a middle of interests of Amerika and Russia becouse of rubber band game,so in that manner the solution for this problem we must find very soon,becouse if you remeber the W.W. I started with assasination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo,so i think this what happening with Kosovo could be very similar situation

[hajduk]

the latest news i read in papers about this thread says that there is possibility of war on balkan if Kosovo get independecy,becouse politicians like Vojislav Kostunica and premier of Republic Srpska Milorad Dodig whant to involve Bosnia in that struggle together with Serbia,our politicians like president of Social Democratic Party Zeljko Komsic says that there is no chance that happened and that he aint let the serbians politicians to involve Bosnia in that becouse that is the problem beetwen Belgrade and Pristina also Zeljko Komsic send the message to Kostunica saying to him that he keep his fingers from Bosnia becouse if he continue to involve Bosnia in politic about Kosovo that he been punched in a nose :D
so what do you think comraders?
is going to be another war in Bosnia?

[wogboy]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 11:22 am
the latest news i read in papers about this thread says that there is possibility of war on balkan if Kosovo get independecy,becouse politicians like Vojislav Kostunica and premier of Republic Srpska Milorad Dodig whant to involve Bosnia in that struggle together with Serbia,our politicians like president of Social Democratic Party Zeljko Komsic says that there is no chance that happened and that he aint let the serbians politicians to involve Bosnia in that becouse that is the problem beetwen Belgrade and Pristina also Zeljko Komsic send the message to Kostunica saying to him that he keep his fingers from Bosnia becouse if he continue to involve Bosnia in politic about Kosovo that he been punched in a nose :D
so what do you think comraders?
is going to be another war in Bosnia?
There is zero chance of war in Bosnia because of Kosovo. In Macedonia the story may be different.

There may be barking in Bosnia, but no biting. The media are just trying to sell stories. Serbia already owns half of the serb republic. Trying to unite it politically and inherit the problem of managing the bosnian serbs isnt a problem serbia needs. The Bosnian Serbs already cost Serbia dearly in the 90s.

The Kosovo problem is difficult to manage. Bost sides have dug themselves so deep that they find it impossible to get themselves out of it.

[hajduk]

Originally posted by wogboy+October 27, 2007 11:45 am--> (wogboy @ October 27, 2007 11:45 am)
[email protected] 27, 2007 11:22 am
the latest news i read in papers about this thread says that there is possibility of war on balkan if Kosovo get independecy,becouse politicians like Vojislav Kostunica and premier of Republic Srpska Milorad Dodig whant to involve Bosnia in that struggle together with Serbia,our politicians like president of Social Democratic Party Zeljko Komsic says that there is no chance that happened and that he aint let the serbians politicians to involve Bosnia in that becouse that is the problem beetwen Belgrade and Pristina also Zeljko Komsic send the message to Kostunica saying to him that he keep his fingers from Bosnia becouse if he continue to involve Bosnia in politic about Kosovo that he been punched in a nose :D
so what do you think comraders?
is going to be another war in Bosnia?
There is zero chance of war in Bosnia because of Kosovo. In Macedonia the story may be different.

There may be barking in Bosnia, but no biting. The media are just trying to sell stories. Serbia already owns half of the serb republic. Trying to unite it politically and inherit the problem of managing the bosnian serbs isnt a problem serbia needs. The Bosnian Serbs already cost Serbia dearly in the 90s.

The Kosovo problem is difficult to manage. Bost sides have dug themselves so deep that they find it impossible to get themselves out of it. [/b]
yes but those suckers from R.S. definitly whant to involve Bosnia in that struggle and Vojislav Kostunica even ask for apologise from Zeljko Komsic becouse of threat that he will be punched in the nose and politicians from R.S. support that,and on media says that if bosnian politicians continue with that kind of politic,the R.S. will make law about separation R.S. from Bosnia and Herzegowina,also the represent of EU Miroslav Lajcak use Bon laws to remove some politicians from R.S. and BiH becouse they stopping conditions for Bosnia to become member of EU and that also bring oil on the fire becouse R.S. and Serbia signed the document about special relationships beetwen R.S. and Serbia whitch means that if Serbia need R.S. or R.S. needs Serbia they will help eatch other,so in the manner of speaking if EU remove Miroslav Dodig from government of BiH, Serbia will support politicians from R.S. to go out from bosnian state institiutions whitch means that Bosnia dont have a legitiment government any more,and in the other hand if Kosovo get indenpendency R.S. will support Serbia and that will involve Bosnia in that struggle whitch means more tension beetwen BiH,R.S. and Serbia

[Prairie Fire]

Form a Leninist standpoint, all nations have the right to self determination, up to and including right of cessession. Now, on that basis, Kosovo shouldn't be analyzed as a country, but rather as nations. Perhaps Kosovo itself should be partitioned, and the predominantly serb areas could merge with Serbia, while the predominantly Albanian areas could be merged with Albania. Rather than Blakanization, that would actually increase the unification of the Balkans, and be based on national lines rather than political boundries.

Hajduk:

and idea for R.o.K is made by Enver Hodža who work with albanian mob using Staljin to provide that idea

True that Enver did put forward the idea back in the day (which the USA didn't support at the time), and true that he did base his ideology on uncle joe, but the rest of your post is non-sensical. Hoxha collaborated with the Albanian Mob? Being as most Albanian mobsters are ex-sigurimi, and the sigurimi was still in existence at this time, there really wasn't an existing Albanian mob for him to ccoperate with (not that he would have). This is Serb nationalist tripe that smacks of Crypto-Titoism, accusing all Albanians including their leadership of criminal connections/ activities.

[Redboy]

I myself would not like to see it.

The balkans is far too crowded. If Kosovo becomes independent, it will lead to a chain of events that will end up with nearly every town or city being a independent country in the Balkans.

If I had my way, Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Romania and Bulgaria would be the only countries in the Balkans.

[Dean]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 05:43 pm
I myself would not like to see it.

The balkans is far too crowded. If Kosovo becomes independent, it will lead to a chain of events that will end up with nearly every town or city being a independent country in the Balkans.

If I had my way, Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Romania and Bulgaria would be the only countries in the Balkans.
Half of those nations aren't in the Balkans. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Balkan_topo_en.jpg)

Besides, what would you say of de-facto nations like Pridnestrovia? There, local determinism has encouraged a more leftist organization. Should they lose their right to an independant nation?

[Comrade Rage]

Originally posted by Dean
Half of those nations aren't in the Balkans.
They do, however have a strong Balkan minority pop. So they are relevant.

By the way: Bush endorsed Kosovar independency
Dubya also wants to build a missile system in East Europe

Do the math, people.

[Eleftherios]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 10:17 am
Form a Leninist standpoint, all nations have the right to self determination, up to and including right of cessession.
Correction: Nations have the right to self determination, but this is not true all the time. In fact, Lenin crushed many of the breakaway republics during the Russian Civil War.


Besides, what would you say of de-facto nations like Pridnestrovia? There, local determinism has encouraged a more leftist organization.

Pridnestrovia, or Transnistria, belongs to Moldova. Right now, it is nothing more than a puppet of Russia.

[hajduk]

[QUOTE=RavenBlade,October 27, 2007 04:17 pm] [QUOTE]

Hajduk:
[QUOTE]but the rest of your post is non-sensical. Hoxha collaborated with the Albanian Mob? [QUOTE]
albanian mob is very similar to sicilian mob becouse of social and nature enviroment ,and in history both are worked together many times and also moust of time both of them have similar goals in crime busines,albanian mob hase a long history but becouse albanians been isolated for years becouse of very low life standards,the publicity didnt mutch know about existing of this crime organisation,but during the years albanian immigrants when they start to go in America to find the ways for spreading "familiy busines" they made strong connections with american politicians and very offen albanian mob use that connections for provideing the profit in crime busines so from time to time they been locate by journalist who start to speak about them so in latest times we can hear in news about lot of crime investigations which included investigation of albanian mob in America, so when Enver Hodža was president the albanian mob was very strong but not strong enough to make political tension in EX-YU to make separation of Kosovo from EX-YU,(and you must know that every family in Albania is somehow connected with albanian mob becouse that organisation during the years become some kind of albanian Cosa Nostra but with albanian mob-rules about family,merriage,busines,nationalism,politic etc. and moust of albanian citizens have positive oppinion about albanian mob becouse during the years albanian mob support struggle against serbs by any means necasary and somehow the albanian mob leaders become freedom fighters same as italian mob leaders who supported fight against france colonisation in Italy)
so that was Enver strong connected with albanian mob during years when he was in albanian government,and by that albanian mob supported Enver Hodža financialy and with authority and also organised his meetings with Staljin etc. didnt help him becouse EX-YU was stronger state then, (you must know that i dont speak about some theory conspiracy but about facts,for example russian mob buy more then 70% of land and mensiones in Monte Negro state so this is also fact which mean a lot in crime busines so if Kosovo get independency and probably it will, the russian,albanian and italian mob will be very close to each other)

so today albanian mob also whant the piece of this cake called independency of Kosovo and as you can see this is not a first time that they whant free pass for smuggling drugs,human trafficking etc. trough balkan to europe becouse with Kosovo they will have free pass,and by that you can see that America and Russia are opposed about this and that political tension albanian mob whant to use for own busines

[Redboy]

Originally posted by Dean+October 27, 2007 06:06 pm--> (Dean @ October 27, 2007 06:06 pm)
[email protected] 27, 2007 05:43 pm
I myself would not like to see it.

The balkans is far too crowded. If Kosovo becomes independent, it will lead to a chain of events that will end up with nearly every town or city being a independent country in the Balkans.

If I had my way, Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Romania and Bulgaria would be the only countries in the Balkans.
Half of those nations aren't in the Balkans. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Balkan_topo_en.jpg)

Besides, what would you say of de-facto nations like Pridnestrovia? There, local determinism has encouraged a more leftist organization. Should they lose their right to an independant nation? [/b]
Not half, just Romaina :rolleyes:

[Eleftherios]

Originally posted by Redboy+October 28, 2007 01:47 pm--> (Redboy @ October 28, 2007 01:47 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 06:06 pm

[email protected] 27, 2007 05:43 pm
I myself would not like to see it.

The balkans is far too crowded. If Kosovo becomes independent, it will lead to a chain of events that will end up with nearly every town or city being a independent country in the Balkans.

If I had my way, Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, Romania and Bulgaria would be the only countries in the Balkans.
Half of those nations aren't in the Balkans. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Balkan_topo_en.jpg)

Besides, what would you say of de-facto nations like Pridnestrovia? There, local determinism has encouraged a more leftist organization. Should they lose their right to an independant nation?
Not half, just Romaina :rolleyes: [/b]
Actually, Romania sometimes is considered part of the Balkans

Countries in the Balkans (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/Balkans-political-map-small.png)

[spartan]

Romania is on the fringes of the Balkans whilst all the other countries listed have at least a sizeable part of their territory in the Balkans.

[hajduk]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28, 2007 11:52 pm
Romania is on the fringes of the Balkans whilst all the other countries listed have at least a sizeable part of their territory in the Balkans.
well all of those countries are considered as balkan countries becouse the term balkan now is more political term then geographical

[hajduk]

more news at 11

25 October 2007

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica says preserving Serb rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo are the main goals of his administration.

The Serbian leader, in a statement, accused international officials of efforts to undermine the 1995 Dayton peace accord that halted the Bosnian conflict and United Nations resolutions on the future of Kosovo.

He was referring to efforts by the top international mediator in Bosnia, Miroslav Lajcak, to streamline the work of the country's central institutions. Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik has challenged the mediator's order and threatened to withdraw all Serb representatives from Bosnia's central government bodies.

On Kosovo Mr. Kostunica again reaffirmed his country's opposition to the plan U.N. mediator Martti Ahtisaari has proposed for supervised independence for Serbia's breakaway province.

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority seeks independence, a position both Serbia and its ally Russia have rejected.

Representatives of the two sides are engaged in talks on the future of the province.

The United Nations has administered Kosovo since 1999, when NATO airstrikes drove Serbian and Yugoslav security forces from the province.


30 October 2007

Bosnian Serb lawmakers have rejected new measures imposed by the top international mediator in Bosnia-Herzegovina aimed at streamlining voting procedures of Bosnia's central government. The lawmakers called the measures by mediator Miroslav Lajcak violations of Bosnia's constitution and of the 1995 Dayton Peace accord that halted the Balkan conflict.

Lajcak wants to change the way a quorum is calculated by counting only lawmakers who attend meetings, rather than also including those absent. Previously, politicians who sought to block votes or decisions had done so by staying away from legislative sessions, depriving them of a quorum.

The international community has given the mediator wide powers to impose laws and dismiss officials to guarantee full compliance with the Dayton accord.

The Dayton accord divided Bosnia into a Muslim Croat Federation and a Serb Republic, each with its own police force.

In a related development, the top commander of European Union peacekeepers in Bosnia has expressed concern over growing instability in the western Balkans. German Rear Admiral Hans-Jochen Witthauer told a Bosnian newspaper Dnevni List international peacekeepers remain in the area to intervene quickly in the event of an outbreak of war.


REUTERS

[hajduk]

more news at 11

The resignation of the Chair of the Council of Ministers BiH means that the BiH Government is now in a technical mandate. The Council of Ministers continues to have a responsibility to ensure that the administration continues to function. The Law on the Council of Ministers foresees this eventuality and therefore BH Citizens have no reason to worry.

“Nikola Spiric’s decision to resign is his right and his choice, but it is not a responsible action”, the High Representative, Miroslav Lajcak said today. “It will not calm the current political situation but I expect the Council of Ministers to exercise their technical mandate in full,” he said.

The High Representative’s decision of 19 October 2007 has been made the pretext for this and other planned resignations. Yesterday the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council stated that “the only objective of the [High Representative’s] measures is to streamline the decision-making process in the Council of Ministers”, and that “certain political leaders have overreacted to these measures”.

“It is paradoxical that the Chairman of the Council of Ministers should resign over measures that are designed to make the Council of Ministers, the body that he Chairs, more efficient,” said the HR today. “The country needs functioning institutions for the reform processes to be re-launched”.

The Peace Implementation Council said yesterday that the Decision to amend the Law on the Council of Ministers is fully in line with the mandate of the High Representative and the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Decision does not undermine, in any way, the position of any Entity or constituent peoples.

The BiH Presidency will discuss the resignation at a session tomorrow, Friday 2 November.

OHR Sarajevo | Thursday, November 01, 2007

[i £ov€ capitali$m]

If the people of Kosovo want independence no one should stop them. They have the right of self-determination just like everyone else in the world.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

27 october 2007

Russian President Vladimir Putin and European Union leaders haved hailed as "constructive," Friday's Summit in the town of Mafra, outside Lisbon.

No major breakthroughs were reported on key issues, such as the future status of Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province or Iran's nuclear program.

But European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso did express confidence that Russia will soon enter the World Trade Organization.

Mr. Putin also expressed hope for an agreement on a new European Union-Russian partnership accord.

EU-member Poland is blocking talks on the agreement in response to a Russian ban on imports of Polish meat. But a Russian spokesman, Sergei Yastrszhembsky, later said Poland had agreed to accept Russian inspectors at its meat-processing facilities in a move that could lead Russia to lift its ban.

During the last EU-Russia summit, earlier this year, President Putin and EU leaders were at considerable odds over the state of democracy in Russia.

Friday, Mr. Putin unveiled a proposal for a joint Russian-European Union institute to monitor observance of human rights in Europe.

The Russian president has often criticized Western governments of using rights as a pretext to try to interfere in Russia's internal affairs.

EU governments and human rights groups accuse Mr. Putin's government of efforts to limit democracy and restrict freedom of speech.

23 October 2007

Kosovo police say they believe that a longtime reporter for the Serbian Service of the Voice of America made a false report when she said she had been assaulted and beaten earlier this month.

The Serbian news agency Tanjug quotes a Kosovo police spokesman, Veton Elshani, as saying the case of Vesna Bojicic will be brought before a relevant court. He said witnesses had seen the journalist in a Gracanica nightclub that evening and at the scene of a traffic accident the following morning.

The journalist told VOA a masked man in a camouflage uniform forced his way into a Pristina apartment and started beating her. She said he made threats alluding to her VOA reports.

Officials of VOA's Serbian Service say the journalist told them Kosovo's ethnic Albanian police had refused to handle her previous complaints. She said she does not trust them and would not agree to an interview with them. She instead had asked that international police handle her case.

Voice of America Director Danforth Austin has expressed concern over Bojicic's welfare. He called her a reliable and thorough reporter and says it is deplorable that journalists face such dangers.

Kosovo - a Serbian province - and its large ethnic Albanian majority are demanding independence. Serbia and its Russian allies strongly oppose an independent Kosovo. U.S., EU, and Russian mediated talks on Kosovo's future have made little progress.

REUTERS

[hajduk]

more news at 11

VIENNA (Reuters) - Serbia said on Monday it had "fundamental objections" to a 14-point framework for the future of Kosovo and insisted mediators explicitly rule out a unilateral declaration of independence by the province.
ADVERTISEMENT

Speaking after a morning meeting with international envoys in Vienna, Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said negotiations had to be based on the U.N. resolution which affirms Serbian sovereignty over its largely ethnic Albanian southern province.

"We'd like these points stated, on paper," Jeremic told reporters. "What's really essential is to explicitly refer to the fact that Resolution 1244 is the framework for our work."

He also complained there was "no explicit ruling out of unilateral action."

Kosovo Albanian leaders, who held direct talks with the Serbs in the afternoon, have threatened to declare independence after a deadline for talks to end expires on December 10.

The meeting is the fourth since August, when envoys from the United States, Russia and the European Union began searching for compromise between Serbia's offer of autonomy and the 90-percent Albanian majority's demand for independence.

There is no deal in sight, and EU envoy Wolfgang Ischinger said they had yet to touch on the crucial question of statehood.

On the table were 14 points of potential agreement, drafted by the three powers, stating Belgrade "will not govern Kosovo" nor "re-establish a physical presence" in a province wrested from Serb control by NATO bombers in 1999.

The proposals "do not prejudice the outcome," Ischinger said, "but describe what in our view, if the parties could reach agreement on status, what kind of relationship they could create."

He said the "endgame" was near, but urged patience.

"In this kind of negotiating process it would be a big surprise if, when you have 120 days, the result would be presented after 60 or 90 days," he told reporters.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the killing and expulsion of Albanians in a two-year war with guerrillas.

Moscow has blocked U.N. adoption of a Western-backed plan for independence under EU supervision.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, addressing the envoys, told them to think along the lines of Hong Kong.

"The Hong Kong model, which nobody will deny has proved a success ... is in itself clear proof that our proposal of substantive autonomy is equally realistic, and secures a stable and sustainable solution," Kostunica said in his speech.

Albanians reject any form of Serb rule, and NATO's 16,000-strong peace force is braced for possible unrest.

Diplomats say Western capitals are working on a way around resolution 1244, to allow the EU to deploy a 1,800-strong police mission and for individual countries -- led by the United States, Britain and France -- to recognize the new state.

[Eleftherios]

Originally posted by i £ov€ capitali$[email protected] 02, 2007 06:44 pm
If the people of Kosovo want independence no one should stop them. They have the right of self-determination just like everyone else in the world.
But what if a lot of them don't want independence? The Serbs certainly don't.

[spartan]

But what if a lot of them don't want independence? The Serbs certainly don't.
The Serbs are the minority in Kosovo and the majority Albanian Kosovans suffered at their hands during the Jugoslavian civil war.

Democracy, whether it be a Capitalist or a Socialist one, is about majority rule (Who wins the voye fairly is who wins the decision).

[Ismail]

Originally posted by [email protected] 05, 2007 03:29 pm
The Serbs are the minority in Kosovo and the majority Albanian Kosovans suffered at their hands during the Jugoslavian civil war.
But only after the Kosovars butchered Serbs in Kosova before this. I think the Serbs were the ones that carried out the killings first (in the early 20th century) but then the Kosovars struck back with equally strong nationalism. Then the Serbs (under Milošević) struck back, and now it seems the Kosovars are doing it again.

Even Hoxha had trouble during WWII trying to convince the Kosovars to work with the Albanian Communist partisans. (Who were also working with Tito's partisans in a united front against the Fascists)

[hajduk]

more news at 11


BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Serbia's United Nations-run Kosovo province is plagued by graft, human rights abuses and cronyism because of weakness in the province's authorities, the European Commission said on Tuesday.

The EU executive's annual progress report concluded there was little progress in the province and institutions were weak, mainly due to widespread corruption at all levels.

"Due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still widespread," the report said.

There was little control on how politicians and officials got their wealth and "civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism."

"Kosovo's public administration remains weak and inefficient," the report added.

In a reference to a widespread perception in Kosovo of cronyism, the report said that "the composition of the government anti-corruption council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality."

"Some but uneven progress can be reported in combating money laundering," and "little progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of trafficking in human beings."

The report is an indictment for the U.N. bureaucrats running the province since 1999, and for the province's ethnic Albanian leaders, who are seeking independence from Serbia, political analysts said.

Belgrade rejects the demand, and the two sides have been locked in negotiations for months, closely watched by the EU that is preparing to take over some of the U.N. functions once Kosovo's status is settled.According to the report, Kosovo's judicial system is still "weak" and institutions have made "little progress".

WAR CRIMES

Laws are not standardized and there is not enough qualified personnel. The case backlog is growing, and there are several hundred pending war crimes trials from the 1998-99 insurgency by ethnic Albanians and the counter-war by Serb forces.

NATO intervened and expelled Serb troops accused of killing civilians while cracking down on the rebellion. Serbia accuses the guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army of also killing civilians not loyal to its cause, both Serb
and Albanians.

"These (war crimes trials) are being hampered by the unwillingness of the local population to testify," the report says. "There is still no specific legislation on witness protection in place."

The report notes that "civil society organizations remain weak," "awareness of women's rights in society is low," and there is no adequate mechanism to address complaints from Kosovo's citizens against the U.N. authorities in Kosovo.

It also highlights major problems in minority rights, especially related to the situation of Kosovo's remaining Serb minority. Some 100,000 stayed in the province after the end of the war, and as many left, fearing reprisals.


"Especially the Kosovo Serb community still see their freedom of movement being restricted ... Returnees' houses are still the targets of violent attacks," the report says.

It adds that acts of vandalism against Serb Orthodox religious monuments "including with mortars", remain a problem, and investigations into the crimes are not always professional.

__________________________________________________ ____________________

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States and Russia clashed anew over Kosovo on Tuesday, as Washington's U.N. envoy said Serb-Albanian talks needed to end in two months while Moscow's called for them to carry on until agreement.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said a premature end to negotiations, leading Kosovo Albanians to declare independence, would destabilize the region, a prospect he described as unacceptable.

But U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said what would be destabilizing is prolonged further uncertainty over the future of the Serbian province, which has been under U.N. administration for the past eight years.

The U.N. Security Council has given Belgrade and the ethnic Albanians who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population until December 10 to try to agree on whether the province would be independent or an autonomous region of Serbia.

But, speaking after the council was briefed by U.N. Kosovo envoy Joachim Ruecker, Churkin said, "One should not have the impression that somehow December 10th is necessarily the end of the world as far as the negotiating process is concerned."

Churkin, whose country strongly supports Serbia, told reporters that at that point the council could decide to continue the talks. He called on the international community to make the parties focus on a negotiated outcome.

"The other scenario is unacceptable, because any kind of hypothetical scenarios of unilateral proclamations of independence will get nobody anywhere," he said. "There will be no stability in Kosovo, no stability in the region and no stability internationally."

FINAL STATUS

But Khalilzad said most council members agreed the negotiation "needs to be terminated" on December 10.

"One cannot continue indefinitely with the situation without clarifying final status because (of) the potential for destabilizing Kosovo," he told reporters. "Time is running out."

Leaders of Kosovo's 2 million Albanians, whose 1998-99 guerrilla war drew in NATO intervention to halt Serb atrocities, are threatening to declare independence if the talks end in December with no accord.

The Serbs and Kosovo Albanians held face-to-face talks in New York on September 28. Neither side reported a shift in position, but Churkin said on Tuesday there had been "some indication of a possibility of progress."

Both Ruecker and Khalilzad said many council members had said it was important for Kosovo's Serb minority to vote in parliamentary elections there on November 17 and deplored what they said were attempts by Belgrade to discourage them.

"I have actually asked (Serbian) Prime Minister (Vojislav) Kostunica to make sure that there are no such direct or indirect calls any more," Ruecker told journalists. He said he had also asked Kostunica to make sure that Serbs who have fled Kosovo could vote.

Kostunica and Serbian President Boris Tadic said last month that conditions had not been met for Serbs to take part in the elections.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

VIENNA (Reuters) - Kosovo sees no way forward in talks with Serbia and will move towards independence by the end of the year, the prime minister of the breakaway province said after another inconclusive round of negotiations in Vienna.

Mediators from the United States, Russia and the European Union have until December 10 to try to bridge the chasm between Serbia's offer of autonomy for Kosovo and the 90-percent Albanian majority's demand for independence.

"We are really looking for a way forward, but after this meeting we must conclude that we haven't found it," Agim Ceku told Austrian daily Der Standard for its Tuesday edition.

"All Serbia is talking about is the past," he said.

On the table are 14 principles of common ground drafted by the envoys to "open a path to a solution" before they report back to the United Nations.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Monday that the proposals "as they were first presented, mean practically a relationship between two independent states".

"That, for Serbia, is completely unacceptable," he told a news conference.

Serbia instead proposed Hong Kong as a possible model to resolve the question of Kosovo's status, an idea the Kosovo Albanian delegation dismissed as "totally inappropriate".

Kostunica's spokesman said later that Belgrade was prepared to continue discussing the 14 points. The next meeting is due on November 20 in Brussels. Russian envoy Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko admitted on Monday that chances of a deal were "very slim". Kosovo Albanians say they will declare independence without a new U.N. resolution, and seek recognition from their Western backers.

Ceku said Kosovo wanted "a sustainable solution, very soon after December 10 ... but we want it peacefully and in partnership with the international community".

"Our goal is independence in coordination with our allies by the end of the year," he told Der Standard. "I told the Serbs today: 'Let's agree to disagree about status'."

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombed for 11 weeks to drive out Serb forces and halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanian civilians in a two-year counter-insurgency war.

Serb ally Russia has blocked the adoption at the United Nations of a Western plan for independence under EU supervision, forcing the latest bid for compromise that began in August.

Diplomats say Western powers are working on a way around current U.N. Resolution 1244, to allow the EU to deploy a 1,800-strong police mission and for individual countries - led by the U.S., Britain and France - to recognize the new state.
__________________________________________________ ___________________

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union agreed to initial the pact representing Serbia's first step on the road to membership on Tuesday but said it would hold off fully endorsing it until Belgrade brings its war crimes suspects to justice.

EU officials hope the move will help keep Serbia's EU aspirations on track during the show-down over the breakaway Serb province of Kosovo, whose independence claim many Western observers fear could plunge the region into instability.

Presenting a report on patchy reform efforts by Western Balkans EU hopefuls, Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said he would initial a so-called Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with Belgrade on Wednesday.

He said he expected the deal, the first rung on the long ladder to membership, to be formally signed next year, but only if Serbia works with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

"This marks a real turning point for Serbia," Rehn told a news conference. "Now Serbia has to go the last mile and achieve full cooperation." The tribunal says Belgrade must arrest and hand over suspects such as Bosnia Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic, who is sought on genocide charges.

Rehn said he chose to initial Serbia's SAA after U.N. chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte noted better access to documents and more will by the new government to make arrests.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the state news agency Tanjug the move showed Belgrade "can at the same time successfully handle European integration ... and defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country".

While EU officials want to avoid having an isolated and disgruntled Serbia on their doorstep, they deny any link between its membership drive and efforts to resolve Kosovo's fate. Serbian Economy Minister Mladjan Dinkic said he expected Serbia to be recognized as a formal candidate by the end of 2008 -- an ambitious target given established EU procedures.

"We have prepared everything, and it just was a matter of the day when the initialing takes place," he told Reuters.

Human Rights Watch said the EU move could hurt efforts to bring war criminals to justice. "Commissioner Rehn is rewarding Serbia even as it harbors a general accused of genocide," said Lotte Leicht, an EU advocate with the campaign group.

CORRUPTION RIFE

Rehn said he also expected to sign an SAA with Bosnia next year. That country's membership drive has stalled over its failure to create a unified state-level police force.

The commissioner said there had been mixed progress in the Western Balkans. He said corruption remained a serious problem across the region -- notably in Kosovo -- and underlined the need for better governance in Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro.

Only Croatia was seen having a realistic chance of entering the bloc in the next five years, with membership for most of the others seen sometime between 2012-15 or later."Instead of focusing on reforms, the politicians are focusing on other issues," he told Reuters of uncertainty which grew last week when Nikola Spiric resigned as prime minister.

Rehn said membership negotiations with Croatia had reached cruising speed and were entering a decisive phase, showing the region that the prospect of EU membership was a reality for all.

But he made no recommendation for when Macedonia, an official candidate since 2005, should open entry talks and called for officials there to jump start momentum on reforms.

"The region as a whole needs to move forward in building modern democracies and further develop a political culture of dialogue and tolerance," Rehn said.

Osman Topcagic, head of Bosnia's European Integrations Directorate, said his country had not made much progress.

[hajduk]

The blind misleading the blind - Edward Said on media and Kosovo

From the Z-net Kosovo web page http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/kosovo.htm
The New Statesman

The blind misleading the blind - Edward Said accuses the western media of cowardice, prejudice and gross over-simplification in their coverage of the war in the Balkans
17th May 1999.

As I write these lines, the Nato campaign is in its second month, with none of the alliance's announced objectives anywhere near being accomplished. The tyrannical and xenophobic regime of Slobodan Milosevic is still in power, gathering more Serbian adherents, even from among his former enemies in the country. Dissidents, democratic opposition figures, anti-government radio stations and papers have either been silenced or now support him against Nato, an unsurprising thing given that the increasingly damaging air campaign is correctly perceived as a war against all of Serbia.

Meanwhile, a conspiracy of silence has been fobbed on to the public. The media has played the most extraordinary role of propaganda and encouragement, which seems to get worse every day. Obviously Serbian propaganda has been playing its own role, which I make no attempt to justify or minimise. There is a vicious politics of identity at work in Yugoslavia, intensified by both the media and the opponents.

But CNN and its co-conspirators have played the part of a cheering partisan team. I appeared on BBC television and at one point had to remind the announcer who was questioning me that he should allow me to speak without further interruptions. When I drew attention to the shortcomings of the Nato position, he started screaming at me, demanding why I justified Milosevic's ethnic cleansing and how I, as a Palestinian, could endorse the ethnic cleansing of "fellow Muslims". Most TV broadcasters refer to the Nato forces as "ours" and regularly challenge military consultants about the folly of not using ground troops and attacking more Serbian targets, including Serbian television itself.

No journalist has dared raise the question of how it is that the number of refugees has actually increased since the bombing began (the bombing that was supposed to save them), and any suggestion that Nato may have made matters worse is scarcely given a hearing.

The co-operation between Nato government spokesmen and journalists has eliminated real investigative reporting. We know next to nothing of what has happened inside Kosovo except that, far from stopping Serb atrocities, Nato has managed to increase the number of Serbian soldiers; it is impossible to know from CNN and the others what exactly is being hit, where, and with what effect.

A further irony is that the constant references to "ethnic Albanians" prevents people from realising that most of the refugees are Muslim. Consider that whenever Hamas or Hezbollah, or Iranians or Palestinians, are referred to by the media, the adjective "Muslim" never fails to appear. In Yugoslavia, the tactic used is to suggest that these are European refugees and hence more deserving of Nato attention. Therefore the word "Muslim" is never used. I have yet to see a programme on the families of the 46,000 Kurdish victims of Turkey's genocide, or the continued starvation of Iraqi civilians (who are also mostly Muslims) taking place right now, with active US participation (supplying Turkey, a Nato member, with Apache helicopters and F-16s, for example). Why that isn't considered as bad as what Milosevic does puzzles me, but one supposes that there is at work a higher logic that ordinary humans cannot easily comprehend.

The worst thing about the Nato campaign as it is reported in the media is not only that it simplifies the enormously complicated histories, societies and peoples that exist in the Balkans, but that, in focusing unquestioningly on what Nato says and what pictures Nato gives out, the media in effect is part of the Nato campaign, obliterating history and reality with propaganda. As Tony Benn said, the result is that democracy is threatened, to say nothing of a decent future for a portion of mankind.

Perhaps the most dangerous side effect of the new Balkan war is that it may have permanently damaged the United Nations. What US power signals is that it, and it alone, can dictate the shape of things to come - intervening unilaterally where the whims of its leaders may choose, destroying or rebuilding as it wishes for no other reason than that it can do so.

The working policy assumption seems to be that the world is a dangerous place for the "west" (ie, the US) and therefore it is always better to take the offensive directly, going into the enemy's camp to do one's will inside it.

The triumph of this idea is the triumph of a ludicrously aggressive picture of our world that assumes that all civilisations necessarily are in conflict and that the only basis for politics is ethnic identity; and of a false dichotomy and a false logic: one is for Nato, that is, for "western values" of "humanity, democracy, decency", or for the inhuman, atrocity-mongering tyranny of Slavic-Orthodox civilisation as represented by Slobodan Milosevic. This is a caricature of reality: no moral choices are that simple. Nor should they be made that simple if the world is to survive as something more than a jungle of all against all, regulated by a "free" market that is controlled by the US.

Moreover, there is a profoundly anti-democratic logic at work here, as if to say hurry up and join us, otherwise you will be demonised and perhaps even destroyed. The US today is the only country in the world that has intervened militarily all across the globe in the past 12 months.

With its planes flying 600-plus missions every day, with General Wesley Clark requesting more planes and more bombs and troops, and with at least half a dozen powers in possession of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons on a large scale, humanity is at risk in the immediate future.

There are no quick solutions, no ready-made tactics to replace the prevailing logic of false dichotomies.

But by raising awareness of what the media at present distorts and hides, we can at least begin to stiffen our resistance to the leadership offered by men like Milosevic, or like Clinton, who has never experienced war and is drunk on the miracles of hi-tech electronic warfare where you do not see or come anywhere near what your victims are suffering.

The answer is not to refuse to look at the endless pictures of refugees, but to develop the resistance that comes from a real education in philosophy and the humanities, patient and repeated criticism, and intellectual courage.

Identity politics, nationalist passions and murderousness, an aggravated sense of victimhood or a saviour complex cannot be dealt with in any other way: these are universal problems requiring universalist solutions, not spontaneous war or quick fixes.

[hajduk]

Protecting the Kosovars
(ZNet April 5)
By Edward Said

ONCE again, and led by the United States as usual, a war is being conducted -this time in Europe - against an unprincipled and racist dictator who will almost certainly survive the onslaught even though thousands of innocents will pay the actual price. The pretext this time is of course the persecution, ethnic cleansing and continued oppression of Albanians in the province of Kosovo by the Serbian forces of Slobodan Milosevic.

No one at all doubts that horrible things have been done to the Albanians under Serbian domination, but the question is whether US/NATO policy will alleviate things or whether they will in fact be made worse by a bombing campaign whose supposed goal is to make Milosevic give up his policies.

Since, as in most cases, the bombing campaign is not all that it seems to be, a look behind the headlines is worth the effort, especially given the new ferocity and willingness to intervene militarily on the part of US foreign policy decision makers (Clinton, Cohen, Albright, Berger).

One needs to remember that since the US is a world, and not merely a regional, power one calculation that enters each of its foreign policy decisions is how the deployment of its military might will affect the US's image in the eyes of other, especially other competitive countries. Henry Kissinger made that point a central concern of his Indochinese policy when he undertook the secret bombing of Laos: your enemies will learn that there are no limits to what you are prepared to do, even to the point of appearing totally irrational. Thus the exercise of massive destructiveness wholly disproportionate to the goal, say, of stopping an enemy from advancing further, is a principal aim of this policy, as it has been of Israel's policy in southern Lebanon, where massive raids on civilian encampments do absolutely nothing to affect Israel's main enemies, the Hizballah guerillas. Punishment is its own goal, bombing as a display of NATO authority its own satisfaction, especially when there is little chance of retaliation from the enemy.

That is one consideration behind the current bombing of Yugoslavia. Another is the misguided and totally hopeless goal of humbling, and perhaps even destroying Milosevic's regime. This, as has been the case in Iraq, is illusory. No nation, no matter how badly attacked from the air is going to rally to the attackers.

If anything, Milosevic's regime is now strengthened. All Serbs feel that their country is attacked unjustly, and that the cowardly war from the air has made them feel persecuted. Besides, not even the Kosovo Albanians believe that the air campaign is about independence for Kosovo or about saving Albanian lives: that is a total illusion.

What transpired before the bombing was that the US seems to have persuaded the Kosovars that if they went along with the "peace plan" Kosovo would get its independence; this was never said, but only implied, leading the Kosovars to expect NATO help. But, as usual, the US has never stated unequivocally that it is for full self-determination for all the peoples of former Yugoslavia. There should have been a straight-out and clearly stated willingness to accept self-determination for Kosovo as well as a safeguarding of rights for the Serbian minority there. None of this was done. And neither were the consequences thought through, i.e., the certainty that the Serb forces would respond to NATO bombardment by intensifying their attacks against Albanian civilians, more ethnic cleansing, more refugees, more trouble for the future. There is now talk of 200,000 ground troops (mostly American) to enter the battle and expand the war, with the attendant problems of prolonged occupation, guerilla warfare, greater devastation, more refugees, and so on. A lot of this comes from the delusion that the US is the world's policeman. In the meantime, its genocidal policy against Iraq continues, and its sanctions policy against other Islamic or Arab countries also continues.

Nothing of what the US or NATO does now has anything really to do with protecting the Kosovars or bringing them independence: it is rather a display of military might whose long-range effect is disastrous, just as is a similar policy in the Middle East. In 1994 when a US intervention might have averted genocide in Rwanda, there was no action. The stakes were not high enough, and black people not worth the effort.

Therefore it seems to me imperative that the NATO bombing should stop, and a multi-party conference of all the peoples of former Yugoslavia be called to settle differences between them on the basis of self-determination for all, not just for some, nor for some at the expense of others. This is the same principle that has been violated by US-sponsored peace processes elsewhere, notably in the Middle East.

There is nothing about the current policy of bombing Serbian forces that will either guarantee democracy for Serbia or protect the Albanians who are still being treated horribly by Milosevic's forces. In its arrogance and ill-considered military deployment the US has forced NATO to go along with it, whereas it is quite clear that there is increasing disunity within the NATO ranks, not just Greece and Italy and Turkey, but also France and Germany.

The greatest danger of all is that more people will be displaced, more lives lost, and more fragmentation will occur in places like Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. All this for the US to assert its will and to show the world who is boss. The humanitarian concerns expressed are the merest hypocrisy since what really counts is the expression of US power.

What I find most distressing is that destruction is being wrought from the air along with a fastidiousness articulated about the loss of American life that is positively revolting. Clinton knows well that Americans will not tolerate the loss of life for Americans. Yet he can destroy Yugoslavian lives with impunity from the safety of the ultimate in modern technology and airpower, with American pilots and bombers sanitizing their horror with the illusion of safety and distance.

When will the smaller, lesser, weaker peoples realize that this America is to be resisted at all costs, not pandered or given in to naively?

[hajduk]

The treason of the intellectuals
by Edward Said

No one at all can doubt that what has transpired in Kosovo as a result both of Slobodan Milosevic's brutality and the NATO response has made matters a good deal worse than they were before the bombing. The cost in human suffering on all sides has been dreadful, and whether it is in the tragedy of the refugees or the destruction of Yugoslavia, no simple reckoning or remedy will be available for at least a generation, perhaps longer. As any displaced and dispossessed person can testify, there is no such thing as a genuine, uncomplicated return to one's home; nor is restitution (other than simple, naked revenge, which sometimes gives an illusory type of satisfaction) ever commensurate with the loss of one's home, society, or environment. Through a combination whose exact proportions we will never know, despite NATO as well as Serbian propaganda, Kosovo has been purged forever of any hopes that coexistence between different communities is soon going to be possible. A number of honest reporters here and there have admitted that what exactly took place so far as the ethnic cleansing of Albanians by Serbs was concerned is still mostly unknown, since the NATO bombings of Kosovo, the actions of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the actual brutality of individual or collective Serb actions took place all at once: trying to determine the blame and responsibility in such a chaos, except to score self-justifying debating points, is pretty difficult, if not impossible.

But that the illegal bombing increased and hastened the flight of people out of Kosovo cannot be doubted. How the NATO high command, with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair leading the pack, could ever have assumed that the number of refugees would have decreased as a result of the bombing fairly beggars the imagination. Neither leader, significantly, has ever experienced the horrors of war; neither man fought, neither has any direct knowledge of what it means to search desperately for survival, to protect and feed one's family. For those reasons alone, both leaders deserve the strongest moral condemnation and, given Clinton's appalling record in Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq and the White House corridors, he should be indicted as a war criminal as much as Milosevic. In any event, even according to US law, Clinton violated the constitution by fighting a war without congressional sanction. That he also violated the UN Charter simply adds to the felony.

Morality teaches that, if one wants to intervene to alleviate suffering or injustice (this is the famous idea of humanitarian intervention which so many Western liberals have dragged out as an excuse for the bombing war), then one must make sure first of all that by doing so the situation will not be made worse. That lesson seems to have eluded the NATO leaders, who plunged in ill-prepared, poorly informed and heedless, and therefore cold-bloodedly sealed the fate of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars who, whether they had to bear the brunt of Serbian vengeance on them, or because the sheer volume and density of the bombing (despite ludicrous claims about precision-guided ordinance) made it imperative for them to flee the province, became victims twice over.

There is now the colossal job of trying to restore a million people to their homes with no clear idea of what, once they return, is to be their fate. Self-determination? Autonomy under Serbia? Military occupation under NATO? Partition? Shared sovereignty? According to what sort of timetable? Who is going to pay? These are only some of the questions that remain unanswered, if the agreement brokered by Russia actually works and goes through. What does it mean that (according to the agreement) some Serb police or military personnel will be allowed back in? Who will protect them against Albanian violence, and who will regulate their actions? Who will protect the Serbian Kosovars? Add to that the exorbitant cost of re-building Kosovo and Serbia, and you have a web of problems that simply defies the limited powers of understanding and political sophistication possessed by any or all of the present NATO leaders.

What concerns me most, though, as an American and a citizen, is what the Kosovo crisis portends for the future of the world order. "Safe" or "clean" wars, in which American military personnel and their equipment are almost totally invulnerable to enemy retaliation or attack, are profoundly troubling things to think about. In effect, as the distinguished international jurist Richard Falk has argued, such wars share the same structure as torture, with the investigator-torturer having all the power to choose and then employ whatever method he wishes; the victim, who has none, consequently is left to the whim of his persecutor. America's status in the world today is at its lowest, that of a stupid bully capable of inflicting much more damage than any power in history.

The US military budget is 30 per cent higher than that of the total budget spent by all the other NATO countries combined. Over half the countries of the world today have felt either the threat or the actuality of US economic or trade sanctions. Pariah states like Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Cuba and Libya (pariahs because the US has labelled them so) bear the brunt of US unilateral anger; one of them, Iraq, is in the process of genocidal dissolution, thanks to US sanctions which go on well past any sensible purpose other than to satisfy the US's feelings of righteous anger. What is all this supposed to accomplish, and what does it say to the world about US power? This is a frightening message bearing no relationship to security, national interest, or well-defined strategic aims. It is all about power for its own sake. And when Clinton takes to the airwaves to inform Serbs or Iraqis that they will get no help from the country that destroyed theirs unless they change their leaders, arrogance simply knows no bounds. The International Tribunal that has branded Milosevic a war criminal cannot in the present circumstances have either viability or credibility unless the same criteria are applied to Clinton, Blair, Albright, Sandy Berger, General Clark and all the others whose murderous purpose completely overrode any notion of decency and the laws of war. In comparison with what Clinton has done to Iraq alone, Milosevic, for all his brutality, is a rank amateur in viciousness. What makes Clinton's crimes worse is the sanctimony and fraudulent concern in which he cloaks himself and, worse, which seem to fool the neo-liberals who now run the Natopolitan world. Better an honest conservative than a deceptive liberal.

Adding to this unhealthy situation, making it worse in fact, is the media, which has played the role not of impartial reporter but of partisan and partial witness to the folly and cruelty of the war. During the 79 days of bombing I must have watched at least 30 days of NATO briefings, and I cannot recall more than five or six reporters' questions that even remotely challenged the bilge put out by Jamie Shea, George Robertson and, worst of all, Javier Solano, the NATO honcho who has simply sold his "socialist" soul to US global hegemony. There was no scepticism in evidence at all from the media, no attempt to do anything more than "clarify" NATO positions, using retired military men (never women) to explicate the niceties of the terror bombing. Similarly liberal columnists and intellectuals, whose war in a sense this was, simply looked away from the destruction of Serbia's infrastructure (estimated at $136 billion) in their enthusiasm for the idea that "we" were doing something to stop ethnic cleansing. Worst of all, the media only half-heartedly (if at all) reported on the war's unpopularity in the US, Italy, Greece, and Germany. No memory of what happened in Rwanda four years ago, or in Bosnia, or the displacement of 350,000 Serbs at the hands of Tudjman, or the continuing Turkish atrocities against the Kurds, the killing of over 560,000 Iraqi civilians, or -- to bring it back to where it all started -- Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine in l948, which continues, with liberal support, until today. In what essential ways are Barak, Sharon, Netanyahu and Eitan different in their views and practices toward different and "inferior" races from Milosevic and Tudjman?

In the post-Cold War era, the question remains: is the US and its sordid military-economic policy, which knows only profit and opportunism, to rule the world, or can there develop a sufficiently powerful intellectual and moral resistance to its policies? For those of us who live in its sphere or are its citizens, the first duty is to demystify the debased language and images used to justify American practices and hypocrisy, to connect US policies in places like Burma, Indonesia, Iran and Israel with what it is now doing in Europe -- making it safe for US investments and business -- and to show that the policies are basically the same, though they are made to seem different. There can be no resistance without memory and universalism. If ethnic cleansing is evil in Yugoslavia -- as it is, of course -- it is also evil in Turkey, Palestine, Africa, and elsewhere. Crises are not over once CNN stops covering them. There can be no double standards. If war is cruel and deeply wasteful, then it is cruel whether or not American pilots bomb from 30,000 feet and remain unscathed. And if diplomacy is always to be preferred over military means, then diplomacy must be used at all costs.

Finally, if innocent human life is sacred, then it must not cynically be sacrificed if the victims happen not to be white and European. One must always begin one's resistance at home, against power that as a citizen one can influence; but alas, a fluent nationalism masking itself as patriotism and moral concern has taken over the critical consciousness, which then puts loyalty to one's "nation" before everything. At that point there is only the treason of the intellectuals, and complete moral bankruptcy.

[hajduk]

SERBS AND THE WEST:
THE ROAD AHEAD

by DR. VOJISLAV KOSTUNICA

The question of what the Serbs have to agree to in their future relations with the Western world, and what they must never accept, is central to our future. I'll try to offer an answer from the Serbian perspective, in the full knowledge that a very different answer may be given from the vantage point of Washington, Paris, London or Brussels. We have to take into account the structure of the contemporary world, especially the position and power of the United States and Europe in it, and -- above all -- we have to start with who we are, and what we are, as "Serbs." In seeking an answer we have to be free from self-delusion of any kind.

The issue "what the Serbs have to accept and what they must not" begs two further questions. The first concerns the definition of the statehood of Serbia, externally and internally. The second concerns the terms for the lifting of all sanctions.

The Serbs entered the twentieth century with two states of their own, and they ended it without a state they can call their own. Serbia cannot resolve its relations with the outside world until and unless it resolves its status from within. This concerns Kosovo, Montenegro, possibly Sanjak and Vojvodina.

Since May 31, 1992, Serbia has been subjected to international sanctions on the basis of Resolution 757 of the U.N. Security Council. Those sanctions were imposed because it was claimed that Serbia and Montenegro were the principal culprits for the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or, to put it more precisely, because they were alleged to have been responsible. That war was halted at Dayton, but the key sanctions have remained. There have been some changes in the sanctions' "package" but they were not fundamental. Various Serbian concessions - notably concessions made by Slobodan Milosevic at the Dayton peace conference - did not qualitatively ease the position of Serbia. Even after Dayton Serbia remained surrounded by the so-called "outer wall" of sanctions.

Immediately following the end of the Dayton conference, on November 21, 1995, the U.S. Department of State issued a statement giving a summary of the proceedings. In this statement, dated November 22, we encounter, for the first time, this "outer wall of sanctions" against Serbia, banning it from the membership in international financial organizations and denying access to all external sources of credit. It was also the first revision of the Dayton agreement by the United States, because the "outer wall" was not even mentioned in Dayton. It was stated that these sanctions would not be removed until Serbia resolved a number of other issues causing concern -- specifically including Kosovo and cooperation with the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, but not limited to those issues.

The architects of the "outer wall" have never explained it fully. That very term contained an element of mystery. Does it mean that there is an "inner wall" of sanctions, and what does it consist of? Obviously, the "inner wall" is less important, and from Washington we were told that the change of regime in Serbia would lead to the lifting - or merely suspension -- of those less important, cosmetic sanctions, while the "outer wall" would remain. Why didn't they commit to the lifting of the "outer wall" if political changes occur in Serbia? The answer is very simple: new concessions would be sought, whether on territory - specifically Kosovo - or on Yugoslavia's internal constitutional arrangements that would lead to its further fragmentation. That which had not been achieved through Milosevic's action, or inaction, would have to be conceded by those coming after him. That means securing as much American presence and influence in this part of the Balkans as possible.

Another demand, of course, concerns the so-called "democratization." This does not necessarily entail the creation of democratic institution as such. No, this entails finding obedient, pliant people who will assume power, people whose equivalents in Bosnia and the Republic of Srpska are known as the "pro-Dayton" forces. Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially the Bosnian-Serb Republic (Republika Srpska), provides the prime example of the relativization of "democracy" and all democratic institutions. Whether it is elections, the media, or the functioning of elected bodies, the will of the people in the Bosnian Serb Republic is irrelevant. What matters is the will of the authorities in Washington.

If the "democracy" in today's post-democratic societies is controlled, then the so-called democracy in the post-communist societies that have been grudgingly allowed into the First World is controlled even more stringently, in fact dictated from the outside.

Legal forms have special importance in various peace agreements that constitute the pax Americana. Those agreements introduce into the rule of law everything that is opposed to the rule of law: voluntarism, insecurity, arbitrariness. Countless revisions of the Dayton Agreement are a clear sign, as are the many creative legal interpretations by the international High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina. So that this does not sound too abstract, let me quote one statement by Christopher Hill, the American diplomat who was the author of several versions of the proposed peace agreement on Kosovo. In the fall of 1998, Hill stated that the U.S. plan for Kosovo must be worded so as to provide different interpretations of the same provisions by the opposing sides, without undermining the agreement in the process.

Milosevic's foreign policy had always oscillated between excessive uncooperativeness and excessive cooperativeness, and always at the wrong moment. In the first phase, back in 1992, Milosevic was - in the memorable words of The New York Times -- the "butcher of the Balkans." In the second phase, most notably from the Dayton agreement until the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement on Kosovo in the fall of 1998, Milosevic was a "guarantor of peace," a "tough negotiator," a "strongman."

Some authorities in Montenegro and in the Republic of Srpska, and some opponents of Milosevic among the opposition in Serbia, have also behaved very cooperatively. It is noteworthy that communist apparatchiks, young and old, have replaced one form of Newspeak with another. They are well aware what can be said and what is forbidden. One must not talk of the NATO bombing and the subsequent conditions in Kosovo, while one has to talk about the Serb "culpability" and The Hague tribunal. In the aftermath of the bombing this was the basis for institutionalized relations between the European Union, the United States, and the democratic opposition in Serbia. Before that time, those relations were based, for years on end, on the triangle formed by the U.S., the E.U., and Slobodan Milosevic; then it was reduced to the United States dealing with Milosevic.

The price for the lifting of all sanctions and the final settlement of our statehood must be as low as possible. It has to be paid, but with the least possible harm to our national and state interests and to our national dignity. We have to look for the Third Way, between the extremely uncooperative position of Milosevic - which was only reinforced by The Hague tribunal's indictment - and the excessively cooperative position of some of his political opponents. In one of his papers Srdja Trifkovic has presented us with the dilemma of "resistance or cooperation." I propose an answer that could be summarized as both resistance and cooperation. But in order to apply the Third Way successfully, several preconditions have to be satisfied.

First of all, internal relations within the state have to be settled, defined or re-defined regarding Kosovo, Montenegro, and Vojvodina. But for Serbia to do this properly, such decisions have to be democratic, following due consultations with all political and social forces, and to a large extent on the basis of their consensus.

Second, we have to retain the awareness of our national identity. In order for a nation to survive it has to know what is its national interest. In order to define its national interest it has to have a strong national identity. This is a special problem since some Serbs have lost their national identity, by becoming "Yugoslavs," "Europeans," "anti-nationalists," globalists, or else sub-national regionalists. The Serbs have a weakened national self-awareness, in addition to the perennial lack of national self-discipline.

Even if the future Serbian political elites succeed in avoiding the many traps that await them as they sail between Scylla and Charybdis of the modern world, between confrontation with the outside world and a subservient attitude to it, we shall face yet another major problem and obstacle. It is the distorted and prejudiced picture of the Serbs that has been created throughout the past decade in the Western media and public. That picture equates the Serbs with the Germans from the Nazi era, and Milosevic with Hitler. It has been aptly branded by an American commentator as the reductio ad Hitlerum.

It is hard to tell who is the most radical Western crusader against the bogey of Greater-Serbian nationalism. Is it David Gompert, formerly Director of European Affairs at the National Security Council and now vice-president of RAND, who, writing in Foreign Affairs way back in 1994, asked "How to defeat Serbia?" In that article Gompert stated that for years, decades perhaps, Serbia would have to be subjected to isolation and misery, that it would have to be quarantined for as long as it takes to eradicate the virus that Serbia carries within it. Because the Serbs - as Gompert claimed elsewhere, in The New York Times - should be treated as lepers. The sanctions against Serbia do not have to be hermetically tight, he said, provided that they are permanent.

Or is it another such crusader, James Gow, an expert on war studies from London, who describes Serbian nationalism as the hissing snake in the bosom of the international community? [!] We should not forget Richard Holbrooke, who described the Serbs on television as "murderous assholes" and explained that Serbia and Montenegro remain internationally unrecognized because they are not civilized enough to be admitted into the community.

Which of these crusaders should take primacy? How about Daniel Goldhagen, Susan Sontag, Shlomo Avineri, and many others, who allow for the possibility that Milosevic is not quite Hitler, that the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences is not quite Mein Kampf, that the Serbs did not quite try to destroy one whole nation as the Germans had tried with the Jews, but nevertheless - According to them the Serbs, just like the Germans before them, need a benign occupation, denazification of sorts, during which democratic forces could emerge and grow strong. Let me quote only one of this group, philosophy professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Shlomo Avineri. He says that the Germans were able to rejoin the community of civilized nations after 1945 not only because they became a democratic state under Allied occupation, but also because they have come to comprehend the horrors done in their name to Jews and others under Hitler's regime - and that is the destiny of the Serbs, too.

It is now quite clear that factually, politically and legally the so-called humanitarian intervention by NATO against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not justified, that it was the intervention itself that caused the humanitarian catastrophe, the consequences of which will be felt for a long time. This view is shared by an increasing number of prominent commentators, from Noam Chomsky to Henry Kissinger. This is the view of some Western media and many international organizations, including the CSCE. Even the chief protagonists of the air war, including President Clinton himself, defend it with an ever-slackening enthusiasm. It is hard to imagine President Clinton going public today with an article claiming that the war of nineteen NATO states against Serbia was "just" and "necessary."

Today and in the future the Serbs cannot count on any "allies" in the old sense among the great powers. They can count, however, on covert and overt allies in the West, in Europe, and on the diffuse but ever more prreviewent resistance all over the world to what has come to be known as "benevolent global hegemony." They can count on the growing awareness that the NATO war against Serbia was mediated in the West by lies and manipulations, by the creation of a twisted and false picture about the Serbs that justified their punishment by sanctions, bombs and indictments at The Hague.

The fact that it is increasingly obvious that the NATO war against Serbia was neither just nor necessary still has not greatly undermined that prejudiced, almost racist image of the Serbs created in the Western public. Even when the "outer wall" of sanctions is removed, it will take a lot of skill and effort to alter this image of the Serbs. As our philosopher Mihailo Djuric has said, our nation has no alternative but to endure gallantly and with fortitude this latest round of heavy suffering because this suffering is not earned by guilt, it is allocated by judgment. Indeed, the Serbs will not accept that which is unacceptable only if they are not deracinated, that is to say, if they have not ceased to be Serbs.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - The breakaway province of Kosovo holds a parliamentary election on Saturday, ahead of a showdown with Serbia over the ethnic Albanian majority's demand for independence.

Prime Minister Agim Ceku is stepping down, so the election will bring in new leadership as last-ditch negotiations between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians reach a climax, with no glimmer of an agreement in sight.

But whoever wins, Kosovo's position will not change: voters are certain to return a government pledged to declare independence after an international trio of mediators end the talks and report to the United Nations by December 10.

Ex-guerrilla commander Hashim Thaci and his opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo enjoy a narrow lead in opinion polls, but would have to share power, possibly with the Democratic League of Kosovo of late independence icon Ibrahim Rugova.

Thaci, bidding to become prime minister, told Reuters this week it was "just a matter of setting the date" for a declaration of independence. "Kosovo and Serbia could talk for another 100 years and never agree," he said.

Serbia's ally Russia has blocked a proposal for Kosovo independence in the United Nations Security Council.

But Kosovo's 2 million Albanians are counting on the United States and Europe to recognize the last state to be carved from the old Yugoslavia. In Washington on Wednesday, the State Department's Nicholas Burns repeated that the United States backs independence supervised by a European Union mission.

The Kosovo daily Express on Thursday quoted what it said was an internal French foreign ministry report, saying major Western powers expected a unilateral declaration of independence in February 2008.

SERB BOYCOTT

EU mediator Wolfgang Ischinger sees no hope of agreement on status. Instead he proposes inviting Serbs and Kosovo Albanians to sign a deal that ignores the issue of independence, the Voice of America quoted him as saying in Washington earlier this week.

"It won't contain a single word about status," said Ischinger, who is due to host a further round of talks in Brussels on Tuesday.

Writing in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, outgoing Prime Minister Agim Ceku said discussion of status was "a dead end".

"Serbia can't accept that independence is inevitable; we know that independence is nothing but inevitable, and can't be compromised on or delayed," the former Kosovo guerrilla wrote.

After December 10, "Kosovo alone will declare its independence, but in an atmosphere of international satisfaction that serious negotiations have been taken as far as possible", he said.

The election for the 120-seat Kosovo parliament is the third since 1999, when NATO bombed Serbia to save Kosovo Albanian civilians from ethnic cleansing in a counter-insurgency war.

Albanians had taken up arms to end a decade of repression under late Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, whose brutal response sent almost one million civilians to flight.

Western powers leading a 16,000-strong NATO peace force see no prospect of returning Kosovo to Serb rule, and worry that Albanian frustrations at life in limbo could provoke violence.
The election campaign has been dominated by party pledges to tackle 60 percent unemployment, minimal foreign investment and rampant corruption -- if only statehood would come.

Reluctant to give legitimacy to a parliament threatening to declare independence, Serb leaders and the Orthodox Church have told Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs to boycott the elections.

[hajduk]

A “model” for the Balkans
Alex N. Dajkovic

There are some persistent themes in the history of the Balkans. After an eclipse of about fifty years following World War II, they have forcefully and often violently reemerged over the past decade. Reflecting on the pattern, George Kennan asserts that “obviously, it is a problem with very deep historical roots.” “Aggressive nationalisms” rooted in “deeper traits of character inherited, presumably, from a distant tribal past” continue to plague the region and “seem to be decisive as a determinant of the troublesome, baffling and dangerous situation that marks that part of the world today.” Kennan expresses a view that prevails in the Western political and intellectual elite circles, and serves to justify policy.



Indeed, a look at Balkan history reveals a major historical signature. The recurring theme, however, differs substantially from the one promoted by the prevailing view and suggests a reason for the narrow focus of Western interpretations of recent historical developments. Balkans are no more prone to turbulence or ethnic hatreds than any other part of the world, historians agree. Outside forces, much more than internal rifts, have traditionally been “decisive determinants” of regional history. Far from being passive observers reluctant to get involved, foreign powers have coveted the region for centuries and sought to assert their hegemony there-- whether by establishing direct control through military conquest or by controlling the internal political elements indirectly. Their domination was invariably accompanied by exploitation of local resources and disenfranchisement of the population. If one historical theme is to be emphasized for its effects on Balkan history and its persistence over time, it is precisely foreign hegemony, not “ethnic hatreds.”



The situation in the current version of Yugoslavia is illustrative. Though it is formally still a federation of Serbia and Montenegro, Kosovo being a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia is not recognized by the dominant powers, apparently awaiting final resolution of its status, consistent with their interests. At present, Kosovo is ruled by outside powers, formally through the UN. Montenegro has joined “transatlantic integrations,” Serbia’s status remaining uncertain.



Montenegro is regularly hailed as an example for the Balkans by Western officials. When, in February of 2000, the Montenegrin Prime Minister visited Washington, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright “reinforced US support for the Government of Montenegro’s efforts on democratization and economic reform.” At the time, the State Department emphasized that Montenegro is “serving as a model and stimulus for change” in the region. Robert Gelbard, former US envoy to the Balkans, expressed a similar sentiment when he cal[color=red][B]led Montenegro a “guiding light” in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.



Given the exalted rhetoric, a close look at the “efforts on democratization and economic reform” that Montenegro is pursuing would give an indication of the “change” that the US is stimulating in the Balkans. It would show the direction in which the “guiding light” is pointing the whole region.


During the early years of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, official Montenegro supported unity. It remained federated with Serbia even after other republics had seceded. The vast majority of the population also remained committed to Yugoslavia, so Montenegrin nationalism with secessionist tendencies found scant support. In 1997 there was a split in the ruling party, Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), which had been up to that point loyal to the Yugoslav regime. The split was caused primarily by differences in favored policy towards assertive outside forces, with the Djukanovic-led faction taking a more submissive approach and the remainder of the party remaining recalcitrant and committed to Yugoslav statism with some leftist rhetoric. The US took advantage of the split, caused in no small measure by US pressure, to further its goals in the area, and changed its policy towards Montenegro.



Zbigniew Brzezinski, a leading American strategic thinker, describes in his book, *The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, the co-optation of foreign political elites as an important method for furthering US global hegemony. Following Brzezinski’s prescription, Robert Gelbard “began meeting Djukanovic even before he became the President of Montenegro,” as he informed Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Ties between the US and Montenegro only strengthened after Djukanovic was elected president and his coalition won the subsequent parliamentary elections, in part due to outside financial and diplomatic support.



Outside support, in the form of budget assistance, helps to prop up the power of the current government, which is otherwise faced with immense social problems caused by a decade of economic strangulation and wars. With the same goals in mind, the US exempted Montenegro from its sanctions on Yugoslavia and Montenegrin and US officials meet regularly to coordinate policy. In addition to budget support, Montenegro is receiving substantial foreign aid directed to so-called “technical assistance” programs designed to bring about “democratization and economic reform.”



It wasn’t until Montenegro became committed to “implementing economic reforms recommended by a technical assistance team” provided by the US that it was designated as the “guiding light” and a “model” for others. James Pardew, US envoy to the Balkans, emphasized this commitment as a success of US policy in the region in his testimony to the House Foreign Relations Committee in March of 1999. Putting methods by which this “commitment” was obtained aside for the moment, let’s examine the mandate of the “team.”



The “technical assistance team” is supplied through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and is therefore governed by its mandate and its overall policy objectives. USAID is an instrument of foreign policy, not an independent agency with humanitarian objectives, so its overall strategic planning is directed by the State Department and subordinated to the imperatives of US foreign policy. Assistance to countries in transition--indeed, the whole process of transition--is therefore coordinated to further US interests, the interests of other peoples, including the residents of Montenegro, being merely incidental in policy planning.



The objectives of USAID are spelled out in its strategic document for formerly socialist countries, From Transition to Partnership. Three assistance areas are outlined: economic restructuring, democratic transition, and social transition. The US government’s vision for the terminus of this transition is “to establish sustainable partnerships between the United States and the countries of Europe and Eurasia, between these countries and other regions of the world, and among the countries themselves.”



Before proceeding, it should be noted that most countries currently in “transition” had partnerships between themselves, Europe, and the rest of the world. Yugoslavia itself was a successful state that had relations with both East and West as well as the developing world, and occupied a position of prominence in the international arena. The West, especially the United States, implemented policies towards Yugoslavia that were instrumental in the country’s demise. The only way to interpret the current focus on establishment of partnerships where partnerships were destroyed is that their new incarnation would be decided upon by the world’s “regent”--to borrow Brzezinski’s designation--and therefore fashioned in its interest.



In Montenegro, USAID has become a major force in restructuring of the economy and the society. It is in the process of orchestrating a social revolution of vast proportions, one whose impact is sure to be felt in all sectors of society and by people from all economic classes. USAID experts provide “technical assistance” that involves the writing of various laws subsequently sent to the parliament for rubber stamping. Alternatively, policies are dictated directly to the executive branch.



In the domain of “economic restructuring” the most notable example is the recent law on foreign investment. Crucial for the economic life of a country, investment in Montenegro was regulated by an older law, which was passed in 1994 and was entirely consistent with a market economy. It was written without the help of foreign experts and it provided some protections for the country’s strategic assets, preventing their easy transfer to unaccountable foreign control. Because this law didn’t conform to US policy objectives, its recent revisions were facilitated by USAID experts. Not surprizingly, they abolish any preference for domestic investors, putting Western transnationals on par with sanctions-ravaged domestic firms and individuals.



One predictable consequence of the new liberalization of foreign investment is that the most profitable Montenegrin assets will be acquired by foreign firms, leaving Montenegro’s population to serve as labor force, as well as assuring that the profits thus generated are repatriated to the safety of the investors’ own country and not used locally for investment. The US Government is recruiting potential suitors among US firms. Thomas Pickering, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, encouraged American business leaders to invest in the Balkans because, in his estimate, the economies of Balkan states hit “rock bottom” sometime during 1999 in the aftermath of the “humanitarian” triumph in Kosovo. “Of course the bottom is the time to buy, when the market is despairing and the demand is weak,” he said to Business Council for International Understanding in Washington. The allegedly altruistic “humanitarian intervention” therefore, presumably fortuitously, becomes beneficial for powerful constituencies in the US.



In order to facilitate transfer of Montenegrin public wealth to American transnationals at “rock bottom” prices, the US and Montenegro concluded an investment incentive agreement earlier this year. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the US federal agency which offers investment services to American business expanding into developing nations and emerging markets, made “available to US investors a full range of its services,” including “political risk insurance and financing of projects.”



The legal basis for this transfer of wealth having been prepared by USAID “technical assistance,” foreign investors are now free to pick and choose between the best of Montenegrin enterprises devalued by years of sanctions and wars. US investors have considerable advantage, given the support of US government agencies, so that American economic dominance in the region will be assured.



Minimum guaranteed income in Montenegro is among the lowest in Europe, under $50 a month. Average monthly salaries are less than $100 and unemployment is at 30%. Given the fact that the Montenegrin population is generally well educated, the flexible labor market is unquestionably attractive to foreign firms seeking to maximize profits by cutting costs in the competitive global economy. Problems in developing countries arise, the UN’s World Investment Report remarks, “when private interests of investors diverge from economic interests of host countries.” The asymmetry of bargaining power, the report observes, between the governments of these countries and foreign transnationals prevents effective management of foreign investment to the country’s advantage. While the current arrangement is certain to serve the interests of foreign investors, the population is likely to extract benefits that are at best marginal.



To assure that correct interests are catered to, the government, advised by USAID experts, is pressuring the labor unions not to demand higher wages, given that such indiscretion may deter foreign investors, direly needed to revive the economy. In one typical enterprise that is being re-structured with the help of American experts, workers haven’t been paid in months, even though their average monthly earnings are $60 in a country where the monthly cost of subsistence is $260. Despite this, union activity is near impossible due to government and USAID pressure, so that one union representative recently called the conditions “intolerable.”



Another important dimension of “economic reform” in Montenegro has been the radical change in monetary policy. Under the guidance of Steve Henke, an American economist, Montenegro has introduced the German mark, therefore the Euro, as legal currency in the republic, soon to completely replace the Yugoslav dinar. According to the plans, Montenegro is to have a central bank with no real power, only an oversight function. Though available evidence on the consequences of “dollarization” (a term often used as shorthand to refer to the use of any foreign currency, not only the US dollar, as legal tender) is scant, economists agree that relinquishing control of monetary policy eliminates one of the levers governments use to manage the economy. “Losing a domestic central bank as a lender of last resort” poses problems in securing “adequate liquidity to individual banks in need,” making them dependent on “credit lines from foreign banks,” an expert in the field maintains. Furthermore, “there is a cost of linking business cycles … with the country whose currency is used. Interest rates rise and fall with those of the foreign country” whose “monetary authority … directs policy for its own perceived benefit, not necessarily that of the dollarizing country.”



Overall, the policies promoted by the State Department through USAID in the economic realm are completely incongruous with historical precedents for economic development. They are based on the assumption that “distribution of the economic benefits, both internally and internationally, will be uneven,” and dogmatically insist on the unconditional opening of markets, as well as the reduction or elimination of trade barriers. Economic historians, however, observe the unvaried record of development and industrialization that shows a favorable regulatory environment, including trade barriers, to be crucial in promoting growth by protecting domestic industries against cheaper imports.



The insistence on “free trade” can be understood in light of the professed strategic objectives of US foreign policy, designed to advance American interests, not the interests of remote peoples in the Balkans. As economist Arthur MacEwan observes, “highly developed nations can use free trade to extend their power and their control of the world’s wealth, and businesses can use it as a weapon against labor. Most important, free trade can limit efforts to redistribute income more equally, undermine progressive social programs, and keep people from democratically controlling their economic lives,” thus maintaining the current “distribution of wealth, both internationally and internally,” as planned.



The policies implemented by USAID in the Balkan countries, then, will assure that they don’t undergo independent economic development but function as service zones to the developed economies, providing raw materials and cheap labor, as well as serving as markets for production surplusses from the developed West. Conceptually, the current economic vision for the Balkans is identical to that of Erganzungswirtschaftsraum, or supplementary economic space, used in strategic planning by the only other hegemonic power which had comprehensive plans for the region.



But reforms in Montenegro are advancing in other spheres as well. A crucial component of “social transition” is the establishment and regulation of civil society organizations. In light of policies being implemented under the rubric of “economic restructuring” it is likely that the civil sector would organize to protect the interests of the domestic population. To eliminate a potential threat from civil society, a new law was passed regulating non-governmental organizations. It was also written with the help of USAID experts and it has a peculiar provision whereby the government has the power to refuse registration --hence legal operation-- to any non-governmental organization. This law could prove to be instrumental in exerting government control over civil society in cases where civil society proves to be inconveniently independent. In fact, this provision was recently invoked to prevent registration of an NGO whose objectives weren’t compatible with “social transition” as envisioned by USAID experts advising the Montenegrin government.



Questions of “democratic transition” will be put aside, given that the realities of economic and social transitions indicate that substantive democracy is impossible under the current system.



Let’s return to the methods by which Montenegrin “commitment” on “reforms recommended by a [US] technical assistance team” is obtained. Primarily, the standard geostrategic devices are employed, including political and economic pressures, and displays of military might, all of which Montenegro has witnessed at various points from the early days of US involvement in the Yugoslav crisis. Doubtless, all these methods have had a significant effect on this country of 650,000 people. But, at the behest of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Wesley Clark, the Institute for Defense Analysis from Washington, developed a multi-million dollar computer simulation expressly for the purpose of “show[ing] leaders in the former East bloc the economic impact of their decisions.” The name of the computer simulation is SENSE, Synthetic Environments for National Security Estimates, and it “allow[s] participants to influence the economic growth and development of a fictitious country through interactive decisions,” in the process “teach[ing] the principles of political, economic and military interrelationships.” The name of the fictitious country is Akrona, its immediate neighbor being Kolonia.



In February of 1999, Montenegrin “government and business leaders … who are working daily to transform the Montenegrin economy” participated in the “first-ever” SENSE exercise, held at the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency in the Hague. The purpose was to provide them with “important insights about the implications of their proposed courses of action,” assuring a priori that policies inconsistent with the interests of the United States and other NATO countries wouldn’t even be considered.



Because of its “far-reaching value,” “several Permanent Representatives to the North Atlantic Council as well as the NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander [attended] the exercise as observers.” The power behind lessons taught by SENSE was made abundantly clear to the participants less than a month later during NATO’s “humanitarian” intervention in Yugoslavia that targeted the civilian infrastructure with radioactive missiles and destroyed a large portion of its production capacity.



The ominous timing and setting of the SENSE exercise inspired concern in some participants about being “puppets.” When one of them telephoned NATO to inquire about the real nature of the game, he was told to “be quiet and keep [his] head down.” With these lessons learned, the Montenegrin leaders are pursuing the sole permissible policies, in order to avert violently persuasive methods employed on other, less educated, states.



And so we have it: a “model” and a “guiding light” for the entire region. To qualify for such kindly designations, Montenegro has had to surrender its sovereignty and independence in most critical domains to the world’s “regent,” transferring decision-making in economic and social policy to USAID strategic planners, who are fulfilling their expressed purpose of advancing American, not Montenegrin, interests.



The threat of popular protest is reduced by shifting the attention and political energy of the masses to nationalist discourse, and by deliberating on the merits of independence from clearly inferior Yugoslavia, whose domination has been endured for all too long. The population is inculcated with vulgar, petty nationalism through a constant barrage of propaganda faithfully disseminated by the doctrinal system.



Since it became a “model,” Montenegro’s media landscape has changed radically. Where there used to be divergent points of view in the newspapers, now there is near uniformity in the picture presented. Yugoslavia, and federal institutions in general, are shown as hegemonic. In contrast, the West is portrayed as benevolent, having only Montenegrin interests in mind, protecting them against Yugoslav domination. The propaganda campaign is waged throughout the doctrinal system. Roughly a year ago, the director of the People’s Library in Podgorica was dismissed for ideological reasons, his political outlook not coinciding with the party line. Universities are likewise dominated by vocal adherents to the permissible doctrines, as are the high courts. The new Academy of Arts and Sciences (Dukljanska Akademija Nauka i Umjetnosti), founded by an affirmed nationalist poet and with exclusively nationalist nembership, is slowly replacing the older one, which survived from the Socialist Yugoslavia.



The propaganda campaign, as expected, is producing results. In two years since it became a “model,” Montenegro has witnessed an extraordinary rise of nationalism. Currently, some 35% of the population supports outright independence from Yugoslavia, and another 20% desires a looser, confederal arrangement with internationally recognized Montenegro. This is a massive increase over a relatively short period of time, during which objective conditions in the country have improved slightly.



Indicative of the patterns present in the region over the past decade, noteworthy nationalism in Montenegro, as in the other republics which seceded from Yugoslavia, followed--not preceded--the change of policy at the highest levels, which was itself brought about by a confrontation with outside forces. Nationalism had to be (and still is) manufactured by restoration of atavistic and irrelevant sentiments, resurrected to champion elite projects, which are conditioned by powerful foreign elements. The interests of the population are being ignored, as in the past, and the contours of likely developments are not hard to discern, given the magnitude of power “stimulating” implementation of the exalted “model” and the persistence of historical patterns.



Send questions and comments to: [email protected]

[hajduk]

NATO in Kosova

By James Petras

Tony Blair, Madeline Albright, and Javier Solano all returned to Kosova to cheering Albanian crowds, praising NATO and the KLA for their efforts on behalf of peace and democracy. The triumphal returns and euphoric rhetoric of the NATO leaders covers up the brutal reality of massive ethnic cleansing, systematic assassinations, pillage and destruction of churches, houses, farms, and businesses by NATO-backed Albanian KLA terrorists and their paramilitary supporters. The mass media claim these crimes are acts of revenge. When are killing farmers and older women acts of revenge?

By the end of the second week of August, over 200 Serbs had been assassinated and many more had disappeared by Albanian gangs and KLA regulars, according to Human Rights Watch and other human rights agencies. Thousands of Serbs have been forcibly driven from their homes. Over 164,000 of the 200,000 Serbs in Kosova had fled for their lives, many after being beaten and tortured. Over 20,000 of the 30,000 Roma people (gypsies) had also fled from the murderous Albanian gangs. The main orthodox cathedral in Pristina, a few meters from NATO headquarters was bombed, while scores of orthodox monasteries had been damaged and pillaged. Under NATO’s watchful eyes, the Albanians had engaged in driving out proportionately more Serbs in shorter time than the Albanians had been driven out by the Yugoslav army during the NATO war. Under Yugoslav occupation, approximately half the Albanians fled; under NATO occupation, over 80 percent of the Serbians and 90 percent of the Romas have been terrorized into leaving.

The claim by NATO commanders that they are "incapable" of preventing Albanian gangs from killing Serbs is patently false. NATO has 46,000 soldiers in Kosova, a ratio of one soldier for every four Serbs in a province the size of a postage stamp. The ration of NATO soldiers to Serbs in Kosovo is the highest in the world. UN officials privately admitted that most of the humanitarian aid was stolen by Albanian gangs that work with the KLA. Most returning refugees are robbed, their apartments seized by fellow Albanian thugs, according to the German military police.

The claim by NATO that there are not enough police is false. There are too many police— KLA—police who run Kosova like a police state. While Serbs are free to criticize Milosevic and organize public protests, in Kosova under the KLA dissidents are beaten, tortured, and killed.

NATO’s role in Kosova is to facilitate Albanian ethnic cleansing. Most of the Albanians pillaging of houses takes place with the knowledge and presence of NATO soldiers and commanders. NATO has a close working relation with KLA leasers who’s uniformed followers have been identified as the material authors of the assassination of 14 Serbian farmers.

Instead of protecting the Serbs, NATO is encouraging their flight from Kosova. One U.S. soldier who was appalled by the brutality of the Albanians commented, "I didn’t come here to help the Serbs flee from their homes." Not a single Albanian terrorist has been arrested and sentenced for murder or rape. Not one KLA official, publicly identified with forcibly evicting Serbs from their homes or bombing churches has been dismissed.

NATO’s shameful behavior in Kosova is not a result of monumental incompetence, ignorance, or impotence. The close relations between NATO and the KLA and the overwhelming armed presence of NATO throughout the region preclude any assumption of innocence. The most plausible explanation is that NATO is supporting a very professional and systematic form of ethnic cleansing in order to punish and destabilize the Serbian government by forcing tens of thousands of refugees into Serbia.

Secondly, an "ethnically cleansed" Albania Kosova would be a docile client of the U.S. and Western Europe, thus increasing NATO’s stranglehold in the Southern Balkans. The UN Commission on Refugees refuses to consider the tens of thousands of Serbs fleeing Albanian terrorists as refugees because "technically" Kosova is still part of Yugoslavia. Therefore, the refugees are denied any aid and the burden is placed on the Serbian government.

U.S. military strategists have worked with and promoted paramilitary groups like the KLA to terrorize enemy populations in many regions of the world. Washington’s (and NATO’s) purpose in using paramilitary groups is to deflect responsibility for human rights violations from the military and police to "anonymous extremists." Thus, the NATO powers can claim innocence, while their Albanian clients engage in their dirty little war.

The Albanian leadership in Kosova has strong ties with the Mafia in Northern Albania, which has been very active in the kidnaping of under age Kosova women for overseas prostitution in Spain and Italy. as well as servicing the NATO "liberators." Kosova is overrun with Albanian gangsters stealing cars, looting and killing Albanian Kosovars. While the NATO war opens small scale business opportunities for the Albanian Mafia, the "reconstruction" contracts have provoked a major economic war among European and U.S. multinationals, eager to obtain lucrative construction contracts. Washington has shown greater concern and forcible intervention to secure "equal treatment" for its construction companies than it has for the tens of thousands of Serbs terrorized by Albright’’ cheering crowds. In the process of evaluating the damage in Kosova, the UN High Commission for Refugees revealed that the majority of Albanian houses, hospitals, and schools damaged during the 78-day war were caused by NATO bombing. Under these circumstances, it is understandable why NATO commanders prefer to let Albanians vent their rage and revenge over their destroyed homes against poor and aged Serbian farmers. It allows NATO to escape its responsibility for the destruction in Kosova. Nevertheless, the destructive legacy of NATO’s war lives on in Kosova’s everyday life. British and U.S. made cluster bombs and depleted uranium ammunition found throughout the province are killing and wounding dozens of Kosovars every week. Apparently, NATO and KLA commanders "forgot" to inform them. Such is the concern for peace and freedom.

[Rankovic]

NO INDEPENDENCE FOR KOSOVO!

Because:

*people there are not for communism(specialy Albanians),who hate leftist,and they are close to USA politic.

*There are many monuments build after USA bombing Yugoslavia 1999,and Albanians there organized many celebrations dedicate to Bil Clinton(who has monument in Pristina capital of Kosovo).

*In Kosovo doesn't work non left organizations.

So who is for indenpedence,he works for USA interests.No for interests working class and leftists.There are no leftists in Kosovo.

[hajduk]

KOSOVO'S DEATH MASK
by Mark Epstein



The few pieces on Kosovo now appearing in the mass media are slowly confirming the viewpoints of those who criticized the months of death and destruction rained down by US/NATO on the civilian population of Yugoslavia and Kosovo.

The agreement finally reached to end the war differs in no substantial regard from the one Yugoslavia would have agreed to at the Rambouillet "negotiations." What is more, it is only thanks to extremely duplicitous diplomatic maneuvers regarding Russia and other European NATO partners, that the US and GB excluded a much more representative Russian peacekeeping force from its sector of Kosovo, and thus prevented it from being able to defend more effectively the lives of the remaining Serb minority in Kosovo. Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, Commander of KFOR (essentially NATO) "peacekeeping" forces in Kosovo said on August 1st that "it was the Russian negotiations with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, not the NATO air campaign, that served as the major factor in ending the fighting in Kosovo." He also said that since he was not responsible for the alliance's operation against Yugoslavia, he could not evaluate it." (1) What is instead quite clear is that, in violation of the "peace" agreements, NATO forces are doing virtually nothing to disarm the KLA army/criminal syndicate, all the while arguing that a force they claimed was sufficient to hold the Yugoslav army at bay is insufficient for policing a much smaller "guerrilla" force and blaming the UN for the lack of policing: as if a police force of around 3,500 (only a tiny fraction of which is currently deployed) could possibly provide better protection than a force 10 times larger (around 35,000 KFOR troops) armed with much more serious weapons.

A typical example of this "contra"strategy, political unwillingness, dressed as impotence, is the statement by US State Department spokesman James Rubin on August 5th that it is impossible for KFOR peacekeepers to guarantee safety for all Serbs in Kosovo. (2) But then, of course, if the US/NATO had decided to abide by the UN, all the barbarous escalation of atrocities in Kosovo would never have taken place in the first place. Instead of disarming the KLA, US/NATO forces--and especially US and GB propaganda outlets--are relying almost exclusively on KLA sources and documentation for their reports on the extent of Serbian "atrocities." (3)

The predictable outcome has been that the KLA and its allies have engaged in daily massacres of Serb civilians, have looted, stolen and "appropriated" vast amounts of Serb civilian property, businesses, and infrastructure, and have persecuted any Albanians who did not tolerate these terrorist activities in silence. The Albanian criminal element, in symbiosis with the KLA, has become the institutionally dominant factor in Kosovo, as is admitted by no less an establishment source than the New York Times. (4 )

While the US/NATO tries to score propaganda "brownie'" points against UN over-policing of Kosovo, the reality is that US/NATO strategy was never really concerned with the humanitarian situation its propaganda blathered about. Instead of trying to reestablish some sort of viable economic and legal infrastructure in Kosovo BEFORE allowing the return of Albanian refugees, the US/NATO essentially encouraged a helter-skelter return of almost all the refugees in a very brief period of time to a country devastated by the NATO bombings and to some extent by Serbian "ethnic cleansing." Taken together with the virtual free rein given to the KLA, it is quite clear that US/NATO policy was NOT to try to establish a situation of peaceful coexistence, but to exacerbate the already horrifically tragic situation-the civil war tensions in the area. The propaganda in the mass-media has tried to justify this situation as "inevitable revenge," whereas in reality both the original "ethnic cleansing," the devastation of the economic infrastructure (which in Serbia alone is estimated at $136 billion (5 ), and the current barbarous contra style activities of the KLA are due to the NATO bombings and the preceding Rambouillet farce, which even the most vicious advocates of civilian destruction, such as Thomas L. Friedman of the NYT, now admit were conducted in bad faith. (6) When it comes to justice, not revenge, the US/NATO believes they can rely on their financial, economic and military might to buy and extort the decisions they want (as in having Milosevic declared a "war-criminal").

Robert Hayden, Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, said: "When questioned about NATO liability for war crimes, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said that 'NATO is the friend of the Tribunal. . . . NATO countries are those that have provided the finances to set up the Tribunal, we are among the majority financiers.' Mr. Shea clearly knows that he who pays the piper calls the tune." (7 )

Many jurists from the international community are trying to have those responsible in the US/NATO coalition brought to justice for war-crimes, the latest being former chief counsel for the House Watergate committee, Jerome Zeifman, who has filed charges before the International Criminal Tribunal seeking the indictment of Clinton and Secretary of Defense William Cohen for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. These formal legal documents have been submitted to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague. Zeifman is a lifelong Democrat whose meticulous preparation of the case against Richard Nixon forced the Republican president out of the White House. (8) Notes Sam Smith, ". . . in an age of internationalism and depreciated national sovereignty, the president of the United States as well as the defense secretary could be placed in the same defendant's box as Slobodan Milosevic, the indicted Yugoslavian war criminal."

However, the political and financial realities now seem to be outweighing conscience, justice, and the rule of law. To justify US/NATO devastation in the immediate aftermath of the 'peace,' the imperial mass-media tried to report mostly on the sites of alleged massacres that were being uncovered. But as Edward Said has written: "A number of honest reporters here and there have admitted that what exactly took place so far as the ethnic cleansing of Albanians by Serbs was concerned is still mostly unknown, since the NATO bombings of Kosovo, the actions of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the actual brutality of individual or collective Serb actions took place all at once: trying to determine the blame and responsibility in such chaos, except to score self-justifying debating points is pretty difficult, if not impossible. (9)

The following is an example of the disinformation and confusion generated. Bernard Kouchner, head of the UN mission to Kosovo, has retracted statements made on August 2nd that as many as 11,000 ethnic Albanians had been killed in Kosovo, saying the figure was an overestimation. He stated, "I had so many meetings with people and it seemed to me that this number corresponded to reality, but I was wrong." An official of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Paul Risley, said it was premature to give a solid figure, but that some international organizations had put the number at a total of 7,000. (10) All in all, the mass-media's performance has been so outrageous, that John Pilger, a renowned British journalist, recently entitled one of his articles "Nothing in My 30 Years of Reporting Wars Compares with the Present Propaganda Dressed as Journalism." (11) As is always the case in 'contra'-style operations, 'humanitarian' relief is merely dangled sadistically as an imperial carrot to exact slavish political obedience in the aftermath of the devastation used as the imperial stick.

The hundred billions of dollars in economic devastation and in military hardware can hardly compare with the trickle of millions in basic aid, while the war and "reconstruction" profiteers wait on the sidelines for their trillions in profits .

The US/NATO strategy and the current activities of the KLA, only confirm what I wrote in a previous article, namely that the most recent "humanitarian war" by the US was in reality intentionally aimed at one of its current rivals on the global scene, the EU and its emerging "euro." The devastation, the ecological catastrophes (not only because of the use of depleted uranium ammunition, but because of the bombing of chemical and petrochemical plants, laboratories with radioactive materials, and so on), and the enormous rise in tensions in the area were not part of some "accidental blunder," but are consistent with a process of destabilization and an imperial "divide and rule" policy that has been part of US strategy for decades. The major difference is that the US, no longer leading a "cold-war coalition" in the evolving 'post-cold-war' tripolar world, is now aiming its apparatus of state-terrorism at its major rivals in Europe and Asia, regardless of the cost to the rest of the world.


1. Stratfor, "Kosovo Crisis Center," 08/02/99.

2. Ibid, 08/06/99.

3. NYT, 6/27/99, "Report: Yugoslavs Linked to Crimes.

4. NYT, 7/29/99, Chris Hedges, "As U.N. Organizes, Rebels Are Taking Charge of Kosovo."

5. Edward Said, "The Treason of the Intellectuals," AL-AHRAM WEEKLY, June 24-30 .

6. NYT, 8/6/99, Editorial.

7. INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES, 5/27/99 <[email protected]>.

8. Sam Smith, "Undernews," 7/12/99.

9. Edward Said, op. cit.

10. Stratfor, 08/04/99. 11John Pilger, NEW STATESMAN, 7/12/99.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

PRISTINA, Serbia, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Front-runner Hashim Thaci pledged independence for Kosovo on Saturday as the breakaway province voted for a new parliament ahead of a showdown with Serbia over its bid for statehood.

"These elections are not about Kosovo&#39;s status," the former guerrilla fighter said after casting his ballot. "We will declare independence immediately after December 10."

That is the date for a report by Russian, United States and European Union mediators on last-ditch talks in search of a compromise between Serbia and Kosovo&#39;s 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority.

There is still no glimmer of a deal, with two negotiating sessions set for Brussels and Vienna in the coming week.

Kosovo&#39;s prime minister Agim Ceku, a former guerrilla commander who does not have a party of his own, is stepping down. Thaci, who leads the Democratic Party of Kosovo, is a narrow favourite to succeed him, according to opinion polls.

Kosovo&#39;s small Serb minority is boycotting the vote at the demand of the Serb government, which bitterly opposes secession. Whichever of the four main parties wins, the 1.5 million Albanians eligible to vote are sure to elect a government ready to unilaterally declare an independent republic.

It may come within weeks of the mediators&#39; report but is not expected to be literally on Dec 10, despite Thaci&#39;s rhetoric.

If he wins, Thaci would still have to form a coalition, possibly with the Democratic League of Kosovo of the late independence icon Ibrahim Rugova. They would hope to create a new government before the mediators hand in their report.

Even then, Kosovo has promised its Western backers in Washington and Brussels that it will coordinate its declaration with the major powers from whom it expects quick recognition.



NO HAGGLING, PLEASE

In a parting admonition to Kosovo&#39;s often squabbling politicians, Ceku warned they would inflict "serious damage" on the historic independence process if they spent weeks haggling instead of getting the new government ready for action.

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic was quoted on Friday as saying there could be no deal on the province&#39;s future status if Albanians insist on declaring their own state.

On the eve of the vote, a petrol bomb was thrown at the home of a Serb candidate for the Kosovo parliament, who had defied Belgrade&#39;s boycott call. Police said no one was hurt.

Serbia&#39;s ally Russia has blocked a Western-endorsed proposal for EU-supervised independence in the United Nations Security Council. But plans for the EU mission in Kosovo are going ahead.

EU mediator Wolfgang Ischinger sees no hope of agreement on status. At talks on Tuesday in Brussels he may propose that Serbs and Albanians sign a deal that ignores the issue.

But even that has already been ruled out by Serbia.

Kosovo guerrillas took up arms in 1998 to end a decade of repression under the late Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic, whose brutal response put almost one million civilians to flight, triggering NATO intervention in 1999 and an era of U.N. control.

The election for the 120-seat Kosovo parliament is the third since then. The campaign was dominated by party pledges to tackle 60 percent unemployment, minimal foreign investment and rampant corruption. The bid for statehood was never in question.

Polling stations were due to at 1800 GMT, with turnout prospects looking weak among an electorate that has grown suspicious of political parties and impatient for independence.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Front-runner Hashim Thaci pledged independence for Kosovo on Saturday as the breakaway province voted for a new parliament ahead of a showdown with Serbia over its bid for statehood.

"These elections are not about Kosovo&#39;s status," the former guerrilla fighter said after casting his ballot. "We will declare independence immediately after December 10."

That is the date for a report by Russian, United States and European Union mediators on last-ditch talks in search of a compromise between Serbia and Kosovo&#39;s 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority.

There is still no glimmer of a deal, with two negotiating sessions set for Brussels and Vienna in the coming week.

Kosovo&#39;s prime minister Agim Ceku, a former guerrilla commander who does not have a party of his own, is stepping down. Thaci, who leads the Democratic Party of Kosovo, is a narrow favorite to succeed him, according to opinion polls.

Kosovo&#39;s small Serb minority is boycotting the vote at the demand of the Serb government, which bitterly opposes secession.

Whichever of the four main parties wins, the 1.5 million Albanians eligible to vote are sure to elect a government ready to unilaterally declare an independent republic.

It may come within weeks of the mediators&#39; report but is not expected to be literally on Dec 10, despite Thaci&#39;s rhetoric.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

(Reuters) - The breakaway province of Kosovo holds its third postwar parliamentary election on Saturday, ahead of a showdown with Serbia over the ethnic Albanian majority&#39;s demand for independence.

Following are brief profiles of the main parties vying for power in the territory, run by the United Nations since NATO bombs drove out Serb forces in 1999.

Opinion polls suggest no single party will win enough votes to form a government alone.

* DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF KOSOVO (PDK) - Hashim Thaci

The PDK was the main party to emerge from the ethnic Albanian guerrilla army that battled Serb forces in 1998-99, and for the first time since the war it holds a narrow lead in opinion polls ahead of the November 17 election. In opposition since 2004, it is led by 39-year-old former guerrilla commander Hashim Thaci, who is widely tipped to become prime minister.

Western diplomats believe that due to his strong power base in the former guerrilla heartland, Thaci will be able to keep tensions in check as Kosovo&#39;s drive for independence climaxes, possibly around the turn of the year.

* DEMOCRATIC LEAGUE OF KOSOVO (LDK) - Fatmir Sejdiu

Founded by late Kosovo president Ibrahim Rugova, the LDK dominated the drive for independence through the 1990s, before passive resistance gave way to guerrilla war. It has splintered since Rugova&#39;s death of lung cancer in January 2006, when current president Fatmir Sejdiu took over.

As the biggest party in the outgoing governing coalition, it has been hit by accusations of corruption and mounting frustration that independence has not yet materialized. Opinion polls suggest it has slipped into second place.

* NEW KOSOVO ALLIANCE (AKR) - Behgjet Pacolli

Kosovo-born, Swiss-based construction millionaire Behgjet Pacolli is the election wildcard. His year-old party has cruised into third place on a heavily technocratic program promising investment and jobs for Kosovo&#39;s bitterly poor population. Known as the man who renovated the Kremlin, the 56-year-old Pacolli appears untarnished by his close business ties with Russia, which backs Serbia in opposing Kosovo&#39;s independence.

* ALLIANCE FOR THE FUTURE OF KOSOVO (AAK) - Ramush Haradinaj

The junior partner in Kosovo&#39;s outgoing coalition, it continues to be led by Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla commander on trial for war crimes at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. Haradinaj was prime minister for 100 days, impressing voters and diplomats alike, but resigned in March 2005 when he was indicted by the tribunal. The AAK has since struggled. Haradinaj heads the party&#39;s list of candidates, but his trial is expected to continue well into 2008.

[hajduk]

Kosovo: Virtual War and International Law
Aaron Schwabach*
Introduction: Kosovo and Postmodern War
http://home.san.rr.com/schwabach/Publicati...ual_War_JLL.pdf (http://home.san.rr.com/schwabach/Publications/Schwabach_Kosovo_Virtual_War_JLL.pdf)

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - International mediators launch new talks with Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaders on Tuesday in a bid to break the deadlock over Kosovo&#39;s future, but diplomats say prospects of a deal remain bleak.

Wolfgang Ischinger, the German diplomat leading negotiations alongside U.S. and Russian mediators, was due to confer with EU foreign ministers on Monday on ways to narrow entrenched Serb and Albanian differences over the breakaway Serbian province.

"I don&#39;t think anyone is that hopeful of a breakthrough on Tuesday," said one diplomat, adding that EU capitals would in the meantime try to overcome their national differences on whether to recognize any future Kosovo independence claim.

A parliamentary election in Kosovo on Saturday was marked by a mass boycott of Kosovo Serbs to protest against a desire for independence that is broadly backed by parties across Kosovo&#39;s political spectrum.

A new mediation effort has already been scheduled for November 26, two weeks before the December 10 date the EU and the United States have set as a deadline for reaching a compromise.

Diplomats reacted cautiously to unconfirmed media reports that the international mediators saw no chance of a deal on Kosovo&#39;s status and wanted instead to propose an interim

compromise that ignored the issue of independence.

Such a "status-neutral" agreement would try merely to regulate relations between Pristina and Belgrade without pre-judging any future move to decide Kosovo&#39;s final status.
"In return for agreeing such a thing, Serbia would want a guarantee from EU states that they would not recognize Kosovo independence. We would say no and that&#39;s the end of that," said a diplomat from one EU state in favor of Kosovo independence.

CONCERN ON BOSNIA

A second European diplomat noted that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana had given Ischinger a mandate to try all options to bring the two sides together, but also expressed doubts as to whether a "status-neutral" offer would be floated.

"Solana has encouraged him to be creative, to leave no stone unturned. A number of formulas are being looked at," said the envoy.

Serbia has offered broad autonomy, but the Kosovo Albanians say they will accept nothing less than independence, eight years after NATO went to war to halt Serb atrocities during a counter-insurgency war and the United Nations took control.

Kosovo Albanian leaders threaten to declare independence and seek recognition from Western powers once talks end.

The United States and a broad majority of EU states support supervised independence for Kosovo as proposed by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari but blocked by U.N. Security Council veto-holder and Serb ally Russia.

Around half a dozen EU states, including several geographically close to the Balkans but others such as Germany, worry about backing any independence claim that does not have U.N. Security Council backing.

According to a draft of a statement to be issued by EU foreign ministers after their talks on Monday, the EU will also note "grave concern over the deteriorating political situation" in Bosnia, referring to the deadlock between ethnic Serbs, Muslims and Croats over institutional reforms.
European diplomats say tensions from Kosovo are spilling over into the tiny Balkan state and note that previous EU plans to begin reducing a 2,500-strong EU peace force in Bosnia have been shelved.
__________________________________________________ ____________________


PRISTINA, Serbia, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Kosovo Albanians who fought Serbia for independence eight years ago seem disillusioned as their dream nears fulfilment and the reality sinks in that prosperity is going to take years of work.

More than half of them did not bother to vote in an election on Saturday, despite the fact that the leaders it was choosing are those who will declare statehood within a month or two.

"The campaign was not about whether or not we will have independence," said analyst Dugagjin Gorani. "It was about the welfare of Kosovo citizens feeling the harsh consequences of bad government and neglect by those in power."

Record low turnout of less than 45 percent came as no surprise, Gorani said. "I was worried it would be under 30, because of people&#39;s deep frustration."

The Council of Europe&#39;s mission said the "alarmingly low turnout" was symptomatic of "profound dissatisfaction". Voter apathy is a also sign that independence euphoria is, in one sense, already a spent force. Many now see Kosovo in the hands of political opportunists who cannot make much difference.

"People are depressed," said local newspaper editor Berat Buzhala. "This is about the economic situation. No water, no electricity, no jobs." Shops and small businesses with smart facades have burgeoned in the past few years, spilling bright neon onto streets once menaced by sandbagged Serb police checkpoints, where Albanians hurried along, eyes averted in a Balkan version of apartheid.

Now, downtown Mother Teresa Street is being turned into a fine pedestrian walkway, paved with imported Chinese granite and lined with trees, in time for Independence Day.

But litter and puddles still deface most of the capital, Pristina, and its smoke-filled cafes fuelled by the boredom of 60 percent unemployment are not likely to empty out soon.

"Over the past three years nothing has changed for the benefit of the people. Only certain people in government have gotten richer," Buzhala said, echoing a widespread suspicion that some have simply exploited eight years of limbo.



UNDER SUPERVISION

Kosovo was always a poor corner of the old Yugoslavia, mired for decades in struggle between a growing Albanian majority and ruling Serbs, who saw the demographic threat to their ancient homeland but could only seem to respond with repression.

Serbia&#39;s iron grip was broken in 1999 when the military crackdown it unleashed on Albanian rebels went too far for Western powers, who used their superior NATO force to prevent a bloodbath after months of warnings went unheeded.

The United Nations has administered Kosovo since, its ubiquitous white four-wheelers now a despised emblem of Kosovo&#39;s suspended animation between protectorate and independence.

An obsolete coal-fired power station belches smoke into the sky north of the city. Electricity cuts are common, portable generators a must-have household appliance on average salaries of 150 euros (&#036;220) a month.

"Kosovo has no economic potential," said Behget Pacolli, a self-made millionaire whose newly created New Kosovo Alliance came third in Saturday&#39;s election. "But we have people who can work, a youth prepared for challenges."

The election was won by Hashim Thaci and his Democratic Party of ex-guerrillas who claim credit for breaking Serbia&#39;s hold in 1999 and feel entitled to lead Kosovo into independence

But even if Kosovo wins quick Western recognition after a declaration expected to come in the next couple of months, things may get worse before they get better. Far from coming to terms with the loss of its province, Serbia is bitterly opposed to secession and may try to inflict as much pain as possible, by blockading recognition, trade, borders, power, telephones and whatever else it can influence.

Serbs living in the northern corner of the province will almost certainly reject the new republic, and since they have Serbia at their backs plus full support from Belgrade, there is little Kosovo can do to prevent de facto partition.

So the flag-raising jubilation of independence day will have a sober undercurrent. Kosovo faces a long climb to the level of prosperity of the European Union, whose white four-wheelers will soon replace those of the United Nations.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Kosovo was heading for a likely grand coalition on Sunday to lead the province into a final showdown with Serbia on the ethnic Albanian majority&#39;s demand for independence.

A senior official in Hashim Thaci&#39;s Democratic Party (PDK), which claimed victory in Saturday&#39;s parliamentary election, told Reuters a coalition with the second-placed Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) was "most likely, since there&#39;s no other option".

The PDK and LDK have been bitter rivals since Thaci&#39;s guerrilla fighters eclipsed the LDK&#39;s policy of passive resistance to Serb rule in the 1990s, under the guidance of the late independence leader, Ibrahim Rugova.

A second PDK source also said a PDK-LDK coalition was most likely, with the support of some smaller parties to secure a stable majority in the 120-seat parliament.

Thaci&#39;s PDK won around 34 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results released by analysts, in a ballot marred by record low turnout and a Serb boycott to protest against Albanian independence plans.

"With our victory today begins the new century," Thaci told cheering supporters. "We showed that Kosovo is ready to move forward towards freedom and independence."

Thaci "crushes LDK", read the front-page headline of the Kosovo daily Express. The LDK saw its support collapse to 22 percent from 45 percent in 2004.

All parties back a quick declaration of independence from Serbia for the breakaway province, which has been under U.N. rule and NATO protection since 1999. Diplomats say it could come within weeks of Serb-Albanian negotiations ending in December.

ECONOMIC CRISIS

Kosovo guerrillas took up arms in 1998 to end a decade of repression under late Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, whose response put almost 1 million civilians to flight and triggered NATO intervention in 1999 and an era of U.N. control.

But in a sign that many voters see little difference in the main parties&#39; ability to tackle poverty and corruption beyond a declaration of statehood, only around 45 percent of 1.5 million turned out to vote, the lowest showing since the war.

Council of Europe observers called it an "alarmingly low turnout, which sends a strong signal to political leaders." It continued a downward trend since 2001, revealing "a profound dissatisfaction among the population".

"People in Kosovo are really fed up with their political situation," said Doris Pack of the European Parliament.

The 120,000-strong Serb minority boycotted the vote, under orders from Belgrade not to legitimize a parliament threatening to declare independence.

"The wall between the main communities -- Serb and Albanian -- remains too high and too thick," said Giovanni Di Stasi, head of the Council of Europe observation mission.

Thaci, who is now clear favorite to become Kosovo&#39;s new prime minister, said parliament would declare independence "immediately after December 10."

That is the date for a report by Russian, United States and European Union mediators on efforts to find a compromise between Serbia and Kosovo&#39;s 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority.

There is still no glimmer of a deal. Two negotiating sessions are set for Brussels and Vienna in the coming week.

[spartan]

Well it looks like Kosovo is going to get independence after all.

An ex Kosovan independence guerrilla fighter turned politicain who wants Kosovan independence is claiming that his party has won the recent elections.

Politics aside i wish the Kosovans good luck as they have suffered under racist Serb rule for long enough and deserve their own state (even if that state is pro west) as a pro western state is probably better then being under the rule of a racist government with the liking of ethnic genocide.

[hajduk]

Edward Said for “Al-Ahram” 24-30 June 1999 :

...the illegal bombing increased and hastened the flight of people out of Kosovo cannot be doubted. How the NATO high command, with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair leading the pack, could ever have assumed that the number of refugees would have decreased as a result of the bombing fairly beggars the imagination. Neither leader, significantly, has ever experienced the horrors of war; neither man fought, neither has any direct knowledge of what it means to search desperately for survival, to protect and feed one&#39;s family. For those reasons alone, both leaders deserve the strongest moral condemnation and, given Clinton&#39;s appalling record in Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq and the White House corridors, he should be indicted as a war criminal as much as Milosevic. In any event, even according to US law, Clinton violated the constitution by fighting a war without congressional sanction. That he also violated the UN Charter simply adds to the felony.

...The US military budget is 30 per cent higher than that of the total budget spent by all the other NATO countries combined. Over half the countries of the world today have felt either the threat or the actuality of US economic or trade sanctions. Pariah states like Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Cuba and Libya (pariahs because the US has labeled them so) bear the brunt of US unilateral anger; one of them, Iraq, is in the process of genocidal dissolution, thanks to US sanctions which go on well past any sensible purpose other than to satisfy the US’s feelings of righteous anger. What is all this supposed to accomplish, and what does it say to the world about US power? This is a frightening message bearing no relationship to security, national interest, or well-defined strategic aims. It is all about power for its own sake.

And when Clinton takes to the airwaves to inform Serbs or Iraqis that they will get no help from the country that destroyed theirs unless they change their leaders, arrogance simply knows no bounds. The International Tribunal that has branded Milosevic a war criminal cannot in the present circumstances have either viability or credibility unless the same criteria are applied to Clinton, Blair, Albright, Sandy Berger, General Clark and all the others whose murderous purpose completely overrode any notion of decency and the laws of war. In comparison with what Clinton has done to Iraq alone, Milosevic, for all his brutality, is a rank amateur in viciousness. What makes Clinton’s crimes worse is the sanctimony and fraudulent concern in which he cloaks himself and, worse, which seem to fool the neo-liberals who now run the Natopolitan world. Better an honest conservative than a deceptive liberal.

...Finally, if innocent human life is sacred, then it must not cynically be sacrificed if the victims happen not to be white and European. One must always begin one&#39;s resistance at home, against power that as a citizen one can influence; but alas, a fluent nationalism masking itself as patriotism and moral concern has taken over the critical consciousness, which then puts loyalty to one&#39;s "nation" before everything. At that point there is only the treason of the intellectuals, and complete moral bankruptcy.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BELGRADE, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Serbia is warning the West ahead of a new round of talks on its breakaway Kosovo province that a declaration of independence by the Albanian majority would lead to new secessionist moves in the Balkans.

"If the independence of Kosovo is recognised, it would not be the final stage of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, but the first stage of new disintegration and secession in the Balkans," Serbia&#39;s Kosovo minister, Slobodan Samardzic, said.

Samardzic, speaking at a conference on Sunday, Samardzic did not spell out where these new breakaway moves would occur.

But some analysts warn a declaration of independence in Kosovo may have a domino effect, with the first victim being Kosovo itself as the Serb-dominated north of the territory breaks away to join Serbia proper.

Bosnia could come next. Serbia is supporting the Bosnian Serb republic against Western efforts to bring it closer to the central state it shares with ethnic Croats and Muslims.

Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaders are due to meet in Brussels on Tuesday with the clock ticking down to a Dec. 10 deadline after which mediation in search of a compromise will end.

Former guerrilla fighter Hashim Thaci, Kosovo&#39;s prime minister-apparent after winning an election at the weekend, says he will declare independence immediately after.

The United States and most EU states are likely to recognise Kosovo. But Samardzic says they would be opening Pandora&#39;s box.



FLASH POINTS

Some Serb politicians say ethnically divided Macedonia could also be affected. A rebellion in 2001 by the country&#39;s 25 percent Albanian minority was put down with Western mediation, but tensions remain.

In the West, there is fear that they could worsen if Kosovo is denied independence.

Serbia believes its offer of wide autonomy for Kosovo would restore stability, order and the rule of law, Samardzic was quoted by state news agency Tanjug as saying.

Branislav Ristivojevic, spokesman for the DSS party of Serb Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, said on Monday the only proof of objective negotiations would be if Serbia&#39;s autonomy proposal was taken seriously.

"Dangers lurk if Kosovo unilaterally declares independence and some countries recognise it," Ristivojevic said.

"The whole world order would crumble, everything that was built in the past 50 years would be meaningless. All the flash points in the world, not just in the Balkans, would erupt".

Kosovo Albanians will accept nothing less than independence, eight years after NATO bombed Serbia to halt atrocities in a counter-insurgency war, and the United Nations took control.

The talks on Tuesday are part of the second bid to reach a solution. A U.N.-sponsored plan to give Kosovo independence under European Union supervision was blocked in spring by Russia, an ally of Serbia, which demanded further negotiation.

The 27-member EU is split over the issue, with half a dozen members appearing hesitant to back a secession not sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union countries on Monday urged Serbia&#39;s breakaway Kosovo not to rush into a declaration of independence, with its backers insisting any such move should be coordinated internationally.

Former guerrilla Hashim Thaci, who is expected to become prime minister of the majority ethnic Albanian province after Saturday&#39;s election, said parliament would declare independence after a December 10 deadline for international mediation efforts.

The United States backs independence for Kosovo, but the EU is divided on the issue. Some EU member states are reluctant to support any such move without the blessing of the United Nations or at least broad international support.

"Kosovo should have her independence (but) it shouldn&#39;t be an unmanaged unilateral declaration. It should be one that is coordinated with the international community," British Europe Minister Jim Murphy told reporters, arriving for an EU meeting.

Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said Thaci&#39;s call was not a surprise but urged Kosovo Albanians and Serbs not to exacerbate their already growing tensions.

"The EU has asked all parties in this climate to behave carefully. That applies to both Belgrade and Pristina."

Wolfgang Ischinger, a German diplomat leading mediation alongside U.S. and Russian officials, is due to meet Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaders in Brussels on Tuesday.

Few participants hold out much hope of a breakthrough. A mass boycott of Saturday&#39;s parliamentary elections by Kosovo Serbs -- in protest against the wide support for independence among Kosovo Albanian politicians -- underlined the divide.

"We have explored almost every humanly known option for squaring the circle of the Kosovo status issue," Ischinger told a breakfast conference in Brussels.

"Regardless of how exactly this process will end ... it is clear no one will be able to say that this was not a meaningful and intense and working negotiating process," he added.

CHALLENGE FOR EUROPE

Serbia has offered broad autonomy, but the Kosovo Albanians say they will accept nothing less than independence. Western diplomats are concerned that Serbia and Russia will declare the mediation process a sham after it finishes.

Hajredin Kuci, deputy leader of Thaci&#39;s PDK party, qualified Thaci&#39;s statement after weekend parliamentary elections about an "immediate" declaration after December 10.

"The PDK and its leader Hashim Thaci stick strongly to the stand that the declaration of Kosovo&#39;s independence after December 10 would only happen in full coordination with the United States and European Union," Kuci told Reuters on Monday.

The EU is anxious to avoid a repeat of its dilemma in the 1990s, when internal splits over how to deal with the Balkans wars showed its ineffectiveness as a foreign policy player.

"This is a European challenge. It is not one we can ask the United States to solve for us," said Murphy.

Several states neighboring the Balkans plus Germany and Spain are most hesitant to back a unilateral declaration.

Diplomats say Madrid and Berlin can be brought round if it is clear that all attempts to reach a compromise between Serbia and Kosovo&#39;s 90-percent ethnic Albanian majority have been made.

With results from 90 percent of polling stations counted, independent election monitors said Thaci&#39;s Democratic Party (PDK) had come first with 34 percent, pushing the ruling Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) into second place.

[hajduk]

Specter of workers&#39; revolt haunts post-Milosevic Serbia
by Peter Hudis

The mass mobilizations which led to the overthrow of Serbia&#39;s President Slobodan Milosevic seem, on the surface, to have receded now that its new President, Vojislav Kostunica, has assumed power. Since taking office on Oct. 6 Kostunica has worked with the military and police to clear the streets; he has obtained control over many government ministries for his 18-party coalition, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS); and he has pushed for special elections to the Serbian parliament, to be held Dec. 23. All this is part of his effort to turn Serbia into what he calls "a normal European society" after 13 years of misrule by Milosevic.

Yet beneath the surface things are anything but normal. Dozens of factories, firms, and enterprises have been occupied by workers. Workers have thrown out their state-appointed managers and are demanding an improvement in living and working conditions. Workers&#39; committees have taken over mines, auto plants, pharmaceutical factories, hospitals, insurance agencies and trading companies.

Though this militancy erupted during the period of mass mobilization which forced Milosevic from power, the occupations of factories and firms have actually intensified since Kostunica took office.

Since Milosevic&#39;s overthrow a major strike has broken out at Trudbenik, one of Serbia&#39;s biggest construction companies. The workers&#39; committee there has called for the firing of its managing director, the board of directors and the trade union leadership. One report noted, "The strike committee wants to be sure that the new rulers from DOS do not just reproduce the old system by imposing so-called democrats [as the managers of] factories."

Though Kostunica rode a wave of strikes and protests to push Milosevic from power, he has since condemned the factory occupations as forcefully as have Milosevic&#39;s "Socialist" Party of Serbia (SSP). Kostunica&#39;s pleas to entrust DOS with the task of running things has so far not succeeded. Whether this remains so will help determine Serbia&#39;s future.

THE "BULLDOZER" REVOLUTION

Kostunica&#39;s victory does not mean Serbia has broken from narrow nationalism.

He is a Serb nationalist who opposed Tito in the 1970s for granting increased powers to Kosova. He was closely associated with the Serbian Academy of Sciences in the mid-1980s when it drew up its rationale for what later became known as "ethnic cleansing." He supported Milosevic&#39;s crushing of movements for autonomy in Kosova and Vojvodina in the late 1980s and Serbia&#39;s wars against Croatia, Bosnia and Kosova in the 1990s. But since Kostunica was an anti-Communist who never joined Milosevic&#39;s government, he was considered "clean" enough to run for president by the much-divided opposition.

Many voted for Kostunica because they have grown tired of Milosevic&#39;s promotion of narrow nationalism. Many others, however, voted for Kostunica because they feel Milosevic didn&#39;t defend Serbian narrow nationalism strongly enough.

Independent observers estimate that Milosevic won less than 40% of the Sept. 24 presidential vote, with about 56% going to Kostunica. Milosevic fared even worse in municipal elections: in Belgrade the DOS won 102 out of 110 contested seats.

Milosevic responded by trying to engineer electoral fraud. He claimed that Kostunica won less than 50% of the vote, which would necessitate a runoff. DOS refused to participate in the runoff, and called for street protests and blockades to force the regime to recognize the election results.

Though many rallies were held in the days following the Sept. 24 elections, most were smaller than the opposition hoped for. What changed everything was the outbreak of a strike at the Kolubara mine complex on Sept. 29--a spontaneous action that was not envisioned by the DOS leaders.

Kolubara is the largest coal mine in Serbia (it employs 17,000) and supplies coal to the Nikola Tesla electricity plant in Obrenovac, which produces half of Serbia&#39;s electricity. The strike had a huge effect. Within days a general strike was proclaimed, the first in Yugoslavia since World War II. Some 4,500 miners at the Kostoloc mine in eastern Serbia joined the strike, as did workers in other industries in Nis, Cacak, Pancevo, and Uzice. In Kragulevac 30,000 auto workers and laborers in the armaments industry demonstrated against Milosevic.

At the same time, tens of thousands of students and citizens came into the streets of 20 cities, especially Belgrade. For the first time, a worker-student alliance emerged in the struggle.

Milosevic responded by arresting dozens of strike leaders; he claimed they were financed by NATO as part of a plot to take over the country. He ordered the police to surround Kolubara, and sent in his army chief of staff, Nebojsa Pavkovic (an architect of Serbia&#39;s war against Kosova). Pavkovic said if the miners didn&#39;t return to work he would fire them and replace them with Serb miners from Kosova.

The threat proved futile. On Oct. 4 angry miners drove a bus through a police cordon, which allowed thousands of miners and their supporters to enter Kolubara. This proved to be the turning point. The police abandoned efforts to maintain control--perhaps in part because many in the army and police had themselves voted for Kostunica.

The next day, as crowds gathered at the Federal parliament in Belgrade, the police stepped aside and did not fire on them. Ljubisav Djokiv, an unemployed construction worker, used his bulldozer to help break into the building. Parliament and the state-run TV and radio stations were soon in flames.

One worker said, "I&#39;ve been waiting 10 years for this and out of that I spent 5 years in a queue. I just want to see Milosevic finished like Ceaucescu" (a reference to the Romanian Communist leader who was shot during the revolution of 1989).

Within 24 hours of his failure to break the Kolubara strike, Milosevic decided the game was up. Rather than risk going down like Ceaucescu, he stepped aside, admitting that Kostunica had won the election after all. Yet by retaining his leadership of the SSP--the largest party in Serbia--he remains a formidable, though weakened, political force.

THE REVOLT IN THE HISTORIC MIRROR

The events in Serbia show how fast a tyrannical regime can come apart once the working class takes the initiative.

For years an array of bourgeois politicians tried to unseat Milosevic, without success. When he annulled the results of elections in 1997, massive protests occurred. Yet Milosevic kept finding ways to outflank and disorient the opposition.

What was different this time is that in the aftermath of Serbia&#39;s military defeat in Kosova the workers decided they had had enough of Milosevic&#39;s lies and took the initiative to get rid of him.

The role played by the working class in the recent events differs in a number of respects from the upheavals which brought down the other Stalinist regimes in East Europe in 1989.

The Stalinist regimes collapsed in 1989 as a result of genuine mass upheavals. Yet for the most part the working class did not step forth as an independent force in its own right. Factory occupations and major strikes were few. Though the collapse of the exploitative "Communist" regimes were welcomed by all layers of the populace, a genuine revolutionary alternative did not arise from the Left. What predominated instead was the notion that there is no alternative to free market capitalism.

While there were many reasons for this, the global context was critical. The East European revolts of 1989 occurred at a moment of profound retrogression, with the triumph of Reaganism, the collapse of revolutionary alternatives in the Third World, and the decline of explicitly anti-capitalist movements in the West.

Today, the global context is somewhat different. Important cracks have appeared in capital&#39;s ideological edifice. The massive strikes in West Europe since 1995; the growing movements against globalization and sweatshop labor; and the Seattle protest against the WTO and its aftermath have rekindled new opposition to global capitalism. Even if only slowly and quietly, an undefined foreboding is emerging that we may not be fated to forever suffer the indignities of global capitalism after all.

It may be coincidental that the protest against the IMF and World Bank was held in nearby Prague on Sept. 26, just days before Serbia&#39;s workers took the initiative against Milosevic. Yet it may reflect the fact that something new is in the air which has helped reawaken the specter of workers&#39; revolt.

IN WITH THE NEW BOSS

Just as with the East European revolts of 1989, Serbia&#39;s new rulers are trying to ensure that the "revolution" remains within manageable channels without any real change in class or social relations.

Kostunica is being aided in this by the U.S. and West Europe. He was barely in office when the European Union announced it would lift sanctions against Serbia. The Clinton administration likewise hailed Kostunica&#39;s victory and agreed to lift sanctions, even though Kostunica says that he will not turn over Milosevic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague--as demanded by the U.S. for the past year. The Clinton administration no longer appears concerned about bringing Milosevic to justice.

Despite the U.S.&#39;s effort to bolster Kostunica, his position remains precarious. Milosevic still has many supporters in the military and government, who can make life difficult for him. The DOS has a minority of seats in the Yugoslav parliament. Real political power in any case lies in the Serbian parliament, in which DOS has no seats. The leaders of Montenegro, which is pushing for independence from Serbia, boycotted the election. In response, Kostunica--who opposes independence for either Montenegro or Kosova--has allied himself with a pro-Milosevic Montenegrin Party (the SNP) in order to obtain a majority in the Yugoslav parliament. And the DOS is a fraction-ridden 18-party coalition which can split apart at any time.

THE LEFT IN DISARRAY--ONCE AGAIN

The U.S. signaled its support for Kostunica even before the election by sending millions of dollars to the DOS. Some "leftists" are using this to argue that the Clinton administration "engineered" the overthrow of Milosevic.

Diana Johnstone-who wrote a series of scurrilous attacks on the Kosova Albanians and Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) during NATO&#39;s imperialist bombing of Kosova last year-has denounced the overthrow of Milosevic as a CIA-engineered coup. Events like the storming of parliament, she says in a post on ZNet, were faked for the TV cameras&#33;

Another Stalinoid "leftist" who was the source of much disinformation about the KLA, Michel Chossudovsky, has written similar nonsense. Neither Johnstone nor Chossudovsky explain how the CIA managed to infiltrate the Kolubara mines, spark a spontaneous strike, and then engineer workplace occupations across the country.

It is telling that those who denounced the KLA for being a "terrorist" group run by the CIA now denounce factory occupations and strikes as "illegal" CIA-run activities. The failure to support a national liberation movement now extends to opposing actual workers&#39; revolt-all because the U.S. supported the campaign of the man brought to power through it&#33;

Such bizarre analyzes totally misread U.S. policy in Serbia and the region as a whole.

It is true that the U.S. has an ally in Kostunica. But it also had an ally for many years in Milosevic. U.S. imperialism treated Milosevic as a friend upon the signing of the Dayton Accords in 1995, which prevented the Bosnians from achieving a military victory against Serbian forces. The U.S. figured: better to go along with Serbian nationalism, albeit in a somewhat tamed form with the Dayton Accords, than risk "regional instability" by allowing the Bosnians to win. From 1995-98 Serbia, like Croatia, was treated as a U.S. regional ally.

That changed only in 1998-99, when Milosevic overreached himself by readying a full-scale crackdown against the Kosovar Albanians. This occurred just as NATO was about to expand into the former countries of the Warsaw Pact. Faced with the outbreak of hostilities that could make NATO look like a helpless giant, Clinton and Albright decided to launch the U.S. air war against Serbia.

The U.S did not attack Milosevic because of his narrow nationalism. Nor did it bomb Belgrade in order to obtain independence for Kosova. The U.S. has long opposed independence for Kosova. After the war it forced the KLA to disarm and insisted that Kosova be rejoined with Serbia-once one man, Milosevic, was removed from power.

Now that Milosevic is gone, the U.S. has no problem supporting someone who shares Milosevic&#39;s basic nationalist standpoint. For that standpoint has never posed a serious threat to U.S. interests.

Nor did Milosevic&#39;s Serbia serve as an economic "bulwark" against the West. Under Kostunica, as under Milosevic, Serbia will have a state-capitalist economy with a set of rulers skimming off the proceeds, this time in the name of "democracy." Milosevic&#39;s plans to privatize 75 of the country&#39;s largest firms will now be carried out. That will be enough to satisfy the U.S., who will also find a way to sneak out of major commitments of economic aid, as it has in so many other areas of the Balkans.

WHICH KOLUBARA?

Now that the new regime is having a hard time stopping the occupations of work sites, it may try to whip up national chauvinism as a way to unite the nation behind it. Kostunica has long supported Serbia&#39;s dominance over Kosova and there is little indication he is prepared to let the region go. He has not released over 800 Kosovar Albanians still in Serbian jails. Though he has admitted to Serbian "atrocities" against the Albanians in Kosova. he has not acknowledged the genocide inflicted on Bosnia.

Given the new situation in Belgrade, the U.S. will no doubt pressure the Kosovar Albanians to accept a form of limited autonomy within Serbia. Those KLA leaders who aspired for independence but who chose to ally themselves with the U.S. occupation will find themselves with no room to maneuver. The Kosovar struggle is now in grave jeopardy.

The situation in Bosnia and Kosova remains critical, not just for those areas, but for Serbia itself. As Marx said about freedom struggles in this country, "Labor in the white skin cannot free itself so long as labor in the black is branded." Marx insisted that class struggles cannot reach fulfillment so long as they remain confined by the mind-forged manacles of racism and national chauvinism.

The future of workers&#39; struggles in Serbia hinges on whether the masses face up to the "ethnic cleansing" inflicted upon Bosnia and Kosova and extend a hand of solidarity with those who fought it. Solidarizing with the ongoing fight of the Albanian Kosovar miners of Trepca is key in that.

In 1914 Kolubara was the site of a Serb victory over the Austro-Hungarian army. The event became part of nationalist folklore and was later featured in a famous novel by Dobrica Cosic, Time of Death. The novel helped fuel the nationalist mania which seized Serbia in the late 1980s and 1990s.

In 2000 Kolubara was the site of a strike which helped end the reign of an architect of genocide. Which Kolubara define the new Serbia? The nationalist mythology of 1914, or the workers&#39; revolt of 2000 which, in reaching to realize itself, will rid itself of the vestiges of narrow nationalism? Upon this question the future of Serbia rests.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Kosovo&#39;s president said on Tuesday the breakaway Serb province would coordinate its push for independence with the United States and the EU, and wanted to launch the move days after a December deadline for mediation.

Arriving in Brussels for talks with Serb officials who oppose Kosovo&#39;s independence, Fatmir Sejdiu said he expected mediators to present their report on the negotiations to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as scheduled on December 10.

"Then a couple more days that we will use for the necessary consultations and afterwards the assembly of Kosovo will take its own decision," he told reporters.

"We will achieve this in coordination with all the countries that are helping Kosovo. There are absolutely no alternatives (to independence)," he said.

Pristina has firmly rejected Serbia&#39;s offer of broad autonomy to the 90 percent ethnic Albanian province.

Serb leaders said they would argue in the talks that there were historical precedents for such arrangements, citing autonomy provisions agreed for the ex-British colony of Hong Kong, and for Finland&#39;s tiny Swedish-speaking Aland Island.

"Yet again Belgrade came with a fresh idea to the table and I hope this is matched by the other side," said Serb Foreign Minister Vuc Jeremic, reaffirming that Belgrade saw December 10 as an artificial deadline and that talks should be open-ended.

EU foreign ministers urged Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaders on Monday to redouble efforts to seek a compromise in last-ditch negotiations launched after Serb ally Russia blocked a U.N.-sponsored plan putting Kosovo on the road to independence.

But in a sign that EU capitals are increasingly pessimistic of a deal by December 10, several ministers stressed Kosovo Albanians should coordinate any subsequent independence moves with international allies to avoid destabilizing the region.

Former guerrilla Hashim Thaci, expected to become Kosovo prime minister after Saturday&#39;s election, said on Tuesday the province&#39;s leaders would "do nothing without coordination with our partners in Washington and Brussels".

"We will respect the agenda of the international community and after December 10, through cooperation with Washington and Brussels, we will take our decision for independence," he told reporters in Brussels.

"STATUS-NEUTRAL"

Wolfgang Ischinger, the German diplomat leading the so-called "troika" negotiations alongside U.S. and Russian counterparts, said earlier he was confident the session -- most likely the penultimate one -- would be productive.

Ischinger said he would confer with U.S and Russian officials on whether to float a so-called "status-neutral" proposal to regulate ties between Pristina and Belgrade without pre-judging any future move to decide Kosovo&#39;s final status.

The idea has its origins in a 1972 pact that normalized ties between West and East Germany without prejudging the question of unification, which only happened 18 years later after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.

Some diplomats argue Serbia and Russia would agree to such a pact only if EU capitals in return gave guarantees that they would not recognize Kosovo independence in the meantime -- something most European countries would not be willing to do.

The United States backs Kosovo independence and British Europe Minister Jim Murphy said on Monday that "well over 20" of the bloc&#39;s 27 states agreed, without naming those who were reluctant.

[hajduk]

KOSOVO/Hank Kalet
Images of War

"On the eve of its 50th birthday, NATO, a defensive alliance founded to protect Western Europe from Soviet invasion, has struck hard at a sovereign state that is not a threat to allies. Without a specific UN Security Council authorization, NATO is intervening in a civil war, a war of secession, to halt the cruelty with which it is being fought--especially by the Serbs. In the process, the allies run the risk that their attacks might increase the level of killing in Kosovo, drive the conflict into neighboring countries and make a negotiated peace less likely." --Bruce W. Nelson, Time, April 5

It is difficult not to feel the urge to act. Grim pictures: A line of thousands fleeing across the Kosovo border; 500,000, a million perhaps, emptying the villages and towns of the war-torn province. Shattered buildings, pillars of smoke rising, stories of mass killings, of men being pulled from cars and shot point-blank in the back of the head.

It is difficult not to feel the urge to act.

But the path we&#39;ve chosen, the route we are travelling down, is the wrong path, immoral and ill conceived, designed ultimately to do little for the ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo--or any ethnic minority forced to remain under the yoke of the oppressive Slobodan Milosevic.

Rather than forcing the Serb leader to recognize and respect the rights of the Kosovars to self-determination, rather than guaranteeing their well-being, the bombings provide Milosevic with a chance to consolidate power by portraying himself and his government as the victims of superpower aggression, by pumping up the passions of Yugoslavia&#39;s hard-core nationalist minority and by plucking the heart strings of Serbs who have been taught from birth to consider Kosovo as a mythic, moral center, a cultural icon, an integral element in the Serbian national identity.

"We are for Slobo because he is for us," Velimir Djurica told Time magazine from his plumbing stall in Belgrade&#39;s black market. "The foreign boot must not be on us."

PRESIDENT CLINTON has attempted to portray the NATO intervention in moral and humanitarian terms, but his reasoning--when scrutinized closely--doesn&#39;t hold up. NATO bombs--and possibly ground troops--are justified to end the slaughter of innocent civilians, to cease a genocidal purge of ethnic Albanians, he says. The use of massive--and primarily American--firepower and the whole-cloth destruction of the Serbian and Kosovar infrastructure is the big stick Clinton says will convince Milosevic to mend his ways.

But there is no proof, no reasonable track record to show that air strikes will be effective and it appears that, at this early stage (I write this in the middle of April), based on the reports from the international press, that Milosevic is bunkering down, that he is expecting national and nationalist opinion to remain on his side.

"No nation, no matter how badly attacked from the air is going to rally to the attackers," Palestinian scholar Edward Said writes in an essay on Z Magazine&#39;s Web site (www.zmag.org).

"If anything, Milosevic&#39;s regime is now strengthened. All Serbs feel that their country is attacked unjustly, and that the cowardly war from the air has made them feel persecuted."

The heavier we bomb, the more recalcitrant he becomes, the more defiant, the more he targets the Kosovars.

"In one incident, 70 men were lined up next to a river and mowed down with machine guns into the water," John Daniszewski wrote in the Los Angeles Times of the massacres that followed the first bombings. "In another, 25 men, women and children were herded into a basement and shot and slashed to death. In a third, 20,000 villagers were forced to concentrate in a tiny hamlet, where they were bombed by a low-flying aircraft that left scores dead and many wounded."

We have entered a vicious cycle in which Serbian persecution of Kosovo&#39;s ethnic Albanian minority is followed by bombs, which is followed by an escalation in anti-Albanian violence and more bombing. And with each turn of this horrible wheel, with each rotation that ratchets up the terror and violence, comes a intensification of the rhetoric. Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair strike moral poses and bellow ultimatums, compare Milosevic to Hitler and portray the NATO mission as one that will prevent even worse destruction down the road. Milosevic, for his part, stands defiant, accusing the west--and in particular the U.S.--of being the aggressor and dragging his people along behind him in his quest to be the region&#39;s strong-arm leader.

STILL, WHAT OF the half-million refugees streaming across the borders into Albania and Montenegro? What of the mass killings, the genocide? What of the human toll of not acting, of not stepping in to stop the slaughter?

We must do all we can to help the refugees, to find them shelter, to protect them against violence. But we must not delude ourselves into thinking that this is what the bombings are about.

Humanitarian concerns are not what compelled the Clinton Administration to the air, are not the real impetus behind the bombings. A commitment to global economic stability is.

The Turkish government has been systematic in its suppression of its Kurdish minority, with estimates placing the number of Kurds who fled to Diyarbakir as the Turkish army devastated the countryside at more than a million. But the Clinton Administration remained silent there, standing by its ally, the single largest importer of American arms and a country its sees as a counterweight against the Muslim Middle East.

And it has remained silent in Rwanda, in Laos, in any number of hotspots around the globe where it sees no immediate economic interest. And it has come to the aid of the repressive Colombian government against its own people, has backed dozens of dictatorships, where the dollars dictate that American force be withheld.

SO WHAT TO DO? First, end the bombing. "Despite the desperate efforts of ideologues to prove that circles are square, there is no serious doubt that the NATO bombings further undermine what remains of the fragile structure of international law," writes Noam Chomsky (Z Magazine Web site).

He points out that the decision to bomb essentially was made by the Clinton Administration, with support from Great Britain, and that NATO members had grave misgivings, with France seeking a UN Security Council authorization for the deployment of a peacekeeping force and other NATO countries--Italy and Greece, in particular--concerned about the fallout. But the U.S. forced the issue, insisting that NATO had a right to act unilaterally, isolating the Russians, who preferred that a diplomatic approach be considered, and placing itself above the authority of the United Nations and the World Court.

This, Chomsky argues, quoting Samuel Huffington, makes the United States a rogue superpower, giving rise to the possibility that "coalitions may arise to counterbalance" American force in the future.

"On pragmatic grounds, then, the stance should be reconsidered," he writes of the bombing. "Americans who prefer a different image of their society might call for a reconsideration on other than pragmatic grounds."

This is not to say that nothing can or should be done. In an essay posted on the Institute for War and Peace Reporting Web site (www.iwpr.net), a Yugoslavian human rights activist (whose name was withheld to protect his relatives in Serbia) is calling for a "comprehensive strategy to change the political tide towards a democratic--and in the Balkans that necessarily means a regional--agenda."

"A key step would be to shift responsibility for the Balkans to Europe. International ground forces must be deployed in Kosovo, and these would be predominantly European. They would administer a protectorate under a temporary administrator along the lines of the Rambouillet agreement (an early truce settlement). That would mean both stopping ethnic cleansing and the humanitarian catastrophe and securing all existing borders. And they must spur the self-administration of Albanians in Kosovo and the return of refugees."

There needs to be a concerted effort to investigate and prosecute war criminals--especially Milosevic--and, as suggested by Edward Said, a "multi-party conference of all the peoples of former Yugoslavia be called to settle differences between them on the basis of self-determination for all."

In the meantime, it is important that those of us who see the bombings as an abuse of American power make our voice heard and that we also work with relief organizations seeking to help the refugees.

Morally, it is our only choice.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union&#39;s envoy to talks on Kosovo played down on Wednesday prospects of a broad agreement on the status of the breakaway Serbian province ahead of a December 10 deadline.

Wolfgang Ischinger said the "troika" of mediators from the EU, United States and Russia had hoped to get deals resolving both Kosovo&#39;s status as well as future ties between the province and Serbia.

But this was "probably not going to be achieved", he told reporters in Berlin.

His comments, among the most pessimistic yet from the German diplomat leading the talks, came a day after Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders failed to break their long-running deadlock over the province&#39;s future.

Kosovo&#39;s Albanian majority insists on EU-supervised independence for the province while Belgrade refuses to grant more than greater autonomy to Kosovo within Serbian borders.

Serbian leaders have rejected a "status-neutral" proposal that Ischinger made which sets out contractual ties between Pristina and Belgrade without influencing subsequent decisions on Kosovo&#39;s final status.

"Our aim in the troika, even if we didn&#39;t get a solution on Kosovo&#39;s status, was to get agreement on the relationship between Serbia and Kosovo, independent of how and when the status question was resolved," Ischinger said.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations for the past eight years, since Western allies launched military intervention in 1999 to rescue two million ethnic Albanians from ethnic cleansing by Serb forces under the late Slobodan Milosevic.

A new round of talks is due to take place next week in Baden, Austria. The mediators are expected to present a report on Kosovo to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon by December 10.

"The troika process on Kosovo was not and is not window-dressing," Ischinger said. "No one will be able to say after the fact that we didn&#39;t explore all possibilities."

The troika began work to break the Kosovo deadlock in August, after a Western-backed resolution for independence was blocked at the United Nations by Serbian ally Russia.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia, Nov 21 (Reuters) - A large majority of Bosnian Serbs believes their republic should secede from Bosnia if Kosovo declares independence from Serbia, according to an opinion poll published on Wednesday.

The survey by the Banja Luka-based Partner agency, published in Novi Reporter magazine, said 77 percent of a sample of 850 voters believed Serbs should break away from Bosnia if Kosovo Albanians secede from Serbia.

The poll coincides with the 12th anniversary of the Dayton peace pact, which created a Bosnia of two parts from the enemies of the 1992-95 war in which over 100,000 were killed.

Serbs got half the country and a Muslim-Croat federation the other half. Suspicions still run deep and relations are poor.

Diplomats say Serbia, with Bosnian Serb connivance, is now actively stoking fears of the breakup of Bosnia in a bid to make the West think twice about supporting Kosovo&#39;s independence.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Wednesday blamed Bosnia&#39;s international overseer for provoking "crisis" in the country by violating the Dayton Accords on power-sharing between Serbs, Muslims and Croats.

Criticising a directive by Miroslav Lajcak aimed at circumventing political blocking tactics, Kostunica said "it is obvious that those measures were wrong".

"Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the international community has made a wrong assessment when making decisions in the Balkans, and those decisions have created numerous crises," he told Belgrade&#39;s Vecernje Novosti newspaper.

Lajcak&#39;s directives should be cancelled, he said.



THREAT TO DAYTON DEAL

The Bosnian Serb Prime Minister, Milorad Dodik, says Lajcak&#39;s measures "could lead to the systematic outvoting of one constituent people" and are therefore an attack on Dayton, which guarantees Serb autonomy.

He also denies any threat to hold a referendum on secession from Bosnia in retaliation for the secession of Kosovo.

However, the possibility of such a referendum is now raised with regularity including by Dodik who muses that people would demand such a step.

Kostunica -- who was visiting Dodik in Banja Luka on Wednesday for an event to mark the anniversary of Dayton -- has overtly linked the futures of Kosovo and Bosnia, speaking of an "open threat to the Serb people" from Western powers.

Former U.S. ambassador in the Balkans William Montgomery has said he believed this was done on purpose to show "the international community mistreating Serbs not only in Kosovo but in Bosnia".

The result was to solidify in Serb minds a definite linkage between the two cases, he wrote at the weekend in the Serbian daily Danas, so that a declaration of independence by Kosovo could lead to further Bosnian Serb challenges to Lajcak or "even an effort to stage a referendum on independence for" the Bosnian Serb Republic. Kostunica say Belgrade will back the Serb Republic.

"Serbia&#39;s government supports in principle the stand of the Bosnian Serb government and its institutions to fully protect the Serb Republic&#39;s status," he told Vecernje Novosti.

"As a signatory, thus a guarantor of the Dayton Agreement, Serbia has full and legitimate right to insist on full implementation and respect of the agreement."

A senior diplomat actively involved in the region says Serbia will do whatever it can to show Kosovo cannot function.

"One of the ways will be through destabilising Bosnia, making the international community fail there as well."

[hajduk]

Why are we in Kosovo?
by Susan Sontag

The other day a friend from home, New York, called me in Bari -- where I am living for a couple of months -- to ask whether I am all right and inquired in passing whether I can hear sounds of the bombing. I reassured her that not only could I not hear the bombs dropping on Belgrade and Novi Sad and Pristina from downtown Bari, but even the planes taking off from the nearby NATO base of Gioia del Colle are quite inaudible. Though it is easy to mock my geographyless American friend&#39;s vision of European countries being only slightly larger than postage stamps, her Tiny Europe seems a nice complement to the widely held vision of Helpless Europe being dragged into a bellicose folly by Big Bad America.

Perhaps I exaggerate. I am writing this from Italy -- weakest link in the NATO chain. Italy (unlike France and Germany) continues to maintain an embassy in Belgrade. Milosevic has received the Italian Communists&#39; party leader, Armando Cossutta. The estimable mayor of Venice has sent an envoy to Belgrade with letters addressed to Milosevic and to the ethnic Albanian leader with whom he has met, Ibrahim Rugova, proposing Venice as a site for peace negotiations. (The letters were accepted, thank you very much, by the Orthodox primate following the Easter Sunday service.) But then it is understandable that Italy has panicked: Italians see not just scenes of excruciating misery on their TV news but images of masses on the move. In Italy, Albanians are first of all future immigrants.


But opposition to the war is hardly confined to Italy, and to one strand of the political spectrum. On the contrary: mobilized against this war are remnants of the left and the likes of Le Pen and Bossi and Heider on the right. The right is against immigrants. The left is against America. (Against the idea of America, that is. The hegemony of American popular culture in Europe could hardly be more total.)

On both the so-called left and the so-called right, identity-talk is on the rise. The anti-Americanism that is fueling the protest against the war has been growing in recent years in many of the nations of the New Europe, and is perhaps best understood as a displacement of the anxiety about this New Europe, which everyone has been told is a Good Thing and few dare question. Nations are communities that are always being imagined, reconceived, reasserted, against the pressure of a defining Other. The specter of a nation without borders, an infinitely porous nation, is bound to create anxiety. Europe needs its overbearing America.

Weak Europe? Impotent Europe? The words are everywhere. The truth is that the made-for-business Europe being brought into existence with the enthusiastic assent of the "responsible" business and professional elites is a Europe precisely designed to be incapable of responding to the threat posed by a dictator like Milosevic. This is not a question of "weakness," though that is how it is being experienced. It is a question of ideology.

It is not that Europe is weak. Far from it. It is that Europe, the Europe under construction since the Final Victory of Capitalism in 1989, is up to something else. Something which indeed renders obsolete most of the questions of justice -- indeed, all the moral questions. (What prevails, in their place, are questions of health, which may be conjoined with ecological concerns; but that is another matter.)

A Europe designed for spectacle, consumerism and hand wringing ... but haunted by the fear of national identities being swamped either by faceless multinational commercialism or by tides of alien immigrants from poor countries.

In one part of the continent, former Communists play the nationalist card and foment lethal nationalisms -- Milosevic being the most egregious example. In the other part, nationalism, and with it war, are presumed to be superseded, outmoded.

How helpless "our" Europe feels in the face of all this irrational slaughter and suffering taking place in the other Europe.

And meanwhile the war goes on. A war that started in 1991. Not in 1999. And not, as the Serbs would have it, six centuries ago, either. Theirs is a country whose nationalist myth has as its founding event a defeat -- the Battle of Kosovo, lost to the Turks in 1389. We are fighting the Turks, Serb officers commanding the mortar emplacements on the heights of Sarajevo would assure visiting journalists.

Would we not think it odd if France still rallied around the memory of the Battle of Agincourt -- 1415 -- in its eternal enmity with Great Britain? But who could imagine such a thing? For France is Europe. And "they" are not.

Yes, this is Europe. The Europe that did not respond to the Serb shelling of Dubrovnik. Or the three-year siege of Sarajevo. The Europe that let Bosnia die.

A new definition of Europe: the place where tragedies don&#39;t take place. Wars, genocides -- that happened here once, but no longer. It&#39;s something that happens in Africa. (Or places in Europe that are not "really" Europe. That is, the Balkans.) Again, perhaps I exaggerate. But having spent a good part of three years, from 1993 to 1996, in Sarajevo, it does not seem to me like an exaggeration at all.

Living on the edge of NATO Europe, only a few hundred kilometers from the refugee camps in Durres and Kukes and Blace, from the greatest mass of suffering in Europe since the Second World War, it is true that I can&#39;t hear the NATO planes leaving the base here in Puglia. But I can walk to Bari&#39;s waterfront and watch Albanian and Kosovar families pouring off the daily ferries from Durres -- legal immigrants, presumably -- or drive south a hundred kilometers at night and see the Italian coast guard searching for the rubber dinghies crammed with refugees that leave Vlore nightly for the perilous Adriatic crossing. But if I leave my apartment in Bari only to visit friends and have a pizza and see a movie and hang out in a bar, I am no closer to the war than the television news or the newspapers that arrive every morning at my doorstep. I could as well be back in New York.

Of course, it is easy to turn your eyes from what is happening if it is not happening to you. Or if you have not put yourself where it is happening. I remember in Sarajevo in the summer of 1993 a Bosnian friend telling me ruefully that in 1991, when she saw on her TV set the footage of Vukovar utterly leveled by the Serbs, she thought to herself, How terrible, but that&#39;s in Croatia, that can never happen here in Bosnia ... and switched the channel. The following year, when the war started in Bosnia, she learned differently. Then she became part of a story on television that other people saw and said, How terrible ... and switched the channel.

How helpless "our" pacified, comfortable Europe feels in the face of all this irrational slaughter and suffering taking place in the other Europe. But the images cannot be conjured away -- of refugees, people who have been pushed out of their homes, their torched villages, by the hundreds of thousands and who look like us.

Generations of Europeans fearful of any idealism, incapable of indignation except in the old anti-imperialist cold-war grooves. (Yet, of course, the key point about this war is that it is the direct result of the end of the cold war and the breakup of old empires and imperial rivalries.) Stop the War and Stop the Genocide, read the banners being waved in the demonstrations in Rome and here in Bari. For Peace. Against War. Who is not? But how can you stop those bent on genocide without making war?

We have been here before. The horrors, the horrors. Our attempt to forge a "humanitarian" response. Our inability (yes, after Auschwitz&#33;) to comprehend how such horrors can take place. And as the horrors multiply, it becomes even more incomprehensible why we should respond to any one of them (since we have not responded to the others). Why this horror and not another? Why Bosnia or Kosovo and not Kurdistan or Rwanda or Tibet?

Are we not saying that European lives, European suffering are more valuable, more worth acting on to protect, than the lives of people in the Middle East, Africa and Asia?

One answer to this commonly voiced objection to NATO&#39;s war is to say boldly, Yes, to care about the fate of the people in Kosovo is Eurocentric, and what&#39;s wrong with that? But is not the accusation of Eurocentrism itself just one more vestige of European presumption, the presumption of Europe&#39;s universalist mission: that every part of the globe has a claim on Europe&#39;s attention?

If several African states had cared enough about the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda (nearly a million people&#33;) to intervene militarily, say, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, would we have criticized this initiative as being Afrocentric? Would we have asked what right these states have to intervene in Rwanda when they have done nothing on behalf of the Kurds or the Tibetans?

Another argument against intervening in Kosovo is that the war is -- wonderful word -- illegal," because NATO is violating the borders of a sovereign state. Kosovo is, after all, part of the new Greater Serbia called Yugoslavia. Tough luck for the Kosovars that Milosevic revoked their autonomous status in 1989. Inconvenient that 90 percent of Kosovars are Albanians -- ethnic Albanians" as they are called, to distinguish them from the citizens of Albania. Empires reconfigure. But are national borders, which have been altered so many times in the last hundred years, really to be the ultimate criterion? You can murder your wife in your own house, but not outdoors on the street.

Imagine that Nazi Germany had had no expansionist ambitions but had simply made it a policy in the late 1930&#39;s and early 1940&#39;s to slaughter all the German Jews. Do we think a government has the right to do whatever it wants on its own territory? Maybe the governments of Europe would have said that 60 years ago. But would we approve now of their decision?

Push the supposition into the present. What if the French Government began slaughtering large numbers of Corsicans and driving the rest out of Corsica ... or the Italian Government began emptying out Sicily or Sardinia, creating a million refugees ... or Spain decided to apply a final solution to its rebellious Basque population. Wouldn&#39;t we agree that a consortium of powers on the continent had the right to use military force to make the French (or Italian, or Spanish) Government reverse its actions, which would probably mean overthrowing that Government?

But of course this couldn&#39;t happen, could it? Not in Europe. My friends in Sarajevo used to say during the siege: How can "the West" be letting this happen to us? This is Europe, too. We&#39;re Europeans. Surely "they" won&#39;t allow it to go on.

But they -- Europe -- did.

For something truly terrible happened in Bosnia. From the Serb death camps in the north of Bosnia in 1992, the first death camps on European soil since the 1940&#39;s, to the mass executions of many thousands of civilians at Srebrenica and elsewhere in the summer of 1995 -- Europe tolerated that.

So, obviously, Bosnia wasn&#39;t Europe.

Those of us who spent time in Sarajevo used to say that, as the 20th century began at Sarajevo, so will the 21st century begin at Sarajevo. If the options before NATO all seem either improbable or unpalatable, it is because NATO&#39;s actions come eight years too late. Milosevic should have been stopped when he was shelling Dubrovnik in 1991.

Back in 1993 and 1994, American policy makers were saying that even if there were no United States intervention in Bosnia, rest assured, this would be the last thing that Milosevic would be allowed to get away with. A line in the sand had been drawn: he would never be allowed to make war on Kosovo. But who believed the Americans then? Not the Bosnians. Not Milosevic. Not the Europeans. Not even the Americans themselves. After Dayton, after the destruction of independent Bosnia, it was time to go back to sleep, as if the series of events set in motion in 1989 with the accession to power of Milosevic and the revocation of autonomous status for the province of Kosovo, would not play out to its obvious logical end.

If Europe is having a hard time thinking that it matters what happens in the southeastern corner of Europe, imagine how hard it is for Americans to think it is in their interest. It is not in America&#39;s interest to push this war on Europe. It is very much not in Europe&#39;s interest to reward Milosevic for the destruction of Yugoslavia and the creation of so much human suffering.

Why not just let the brush fire burn out? is the argument of some. And the expulsion of a million or more refugees into the neighboring countries of Albania and Macedonia? This will certainly bring on the destruction of the fragile new state of Macedonia and the redrawing of the map of the Balkans -- certain to be disputed by, at the very least, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. Do we imagine this will happen peacefully?

Not surprisingly, the Serbs are presenting themselves as the victims. (Clinton equals Hitler, etc.) But it is grotesque to equate the casualties inflicted by the NATO bombing with the mayhem inflicted on hundreds of thousands of people in the last eight years by the Serb programs of ethnic cleansing.

Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust.

No forceful response to the violence of a state against peoples who are nominally its own citizens? (Which is what most "wars" are today. Not wars between states.) The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders. Can we really say there is no response to this? Is it acceptable that such slaughters be dismissed as civil wars, also known as "age-old ethnic hatreds." (After all, anti-Semitism was an old tradition in Europe; indeed, a good deal older than ancient Balkan hatreds. Would this have justified letting Hitler kill all the Jews on German territory?) Is it true that war never solved anything? (Ask a black American if he or she thinks our Civil War didn&#39;t solve anything.)

War is not simply a mistake, a failure to communicate. There is radical evil in the world, which is why there are just wars. And this is a just war. Even if it has been bungled.

Stop the genocide. Return all refugees to their homes. Worthy goals. But how is any of this conceivably going to happen unless the Milosevic regime is overthrown? (And the truth is, it&#39;s not going to happen.)

Impossible to see how this war will play out. All the options seem improbable, as well as undesirable. Unthinkable to keep bombing indefinitely, if Milosevic is indeed willing to accept the destruction of the Serbian economy; unthinkable for NATO to stop bombing, if Milosevic remains intransigent.

The Milosevic Government has finally brought on Serbia a small portion of the suffering it has inflicted on neighboring peoples.

War is a culture, bellicosity is addictive, defeat for a community that imagines itself to be history&#39;s eternal victim can be as intoxicating as victory. How long will it take for the Serbs to realize that the Milosevic years have been an unmitigated disaster for Serbia, the net result of Milosevic&#39;s policies being the economic and cultural ruin of the entire region, including Serbia, for several generations? Alas, one thing we can be sure of, that will not happen soon.

[hajduk]

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders failed again on Tuesday to break a deadlock over the future of the breakaway Serb province but agreed to hold three days of intensive talks next week ahead of a December 10 deadline.

Both sides stuck to their long-standing positions, Kosovo Albanian negotiators rejecting a Serb offer of broad autonomy and insisting on EU-supervised independence, a statement issued by European, U.S. and Russian mediators said.

"Pristina described its vision of Kosovo&#39;s supervised independence in line with the recommendations of U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari," the statement said.

"Belgrade continued to elaborate to Pristina its vision of a highly autonomous Kosovo inside the borders of Serbia."

The next round, which will be the first to last more than a day, will take place in Baden, Austria from November 26 to 28.

Serb leaders rejected a "status-neutral" proposal by EU mediator Wolfgang Ischinger setting out contractual ties between Pristina and Belgrade but without pre-judging a subsequent decision on Kosovo&#39;s final status.

"It is a trick," said Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

"It is another word covering the fact that Kosovo and Serbia would be independent states and that is not acceptable," he said of the proposal, modeled on a 1972 pact that regulated ties between East and West Germany until unification in 1990.

Asked how the two sides would fill three days of talks next week, given their unwillingness to budge, Kosovo delegation spokesman Skender Hyseni told reporters: "We are going to have to be creative enough to find ways to exhaust those three days."

HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS

Kosovo&#39;s president said before the talks his government would coordinate its push for independence with the United States and the European Union, and wanted to launch the move days after the December deadline for mediation to end.

Fatmir Sejdiu expected the mediators to present their report to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as scheduled on December 10.

"Then a couple more days that we will use for the necessary consultations and afterwards the assembly of Kosovo will take its own decision," he told reporters.

"We will achieve this in coordination with all the countries that are helping Kosovo. There are absolutely no alternatives (to independence)," he said.

Serb leaders argued in the talks that there were historical precedents for their offer of broad autonomy for Kosovo, citing provisions agreed for the ex-British colony of Hong Kong, and for Finland&#39;s tiny Swedish-speaking Aland Island.

"None of these can be imported to Kosovo. Kosovo is a unique case," Hyseni said of the 90 percent ethnic Albanian province, administered by the United Nations since a NATO bombing campaign to drive out Serb forces in 1999.

EU foreign ministers urged Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaders on Monday to redouble efforts to seek a compromise in last-ditch negotiations launched after Serb ally Russia blocked a U.N.-sponsored plan putting Kosovo on the road to independence.

But, in a sign that EU capitals are increasingly pessimistic about a deal, several ministers stressed that Kosovo Albanians should coordinate any subsequent independence moves with international allies to avoid destabilizing the region.

Former guerrilla Hashim Thaci, expected to become Kosovo prime minister after Saturday&#39;s election, said on Tuesday the province&#39;s leaders would "do nothing without coordination with our partners in Washington and Brussels".

The United States backs Kosovo independence and British Europe Minister Jim Murphy said on Monday that "well over 20" of the bloc&#39;s 27 states agreed.

[hajduk]

NATO&#39;s Road to War and Ruin

THE CARNAGE IN Kosovo and the United States/NATO air campaign—which, we will argue, is escalating toward either humiliating defeat or a full-scale ground war—pose one of the greatest challenges in a generation to the left&#39;s principles, political courage and moral backbone. During most of our lifetimes, it&#39;s been unprecedented to confront such a situation of apparent total conflict between competing imperatives: between the need for immediate action to stop the crimes against the population of Kosovo, and the need to oppose and halt imperialist interventions.

In presenting the arguments to be offered here, the editors of Against the Current fully recognize that there will be sharp disagreements among our readers and friends—differences in the analysis of these events and in the conclusions to be drawn. Such differences are inevitable and legitimate. What we insist upon is that all those engaged in the debate, as individuals or as organized political tendencies, must honestly confront the consequences of whatever positions they advocate—and we will apply the same rule to ourselves.

While we oppose this war—NATO&#39;s bombing of Yugoslavia today, and the ground war and occupation that are inevitably in the planning stage—we must also reject in this instance some of the most common "constructive alternatives" to military intervention that are often employed by the peace movement. Hiding behind calls for "a negotiated political peace settlement" or "United Nations peacekeeping," or promoting any pacifist illusions whatsoever about non-violent conflict resolution, are morally unacceptable here: In real life, they could not mean anything but handwringing while Serb forces completed the mass depopulation of Kosovo, after which of course Milosevic would negotiate "peace" at leisure.

The truly agonizing dilemma that faces the peace movement here must be openly confronted, not papered over by fine-sounding phrases which, albeit unintentionally, only provide cover for the ethnic-cleansing-bordering-on-genocide practice of Slobodan Milosevic and the gangsters allied to him.

Fact: To stop state-sponsored mass murder and population removal requires not "conflict resolution," but the defeat of the perpetrators. Generally speaking, the time to defeat them is before they have put in place the apparatus for mass murder. Nowhere is this more true than in the Kosovo case.

The crime against humanity perpetrated in Kosovo would have been prevented, years in advance, by the defeat of the Milosevic regime and allied gangsters during their previous war, in Bosnia. What was required then, from 1991 on, was not NATO bombings or invasions, but simply allowing the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina to arm itself against the ethnic cleansing that aimed at destroying a small multicommunal state.

The West imposed an arms embargo in the name of "avoiding a wider war," which left the unarmed Bosnian civilian population subject to destruction by Milosevic&#39;s "Yugoslav National Army" and by Serb and Croat paramilitaries, finally forcing Bosnia into a military alliance with Croatia for physical survival.

Now the imperialists have the very war they tried to "prevent" by their treacherous betrayal of the Bosnians. NATO&#39;s bombing cannot now stop the depopulation of Kosovo, even if we make the dubious assumption that saving the Kosovars is its intent.

This is a thoroughly reactionary war, in which the rulers of the United States and Western Europe must systematically promote ever-bigger lies to their own populations: lies to exaggerate the "great military success" of the bombings and to hide the destruction of civilian life; lies to disguise the full extent of the escalation and occupation that must be prepared to win this war; lies to rewrite history, to make people forget that throughout the 1990s the West facilitated Milosevic&#39;s butcheries and internal repression by treating him as the key to Balkan "stability."

The Catastrophe in the Making

There&#39;s one important antiwar argument that we think is valid and important, but somewhat ambiguous: that the onset of NATO&#39;s bombing campaign made the Kosovo crisis worse. This case is made among others by Edward Said, "Protecting the Kosovars," available by email on ZNet http://www.zmag.org/Zmag/saidkosovar.htm Arguing with his usual clarity and passion, Said states that "Neither were the consequences thought through, i.e. the certainty that the Serb forces would respond to NATO bombardment by intensifying their attacks against Albanian civilians, more ethnic cleansing, more refugees, more trouble for the future."

It is clearly true that the flow of refugees, the reports of mass depopulations and burning of villages, and the all-too-credible reports of separation of male refugees for summary mass executions, all accelerated when the bombings began. Yet it is important not to overweight this argument: The Serbian regime&#39;s campaign for the destruction of the Kosovar Albanian population was already underway.

All evidence points to the conclusion that this was no act of blind rage under US/NATO military provocation. This world-class crime against humanity was, rather, a systematically planned and integrated operation, coordinated among Serb regular military, police and paramilitary forces. Indeed, the planning and implementation of this operation was enabled and precipitated not by the bombing of Yugoslavia, but by the West&#39;s policies of the previous decade of constant attempts at cynical deal-making with the Milosevic regime. This point seems to us to be the essential starting point for analyzing the Balkan catastrophe, and we will shortly return to it.

There&#39;s still another anti-war argument that we think cannot be considered the decisive factor in this case, even though it is true: that under the bombing, "If anything, Milosevic&#39;s regime is now strengthened. All Serbs feel that their country is attacked unjustly, and that the cowardly war from the air has made them feel persecuted." (Edward Said, ibid.)

Again, this is so. We should remember that the admirable anti-war struggles of the Yugoslav democratic opposition, at its height in the early 1990s, organized anti-war mobilizations of larger size, relative to the population of Serbia, than our biggest U.S. anti-war demonstrations of the Vietnam era. And this brave legacy of civic opposition to Milosevic is the first "collateral damage" of the bombing.

Yet again we must face hard facts: No one could imagine that this opposition today, in its defeated and corrupted state (with some of its leadership now in the Milosevic cabinet), could mount any effective challenge to slaughter and depopulation in Kosovo.

Again, the main international factor that derailed the once-promising democratic challenge to Milosevic was not NATO bombing. It was, rather, the incessant western policy of copying up to Milosevic, legitimizing his regime, rewarding his adventures in Kosovo (abrogating its regional autonomy in 1989), the war with Croatia, then the ethnic-cleansing rape of Bosnia-Herzegovina, each one more murderous than the previous, culminating in the 1998-99 Kosovo catastrophe.

Throughout this decade, everything the West has done could only make this regime appear permanent and irremovable, even irreplaceable. That, in fact, was the real lesson of the Dayton accords, which consolidated the dismemberment of Bosnia (after its army had begun to win the war&#33;), and the intent of the ramshackle agreement at Rambouillet, which specifically excluded the Kosovar Albanians&#39; right of self-determination.

The facts of the immediate impact of NATO bombing on the fate of the Yugoslav democratic forces, and on the acceleration of killing and depopulation in Kosovo, are relevant but not ultimately decisive. After all, by all accounts the refugees fleeing Kosovo welcome the bombing and would prefer to see it intensified. As socialists and as revolutionary opponents of imperialism, we have to face the question uppermost in most ordinary people&#39;s minds: Shouldn&#39;t the world stop the genocide?

The Politics of This War Our response must begin by noting numerous genocides and crimes against humanity in which U.S. imperialism itself was the perpetrator or sponsor: Guatemala, Indonesia and East Timor, Indochina, the starvation of the people of Iraq today. Elsewhere in this issue of Against the Current, in fact, we highlight some aspects of the recent history of Guatemala and East Timor.

Nor should it be forgotten that the United States-organized sadistic torture of the Iraqi population began with the stated goal of liberating Kuwait from the murderous occupation by Saddam Hussein. This case illustrates one fundamental reason for opposing the current war: Any gateway for imperialist "humanitarian intervention" opens onto the most horrific consequences, unanticipated and uncontrollable by well-meaning folks who may have initially supported the intervention.

It&#39;s true that in the case of Kosovo, the policies of the United States and Western Europe enabled the regime that organized the crime against Kosovo—but did not directly perpetrate or sponsor it. But what flows from the United States and NATO giving themselves license to be the saviors and the guarantors of stability? Our view is that even worse horrors are the likeliest result.

In our view, the current war is a confrontation between two malignant relics, former Cold War partners now become enemies: NATO, the U.S.-organized alliance organized 50 years ago to ensure Washington&#39;s hegemony in the anti-Communist Cold War crusade; and the rump Yugoslav regime of Slobodan Milosevic, a Stalinist who turned to nationalism, and allied himself to the most vicious elements within Serbia, to advance his own opportunist ambitions.

NATO is not at war with Yugoslovia for humanitarian reasons to save Kosovars. Nor is this a war over some direct economic interest. NATO is at war to save itself and its political leaders—because their threats and bluffs failed, and they must now follow through, regardless of whether this means "we have to destroy Kosovo in order to save it."

An Inevitable Wider War

We oppose NATO&#39;s war in the former Yugoslavia first, because we are opponents of NATO itself—because by its very nature it is not and cannot be anything other than a machine for imperialist dominion. NATO was created in 1949, at a time when the economic hegemony of the United States was absolutely unchallenged, when it was the political decision-maker for Europe, when its military muscle and nuclear umbrella made Washington the guarantor for the reconstruction of capitalism in Europe and the supervisor of the transformation of the old European colonial empires.

Much has changed in half a century. The former foe, the Soviet Union, has vanished, and United States capitalism faces serious economic rivals. Still, through its unique ability to organize a large-scale military intervention, the United States seeks in this war with rump-Yugoslavia to reaffirm its power to call the shots.

The same desire to maintain U.S. hegemony lies behind Washington&#39;s aggressive sponsorship of NATO&#39;s newest members, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, at a time when a nearly-shattered post-Soviet Russia cannot be considered any military threat to them.

Ostensibly, U.S. "leadership" is an indispensable ingredient for preserving "stability." Instead, the expansion of NATO humiliates Russia and strengthens right-wing nationalism there, while the bitter example of the Balkans shows U.S. "leadership" morally and politically bankrupt, unable even to foresee let alone prevent systematically-organized ethnic cleansings, dithering and dathering and blithering and blathering while civilian populations were left defenseless and consumed.

Secondly, this war, once having begun, almost inevitably must become nothing less than an all-out occupation and re-drawing of the map of the Balkans. In this process, the rights of self-determination of all the peoples involved, Kosovars included, will be brutally subordinated to the goals of conquest.

In saying this, we recognize that the Kosovars themselves overwhelmingly support NATO intervention and undoubtedly want it to be expanded. Our fundamental quarrel is not with the victims who are understandably seeking help from any possible source, but rather with those supporters of this war who fail to face up to the consequences of where it is most likely to lead.

Unlike some apologists for the Belgrade regime, we don&#39;t subscribe to the notion that this war was all plotted in advance by U.S. imperialism as part of a plot to "break up" Yugoslavia. If anything, the United States was less eager than (for example) Germany to encourage Croatian and Slovenian secession from Yugoslavia—and certainly, Washington showed little objection to Milosevic&#39;s ambitions for a Greater Serbia so long as it seemed attainable without too much "wider instability."

Far from expecting this war, it appears that NATO and the United were surprised by the failures of their diplomatic schemes and military bluff, and have gone to war without the necessary military or political preparation.

Evidently, the State Department&#39;s Balkan experts failed to recognize what was most obvious: If the Serb regime was determined to hold onto Kosovo, against the wishes of its 90% Albanian population, it would have to kill or expel half or more of the two million Kosovars.

Only the kind of "experts" whose professional assignment was to work out a deal with Milosevic could fail to see the pre-planned escalation from repression to depopulation in Kosovo. But having failed to secure Milosevic&#39;s agreement at Rambouillet or to deter him with the threat of air strikes, NATO suddenly found itself with a choice between two options, both potentially catastrophic.

It could in essence abandon its stated commitment to the Kosovars—a choice that Clinton and his European social democratic partners Blair, Jospin and Schroeder refused to contemplate, since it would constitute an incredible defeat that would discredit their respective governments and leave in doubt NATO&#39;s unity and possibly its very survival.

Or, NATO could begin the air war—but once the first strikes failed to produce a Serb surrender, as again could be predicted by anyone other than a military expert self-hypnotized by Cruise missile technology, there is no option but to escalate toward an inexorable larger war—or admit defeat.

Day by day, as the scope of the horrors imposed on the Kosovars and the unmanageable extent of the refugee emergency unfolded, the war imposed its own logic on the planners, more than the other way around. To save NATO—an even greater imperative than saving the Kosovars, obviously—it is necessary now to fight the war and win it.

In the words of the 1980s Reaganaut Lawrence Eagleburger, "We can&#39;t let this pipsqueak nation, Serbia, inflict a defeat on NATO." (What are we fighting for? I don&#39;t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam...)

If the refugees are to be returned, a la NATO&#39;s promise, the Yugoslav military must be absolutely defeated in Kosovo and prevented from returning. That objective requires the destruction of Serb military power and Serbia&#39;s capacity for rebuilding that power. Hence not only must Serbia&#39;s existing military infrastructure be wiped out, but its industrial capacity must be bombed back to pre-World War II levels.

Further: A large-scale ground force must be sent into Kosovo, since air power alone cannot drive out the Serb forces, and to create a NATO protectorate in most of Kosovo (a part may be left for the Serb population in Kosovo to flee to). It&#39;s true that Clinton promises every day not to send ground troops, with the same credibility with which he vowed never having had sexual relations with that woman—but by the time the lie is revealed it will be "too late."S

At war&#39;s end, new boundaries must be forcibly imposed on Serbia. Whether or not to join "Republika Serpska" in Bosnia to Serbia; whether or not Montenegro secedes from rump-Yugoslavia; whether to coercively "adjust" the borders of Macedonia to satisfy Albanian ambitions on the one hand or Greek claims on the other—all these are decisions that will be taken by the occupying powers.

It hardly seems likely (though in the world of diplomacy, perhaps a role can be arranged for Russia to play intermediary) that these arrangements can be made with the Milosevic regime and his gangster partners. Hence, although a military occupation of the Serbian heartland is out of the question, the government of rump-Yugoslavia must probably be somehow removed, or else its people subjected to the protracted horrors now imposed on the people of Iraq for their unforgivable crime of being ruled by Saddam Hussein.

Again, such objectives entail war, and a postwar level of intervention, with casualties and expenses on a scale for which the population of the United States and other NATO powers have been completely unprepared. No wonder that neither Clinton nor any of his European partners have the political courage to do what democratic principle demands—to state openly where their course leads and to ask their Congress or Parliament to debate a declaration of war.

Anyone on the left who favors NATO&#39;s actions, regardless of the most honorable and sincerest of desires to stop genocide, must face up to these consequences. The result can only be a more virulent post-Cold War NATO, intervening at will (mainly, U.S. will) wherever its power can reach, i.e. practically anywhere.

Kosovo Yes—NATO No&#33;

Given these realities, it is impossible for socialists to want NATO&#39;s operation to succeed. Supporting this war, now, can only mean supporting imperialism. In the real world, we cannot pick-and-choose between ostensibly benevolent military interventions, carried out in the name of humanitarian rescue, and those conducted for naked military-political aggrandizement or profit—because inevitably, inexorably, the former becomes the pretext for the latter.

That is the case even in Kosovo, a war the United States and NATO didn&#39;t "provoke" but actually tried to avoid through a criminal policy of appeasement. Once having begun, this is inevitably a war for NATO to occupy and re-configure the map of the Balkans—even though the war itself, should it end in yet another "political settlement" with Milosevic or should it produce military debacles and serious casualties for the invaders, may prove to be NATO&#39;s own road to ruin.

We stated at the outset that we would honestly confront the consequences of our own position: For us, the ruin of NATO is the only possible good that can come from this horrific human holocaust. Our small contribution to NATO&#39;s defeat must be to do all we can to politically expose and discredit it inside our own country. We have no "constructive alternative" to propose for NATO except its dissolution.

Whatever happens next, the Kosovar and Serb peoples have lost. The Kosovars, if NATO accepts defeat and deals yet again with Milosevic, will be left a landless and homeless people—the Palestinians and the Kurds of the Balkans. If NATO ultimately overwhelms Serbia and establishes a military protectorate in Kosovo, the refugees may return, but their survival would then depend upon an indefinite occupation with all the consequences that entails for future generations.

For the Serbs, ten years of Milosevic&#39;s Greater Serbia campaign have produced a national catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs who lived for centuries inside Croatia, whose welfare was Milosevic&#39;s pretext for invading Croatia in 1991, were brutally expelled from their homes in the Krajina region when Croatia regained the territory. Serbs in "Republika Serpska" are ghettoized, Serbs in Kosovo will have no future in a NATO-occupied zone and Serbs in the heartland of Serbia have suffered economic ruin and the destruction of the hope for democracy.

What Can We Do?

We support the Kosovar Albanians&#39; right of self-determination. No one with democratic values can deny the legitimacy of their struggle, which is a fight for physical and cultural survival as well as political rights. Even further, under circumstances of threatened annihilation or mass dispersal of the population, an independent Kosovo is the only real-life solution.

But the Kosovars&#39; absolutely legitimate struggle is only one element in what has become a much larger and reactionary imperialist war. The United States always regarded the Kosovars as bargaining pawns, never supported Kosovo independence—and even welcomed the defeat of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998, when the Yugoslav military launched its first assaults. Yet even aside from that, we do not support "liberating" Kosovo through NATO destruction of Serbia&#39;s cities and people.

In this tragic situation, we believe there are several "wars within the war" where socialists with consistent democratic loyalties can take sides and, in some cases, small practical steps.

Obviously, we cannot influence in any way the struggle between the Kosovo Albanians and the Yugoslav Army. But as a matter of principle we uphold the right of the Kosovars to struggle for their survival by any means available to them, whether through the pre-war movement of civic resistance or the struggle of the KLA.

The KLA itself is no left-wing force: It appears to be politically incoherent at best, and (probably for that reason) vastly overestimated its prospects for military success against Milosevic&#39;s army. But it is fighting a justified war for independence and against a threatened genocide.

Given imperialism&#39;s responsibility for this tragedy, we can only demand that all the Kosovar refugees receive immediate asylum wherever they wish to come. For those who choose refuge in the United States, that means the right to come here—with unconditional rights to permanent residency or citizenship or return to their homeland whenever they may choose—not the unspeakable plan to put them in detention in Guam or Guantanamo.

Equally important, we must do everything in our power to reach out to the doubly besieged democratic opposition activists in Serbia, who are being bombed from the air by NATO and hunted down by the regime on the ground, in some cases threatened with being drafted into the Serb army or the ethnic-cleansing paramilitaries for duty in Kosovo.

Both the imperialists and the Milosevic regime will seek to exploit, by blaming each other for, the suffering of the ordinary people of Serbia and the destruction of democratic forces. Thanks to the internet and to the distribution the international progressive media can provide, dissidents in Serbia have some chance to continue to speak for themselves. Their uncensored voices must be heard, and all possible material and political solidarity must be extended as they seek to rebuild a democratic opposition that will be neither a tail to Milosevic or a pawn for imperialist occupiers.

Finally, in the military conflict that now dominates the ruins of former Yugoslavia, let&#39;s be clear: There is no side to support, neither Milosevic&#39;s genocidal post-stalinism nor NATO imperialism. Neither side is a lesser evil. Freedom for Kosovo&#33; Abolish NATO&#33;

[hajduk]

more news at 11


BELGRADE, Nov 23 (Reuters) - A two-day meeting of Serbs and Albanians in the Austrian spa town of Baden next week is unlikely to make much of an entry in the annals of Balkan peace conferences, although its aftermath could be historic.

Barring an unimaginable about-face by Serbia or the Kosovo Albanians, negotiations on the fate of the breakaway province will limp to a close by next Tuesday night, two weeks before a deadline for an agreement on its future.

There will be no repeat of the lockdown in Dayton, Ohio, when Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims negotiated under big power pressure until they agreed to end the 1992-95 war.

Nor is Baden likely to echo the extraordinary but abortive peace conference at Chateau Rambouillet in France that preceded NATO&#39;s 1999 air war to wrest control of Kosovo from Serbia.

The Albanians say the post-Baden scenario is already written - a declaration of independence and promised recognition by the West. Just brace for the fallout in Serbia and the diplomatic chill from Russia.

"We are going to have to be creative enough to find ways to exhaust those three days," said Skender Hyseni, the deadpan spokesman for Kosovo negotiators, after their last inconclusive meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.

Serbia has offered Hong Kong, or Finland&#39;s Swedish-speaking Aland Island as examples of the broad autonomy it is prepared to give its southern province, where 2 million Albanians have been living under U.N. administration for the past eight years.

The Albanians say autonomy is no compromise; it is less than they already have and far from the independence they fought for.

The trio of U.S., Russian and European mediators plans a final trip to Belgrade and Pristina before submitting its report to the United Nations, due by Dec. 10.

The West sees no prospect of restoring Serb rule, and there is growing consensus in the 27-member EU that Kosovo&#39;s independence should be recognised even without U.N. blessing.

EU CONSENSUS

Serbia turned the full force of its army on separatist Kosovo guerrillas in a 1998-99 conflict in which thousands of civilians were killed and 800,000 Albanians driven out before NATO intervention stopped the ethnic cleansing.

Serbia, which insists its territorial rights are inviolable, says the Albanians can do what they like within Kosovo&#39;s borders but cannot usurp and gain title to the land Serbs consider the ancient heartland of their nation.

Diplomats close to the talks say potential solutions already discussed will be thrashed out again in Baden, as will Kosovo&#39;s offer of a friendship treaty between two independent states.

But the answer on both sides will be the same: "No."

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Tuesday dismissed a plan for "contractual ties" between Serbia and Kosovo as "a trick" to seal independence by the back door.

Russia and Serbia reject the December deadline.

European Union envoy Wolfgang Ischinger took on the mediating task in August, after the threat of a Russian veto blocked adoption of a U.N. plan for independence under European Union supervision.

That came after 13 months of sterile talks mediated by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who concluded that an agreed solution was virtually impossible.

Ex-rebel fighter Hashim Thaci hopes to form a coalition government in Kosovo in December, after a Nov 17 election, and has promised to waste no time in declaring independence.

But Baden is the mediators&#39; one last shot.

"No one will be able to say after the fact that we didn&#39;t explore all the possibilities," Ischinger said this week, at the same time as conceding a deal was "probably not going to be achieved".

Ex-Kosovo guerrilla claims victory
http://www.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=70992

Deadly blast hits Kosovo
http://www.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=67127

[hajduk]

No Safe Place:
An Assessment on
Violence against Women in Kosovo
Prepared by
Rachel Wareham, Consultant UNIFEM

http://www.unifem.org/attachments/products...lace_Kosovo.pdf (http://www.unifem.org/attachments/products/NoSafePlace_Kosovo.pdf)

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia begins final talks on Kosovo on Monday knowing it has failed to persuade a significant number of European Union member states to oppose independence for the breakaway province.

There is also virtually no hope of an 11th hour compromise in the two and a half days of talks with Kosovo Albanian leaders, due to take place in a spa town near Vienna.

Instead, Serbia is now focused on what to do when they declare independence, probably in February, with Western recognition within weeks. Some analysts expect a raft of obstructive measures such as protests and road blocks.

"All of Serbia needs to be united and show that for us it is illegal and that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia," Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Saturday.

He said unilateral decisions by Kosovo Albanians would be annulled and "Kosovo Serbs will always be Serbian citizens" -- an indication Serbia would try to keep the Serb-held north.

"American or any other recognition of unilateral independence cannot turn an unlawful situation into something normal," the prime minister told Tanjug state news agency.

Kosovo has waited eight years for its future status to be decided since NATO military intervention and its handover to U.N. control in 1999 to stop ethnic cleansing by Serb forces under the late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.

RUDE RECEPTION

The pendulum has swung more unpredictably than the West expected in the lengthy diplomatic tug-of-war that began some two years ago, with U.N. mediated talks that got nowhere.

When envoy Martti Ahtisaari of Finland proposed EU-supervised independence as the only viable solution, the West assumed it needed only to persuade Serbia to acquiesce without a big fight, so all sides had a soft-landing.

But Serbia enlisted the help of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose veto threat at the U.N. Security Council scuppered the Ahtisaari plan, to Kostunica&#39;s satisfaction.

In the ensuing months it looked as if dire Serb warnings of long-term chaos in the Balkans were unsettling the EU. At least a half dozen members were against independence, and even all-important Germany was said to be wobbling.

But the United States did not waver, infuriating Kostunica and facing down Russia by repeating that "the Ahtisaari plan is the best option if the two sides cannot reach an agreement".

The EU has now rallied. Only Cyprus and Greece remain opposed, EU diplomats say. The rest of the 27-member bloc is braced to accept the EU&#39;s new role in an independent Kosovo.

President Boris Tadic, whose more moderate voice has been drowned out by Kostunica, says Serbia "will use all legal and political means" against a "hostile" act. Deputy premier Bozidar Djelic says ministries are getting "ready for the blackest scenario".

This will not mean war, political and military analysts agree. But tensions will rise and violence cannot be ruled out.

One reaction could be the setting up of "Serbian-controlled areas in Kosovo ... similar to those set up in Bosnia and Croatia 16 years ago", says former U.S. ambassador William Montgomery, now a commentator.

He says "volunteers" may go to help Kosovo Serbs and thinks Belgrade will say "it had nothing to do with it". There will be protests and a bid to downgrade Serbia&#39;s ties with the West.

Roads to Kosovo may be closed to non-Serb traffic and transit agreements with Kosovo&#39;s 16,000 strong NATO-led peacekeeping force may be stalled, Montgomery says. Serbia may also consider interrupting electricity supplies to Kosovo.

"As these events unfold, the potential for violence and pressure for additional measures will be very high. Relations with the United States and the EU will deteriorate sharply."

[hajduk]

Kosovo, curtain-raiser for Iraq, still in search of a solution
Contributed by Brian Barder


Anyone under the widely shared illusion that NATO&#39;s attack on Serbia in 1999 over Kosovo permanently resolved the
problem of Kosovo&#39;s relationship with the rest of Serbia needs to have another think. The veteran peace-making miracle
man, Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland and accomplished godfather of UN solutions to intractable problems,
is shortly to announce his proposals for the future status of Kosovo, having consulted at length with the governments of
Russia, the US, the UK, France, Germany and Italy, the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo, and many others.
The forecast is that (after yet another round of protracted &#39;consultations&#39;) he will propose for Kosovo a form of
internationally policed quasi-independence from Serbia — but without any specific mention of the i-word; probably also
without any entitlement to membership of the UN, other countries then free to decide whether to &#39;recognise&#39; Kosovo as
a state or not. This, like any other kind of severance of Kosovo from Serbia, will be bitterly and perhaps violently
opposed by the great majority of the people of Serbia, and (not unnaturally) by the small, beleaguered Serbian minority
still clinging on in Kosovo. For there are still some Serbs in Kosovo despite the virtual ethnic cleansing that followed the
departure of the Serbian army and police in 1999 and the installation of the NATO-led international régime in Kosovo
under the revised settlement programme skilfully negotiated by — you guessed&#33; — Ahtisaari, with discreet help from the
Russians and the Americans, after the NATO bombing had failed to bring the Serbs to heel.

There&#39;s a predictably excellent account of the current situation in the Guardian of 26 January 2007 by Jonathan Steele,who argues with his usual persuasiveness for the award of full independence to Kosovo without further delay, despite the acknowledged risks. One such risk is that when the package is submitted to the Security Council for endorsement, the Russians, traditional protectors and patrons of the Serbs, will veto it. There&#39;s also the risk of armed resistance by Serbia to the secession of Kosovo, prospect reinforced by the sweeping victory of the Serb nationalists (united in their determination that Kosovo should remain part of Serbia) at the recent Serbian elections.

Another risk is that even qualified independence for Kosovo will precipitate a demand by the Bosnian Serbs for secession from Bosnia and union with Serbia, a situation that could also degenerate into violence. Any move by the newly independent Kosovars,often referred to as the Kosovo Albanians, to seek a union with their kith and kin in neighbouring Albania would give a strong fillip to the campaign for a Greater Albania which in turn would arouse intense alarm throughout the region, providing another destabilising element. Yet another daunting factor is the impact of any UN-approved Kosovo secession from Serbia, justified on grounds of nationalism and self-determination, on the serious dispute between Russia and Georgia over the future status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (usefully described in an article last August in the Christian Science Monitor).

There could even be consequences for Chechnya, in that case wholly negative for Moscow. Here too there&#39;s a real danger of disputes erupting, or erupting again, into violence.

There&#39;s a sad irony in all this. The Kosovo nationalists fighting for their independence from Serbia in the period leading up to the NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 were given a promise by the Americans of an "act of self-determination" — unmistakeable code for independence, the inevitable result of any such exercise of self-determination — in exchange for the Kosovars&#39; reluctant acceptance of the NATO ultimatum drawn up at the Rambouillet conference in March, 1999.

The ultimatum had been carefully crafted to ensure that the Serbian government — any Serbian government — would reject it, as indeed it duly did. The US and some other western delegations at Rambouillet, presumably including the British who co-chaired the conference with the French, were determined to ensure that their ultimatum would be accepted by the Kosovars and rejected by the Serbs. This was designed to provide a plausible justification for the NATO aerial assault on Serbia on which Madeleine Albright, the then US Secretary of State and leader of the US team at Rambouillet, was determined, drawing on a false and misleading analogy with the west&#39;s failure, earlier, to use force against the Serbs in Bosnia until too late.

NATO&#39;s escalating attack on Serbia for 11 weeks in 1999 had many eerie parallels with the US-led attack on Iraq four years later, for which in many ways Kosovo was intended to be the model. Contrary to the current received wisdom, both wars were illegal, neither having been authorised by the UN Security Council and neither fought in self-defence. Both failed in their proclaimed objectives: it wasn&#39;t the NATO bombing that eventually dislodged the Serbian forces and administration from Kosovo but the flexible and constructive behind-the-scenes diplomacy of an American and a Russian negotiator (Strobe Talbott and Viktor Chernomyrdin) — and Martti Ahtisaari.

Both wars were unnecessary: the terms eventually accepted by the Serbs could and should have been negotiated with them at Rambouillet, producing the same as the eventual settlement without a single bomb being dropped. Similarly, if the UN inspectors under Blix had been allowed to complete their work in Iraq, they might well have been able to show that Iraq had no WMD, which would have demolished the sole British rationale (at the time) for participation in the attack and occupation. Both wars were publicly asserted to have a variety of objectives and justifications, some of each of them sold on a deliberately false prospectus. Both military actions were disproportionate to both their real and their proclaimed objectives. Both turned out to be counter-productive: the NATO bombing of Serbia actually accelerated and aggravated Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and precipitated for the first time the wholesale flight of refugees into neighbouring countries. So far from producing a solution to the problem of how Kosovars and Serbs could live together in peace in Kosovo, the NATO attack actually aggravated it, and the international administration which was eventually installed under the US-Russian-Ahtisaari settlement has merely frozen the problem — and made it worse by presiding over the expulsion of thousands of Serbs from their Kosovo homes.

In case some of these assertions sound improbable, I have set out the ample and damning evidence in support of them in a much earlier piece here.Nothing can excuse the brutal behaviour of the Serbs towards their Kosovo compatriots in their repeated over-reaction to the &#39;liberation struggle&#39; — or &#39;terrorist campaign&#39; (select whichever description you prefer) — waged until 1999 by the Kosovo Liberation Army; but it&#39;s almost equally hard to excuse the misjudgements, the duplicity, and the failure to exhaust the resources of diplomacy before resorting to the use of force, which characterised the western performance at Rambouillet leading, as it was always designed to do, to the NATO bombing campaign, just as the same failures characterised the performance of the US and UK governments over Iraq in 2003. Kosovo,not Iraq, was Blair&#39;s first illegal war; sadly, it was Clinton&#39;s and Robin Cook&#39;s, too.

I don&#39;t of course pretend to have a solution to the problem of what to do now about Kosovo. No possible solution is without its risks and defects, and — as Jonathan Steele rightly says — the stakes are high, as always in the Balkans. What&#39;s certain, though, is that the intractability of the problem now is in part the fruit of the misjudgements of the western powers in 1999 in their hasty, premature, unnecessary, unsuccessful, and above all illegal resort to the use of force. History was all too soon to repeat itself..

Edward Said was right about the effect of the bombing on Serbian support for Milosevic, whose fall occurred only months later, toppled not by bombs but by the ballot box.






Retired from Diplomatic Service (&#39;65–’94) and Civil Service (’57–’65). Former member (resigned) of SIAC. Brian
Barder&#39;s writings can be found at Barder.com

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BADEN, Austria, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Russia on Monday stepped in to head off a threatened declaration of independence by Serbia&#39;s breakaway Kosovo province, saying it would insist on the extension of negotiations beyond a December deadline.

At the same time, Moscow&#39;s envoy to the talks, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, said there was "no chance of a breakthrough" at a final meeting starting at this Austrian spa on Monday afternoon.

Dialogue between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians had to carry on, he said, two weeks before a U.N. deadline expires on Dec. 10, after which the West says the process is ended.

"We will insist on the continuation of the status process through dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina," he told the Belgrade Blic newspaper, adding that the U.N. Security Council would have the final word.

Envoys from Russia, the United States and the EU were due to join Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaders for a sixth and final round of talks due to end Wednesday morning, and complete a last-chance search for a deal forced by Russia&#39;s threat to veto a U.N. plan granting Kosovo independence.

Kosovo Albanians say they could negotiate with Serbia "for another 100 years" and come no closer to a deal.



"THE BLACKEST SCENARIO"

All sides are now looking beyond the talks to an expected declaration of independence by the U.N.-run province in the next three months.

Recognition is expected to come quickly from the major Western powers who in 1999 unleashed NATO bombers to end a wave of ethnic cleansing by Serb forces trying to crush a guerrilla insurgency. Almost one million Albanians fled.

Serbia last week instructed government ministers to draw up an &#39;Action Plan&#39; in the event of a unilateral declaration - "the blackest scenario," said deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic.

Analysts predict roadblocks, obstruction of electricity supplies and possibly the establishment of Serbian-controlled areas in Kosovo, similar to those set up in Bosnia and Croatia 16 years ago.

But the Kosovo Albanians, who are determined to end eight years as a de facto U.N. protectorate since the 1998-99 war, said they were ready to ride out the storm.

"We have nowhere to go and we are ready to face all the challenges," outgoing Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku told reporters in Baden late on Sunday.

"We are very much aware that with a declaration of independence as a necessary step, we are going to be faced with some challenges," he said.

Diplomats say the province, which is looking towards a new coalition government in December, plans to declare independence in January or February. Serbia enters the final talks knowing it has failed to persuade a significant number of EU member states to oppose such a move.

EU diplomats say that of the 27 members, only Cyprus and Greece remain firmly opposed. The bloc is in the final stages of planning to deploy an 1,800-strong police and justice mission to take over from the eight-year-old U.N. mission.

[ComradeR]

It seems Kosovo independence is inevitable although it&#39;s almost certain that it&#39;s going to come to bloodshed before it achieves it.
It will be interesting to see what effect Kosovo independence will have on other separatist movements in Europe and elsewhere.

[hajduk]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26, 2007 02:39 pm
It seems Kosovo independence is inevitable although it&#39;s almost certain that it&#39;s going to come to bloodshed before it achieves it.
It will be interesting to see what effect Kosovo independence will have on other separatist movements in Europe and elsewhere.
you mean like Wallons and Flemish case?

[hajduk]

Divided Belgium

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium&#39;s King Albert II gave Flemish Christian Democrat leader Yves Leterme a second chance to form a centre-right government on Saturday in a sign that the country&#39;s political crisis was easing.

Belgium remains without a new government 111 days after the June 10 parliamentary election despite a series of attempts by senior politicians to bridge the gap between warring parties of the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders and francophone Wallonia.

Leterme, former premier of Flanders, failed in his initial attempt to build a coalition, but has been given another chance after a fellow Christian Democrat, acting as a mediator, pulled party chiefs back to the negotiating table.

"The king has charged Mr Yves Leterme with forming a government. Mr Leterme has accept this assignment," the palace said in a brief statement.

Leterme can thank parliamentary speaker Herman Van Rompuy, a veteran Christian Democrat, who appears to have succeeded as a background negotiator in his month since being appointed mediator by the king.

The royal palace said Van Rompuy reported back to the king on Saturday afternoon.

"It appears that there are sufficient elements of convergence to allow negotiations to be resumed under the leadership of a formateur," the palace said before reappointing Leterme in that role.

The formateur, the person charged with forming a government, typically becomes prime minister.

Leterme&#39;s Flemish Christian Democrats emerged as the clear winners of the June election, but their key demand to devolve more powers has met with stern opposition from French-speakers, including their francophone centrist allies.

BREAK-UP?

The impasse prompted media to speculate that the 177-year-old nation might be better off breaking apart.

Newspaper articles have regularly discussed the merits and pitfalls of separation, while the peaceful "velvet divorce" of Czechoslovakia has been cited as a possible model to follow.

Investors too have sensed the crisis, scurrying out of the country&#39;s debt. That sent the spread between yields on Belgian government bonds and those on benchmark German bonds to their widest level in five years a week ago.

Leterme will once again seek to forge a four-way centre-right alliance of Christian Democrats/Centrists and Flemish and francophone Liberals.

Leterme wants Belgium&#39;s regions, and notably Flanders, to control their own job creation schemes and to be able to vary taxes, but has not called for the country to break up.

Belgium&#39;s regions and linguistic communities already rule over transport, housing, agriculture, education and culture.

Most Belgians favor keeping the country together, although more than 40 percent in Flanders favor independence for their region.

[hajduk]

Divided Belgium II

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Should Belgium break up? Would anyone in the rest of the world notice? Should they care?

These are some of the questions being raised in a media frenzy both in and outside the country as a political impasse has fanned the flames of separatism in the Dutch-speaking north.

More than three months after national elections, political leaders have failed to form a government, stymied by age-old rivalries between the Dutch and French speaking communities.

France&#39;s Liberation splashed "What if Belgium splits..." on its front page last week while The Economist called for a "praline divorce" -- presumably a Belgian variant of the "velvet divorce" that split Czechoslovakia peacefully 15 years ago -- saying Belgium had outlived its purpose.

Seen by many as an unhappy marriage between the Anglo-Saxon north and Latin south of Europe, Belgium has often been the butt of jokes from its French and Dutch neighbors.

An old parlor game in which players have to name 10 famous Belgians leaves many stumped after just two or three.

But political scientists say the nation of 10.5 million is a model of peaceful co-existence, as well as the source of some ubiquitous inventions such as the saxophone and bakelite.

"Belgium is an interesting experiment in governing together without bloodshed. It&#39;s something that might teach other places in the world like Northern Ireland or Cyprus," said Kris Deschouwer, political scientist at Brussels Free University.

While the two sides like to tease each other, with Dutch speakers from the affluent north often describing their southern Walloon fellow citizens as lazy, violence is extremely rare.

"The Flemish movement has not been violent. It is no ETA," said Jean-Yves Camus, political scientist and research fellow at the Institute for International Relations and Strategy (IRIS) in Paris, referring to Basque separatist guerrillas in Spain.

"Often other groups are using terrorism and are not backed by their people."

DOMINO EFFECT?

Some commentators say a split could have a domino effect with other separatist groups in Europe claiming independence.

"If Belgium breaks up then many would follow. This could be seen as part of the end of the nation state," said Carl Devos, professor at the University of Ghent.

He said Spain, where Catalonia&#39;s parliament has declared the region a nation within Spain, and Britain, where the Scottish National Party recently became the biggest party in Scotland&#39;s parliament, were obvious candidates.

Political analysts say Belgium is an example of how the devolution of power to regions and supranational institutions such as the European Union is superseding the nation state.

"You can be a citizen of the world and Flemish at the same time," said Camus.

If the country were to split, it could well create more problems than it would solve.

"If you think it through, splitting up a country is harder than forming a coalition government," said Deschouwer. "Split it up how? Who, for example, will pay the huge public debt?"

Belgium&#39;s public debt amounted to 87 percent of gross domestic product in 2006.

The political impasse largely centers on who pays for what. Flanders, the dominant economic power, complains it has to subsidize the economically weak Wallonia and wants more public services decentralized.

Another question: what would happen to Brussels? The headquarters of the European Union is a bilingual region with an 80 percent French-speaking population inside Flanders.

Even the head of the Flemish NVA party, which wants eventual independence for the region, said he could not see a solution.

"There is actually little that unites us," said Bart De Wever. "I would say if there is one thing, it&#39;s our capital Brussels ... Nobody wants to lose Brussels."

The only politician to call for a split so far is Filip Dewinter, head of the far-right Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest). He told the Flemish parliament the nation should go for a "velvet divorce".

A poll by public broadcaster VRT showed 40 percent of the Flemish -- but only 8 percent of the French-speaking Wallonia region -- want the country to split.

But many people seem underwhelmed by the political impasse, with close to 70 percent saying in a survey in La Derniere Heure that they did not see it as a political crisis. Previous governments have taken as long as six months to form.

"All this is just politics. It&#39;s no good," said Brussels resident Alain Van Hemelryck.

"People get along -- Flemish, Walloons, it&#39;s all the same. We are human beings on the face of earth. But politicians do not understand that. This is our problem."

[hajduk]

They call all resistance "terrorism"
by Edward W. Said

ROBERT FISK the Middle East correspondent for the Independent, comments that "ignorance of the Middle East is now so firmly adhered to in the US. that only a few tiny newspapers report anything other than Israel&#39;s point of view?
I DID a homemade survey of the major papers in the metropolitan centers-Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Boston. They are uniformly reporting from Israel, that is to say, using reporters who are stationed in Jerusalem, which is Israel because it&#39;s been annexed, or Tel Aviv. They have very few reporters in the Arab world reporting the Palestinian point of view. Second, they report things that are sent back to their editorial offices in their home bases, and the stories are changed to reflect the same bias, the same line.
The mantra is Palestinian violence and Israeli insecurity. That is the theme of all the reporting in which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, thousands maimed and wounded, ignoring the reports of Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, United Nations committees, the UN High Commissioner for Refugee&#39;s report. I could give you a dozen citations about what is taking place that are easily verifiable.
None of this gets reflected in the major newspapers, and certainly not on TV. Even the so-called virtuous programs, like the "NewsHour" on PBS and National Public Radio, hew to the same line, largely-and they told me this when I inquired-because of letter-writing or e-mail campaigns that flood them with complaints, orchestrated obviously by public relations outfits, designed to keep the news focused on Israel and Israel&#39;s plight.
There are a few intrepid people writing critical pieces in the Orlando Sentinel, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Z magazine, the Des Moines Register, and the Hartford Courant. You find them here and there. But they are few and far between and do not reach the major newspaper-reading public.
TERRORISM IS an ongoing focus for the US. media. The State Department has just issued its annual report. With the litany of terrorist states, Afghanistan, Pakistan, /ran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria, an of them are Muslim-majority countries. "Terrorism is a persistent disease," Colin Powell said as he released the report. What geopolitical function does the focus on terrorism serve?
FIRST OF all, this relentless pursuit of terrorism is, in my opinion, almost criminal. It allows the United States to do what it wishes anywhere in the world. Take, for example, the 1998 bombing of Sudan. That was done because Bill Clinton was having trouble with Monica Lewinsky. There was a paper-thin excuse that they were bombing a terrorist factory, which turned out to be a pharmaceutical factory producing half the pharmaceutical supply for the country, which a few weeks later was in the grip of a plague. Hundreds of people died as a result of the plague because there were no pharmaceuticals to treat them because of the willful bombing by the United States.
Terrorism has become a sort of screen created since the end of the Cold War by policymakers in Washington, as well as a whole group of people, like Samuel Huntington and Steven Emerson, who have their meal ticket in that pursuit. It is fabricated to keep the population afraid and insecure, and to justify what the United States wishes to do globally.
Any threat to its interests, whether it&#39;s oil in the Middle East or its geostrategic interests elsewhere, is labeled as terrorism, which is exactly what the Israelis have been doing since the mid-1970s in response to Palestinian resistance to their policies.
It&#39;s very interesting that the whole history of terrorism has a pedigree in the policies of imperialists. The French used the word "terrorism" for everything that the Algerians did to resist their occupation, which began in 1830 and didn&#39;t end until 1962. The British used it in Burma and in Malaysia. Terrorism is anything that stands in the face of what we want to do. Since the United States is the global superpower and has or pretends to have interests everywhere-from China to Europe to southern Africa to Latin America and all of the Americas-terrorism becomes a handy instrument to perpetuate this practice.
Terrorism is also now viewed as a resistance to globalization. That connection has to be made. I notice, by the way, Arundhati Roy made that connection, as well, that people&#39;s movements of resistance against deprivation, against unemployment, against the loss of natural resources, all of that is termed "terrorism. "
Into this vicious cycle feed a few groups like bin Laden&#39;s and the people he commands, whether they are in Saudi Arabia or Yemen or anywhere else. They&#39;re magnified and blown up to insensate proportions that have nothing to do with their real power and the real threat they represent. This focus obscures the enormous damage done by the United States, whether militarily, environmentally, or economically, on a world scale, which far dwarfs anything that terrorism might do.
Lastly, very little is said about homegrown terrorism, the militias and armed groups in this country, or Timothy McVeigh. I remember very clearly after the blowing up of the federal building in Oklahoma City, my office was deluged with phone calls because I think Steven Emerson, who was instantly called an expert on terrorism, said this has all the marks of Middle Eastern terrorism.
That cycle of connections is deeply damaging to individuals of Arab and Muslim origin in this country. During the 2000 election campaign, anything having to do with Islam or Muslims was used as a way of discrediting your opponent. Hillary Clinton returned a &#036;50,000 contribution from the Muslim Alliance, which is a very conventional, quite politically neutral group, because they smacked of terrorism, she said. Those kinds of labels can be like racial profiling that involves not only African Americans and Latin Americans but also Arab Americans.
Interestingly, the State Department report you cited shows conclusively that the Islamic world is number 10 on the list. The greatest source of terrorism is the U.S. itself and some of the Latin American countries, not at all the Muslim ones. But they&#39;re used, partly manipulated by the Israeli lobby, partly by Defense and State Department interests, to keep America in its policies and to intimidate people.
THE US.- and UK.-led sanctions against Iraq are clearly crumbling. What accounts for that?
THEY&#39;VE FAILED. In the first place, the point of the sanctions was to bring down Saddam Hussein, but he got stronger. Second, the Iraqi civilian population has suffered enormous harm, genocidal harm, thanks to the United Kingdom and the United States. Sixty thousand children are dying every year since the sanctions were imposed. And countless unnumbered others have been affected through cancer and other diseases. It&#39;s led to the impoverishment of the entire population. Two UN commissioners of the oil-for-food program resigned because of the inhumanity of the sanctions.
Also, Iraq does not exist, contrary to U.S. policymakers&#39; fantasies, in a vacuum. It is, along with Egypt, one of the central Arab countries. Its economy has always historically been tied to that of its neighbors, especially Jordan. What has happened is that the Jordanians have now been supplied by Iraq with oil at 50 percent of its cost, and Jordan trades with Iraq. There are other kinds of organic connections between Iraq and its neighbors, including some of the Gulf countries. So the sanctions can&#39;t possibly continue in the form that they were envisioned.
As a result, we have Colin Powell traveling throughout the Middle East in February, advocating something called "smart sanctions." That struck me as a complete misnomer and again a fantasy-to suggest that the U.S. can in fact cause people to go against their own interests. That won&#39;t happen. The whole thing has been a total, futile, disastrous policy.
This is the irony of it. The power and wealth of the United States is such that most people have no awareness of the damage that has been caused in its name-or the hatred that has been built up against it throughout the Middle East and the Islamic world-for no purpose other than to guarantee the continued dominance of policymakers and a few people whose interests are tied to this ridiculous and inhuman policy.
ONE OF the countries that has broken the sanctions and actually sent flights into Baghdad is Turkey. It is in the situation of being the site of the major US. air base that bombs Iraq and also a country that has invaded northern Iraq a number of times in pursuit of Kurdish resistance fighters.
AND WHICH is supplied by the U.S. in pursuit of its war against the Kurds, to the extent that it makes what happened to the Albanians in Kosovo look like a Sunday school picnic Turkey, one mustn&#39;t forget, is in very close alliance with Israel They have joint military maneuvers. There&#39;s a military alliance with the United States and with Israel, and yet, because commercial and regional interests override those, Turkey is now trading with and getting oil from Iraq, the second-largest oil supplier in the region.
DO YOU think the Israeli military and economic alliance with Turkey is part of a grand strategy to encircle the Arabs?
NO, BECAUSE Egypt is involved. It&#39;s not to encircle the Arabs. It&#39;s to encircle what are considered to be intransigent states, like Syria, Iraq, and Iran. It&#39;s not directed against the Arabs, but rather against those states that have seemed to be too anti-Israeli or too sympathetic to the Palestinians. But it&#39;s a mindless, irrational strategy. In the final analysis, these are deeply unpopular policies and can&#39;t possibly last. It&#39;s like Syngman Rhee in South Korea, or Ky and Thieu in Vietnam. U.S. policymakers never learn. They repeat the same mistakes, with the same human and economic and political costs. They will persist in doing it, because their education and their perspective is the same, handed down from generation to generation.
NOBEL PRIZE winner and current Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres recently gave an interview to the Turkish press denying the Armenian genocide.
THERE, TOO, Turkish policy and Israeli policy are very similar. They both have an interest in suppressing knowledge and acknowledgment of what the Turkish government did to the Armenians early in the twentieth century because they want to reserve the right to function in the same way. I&#39;ll give you an example. In 1983, there was an Israeli government radio program that was about trying to understand what happened to the Armenians. It was forbidden to go out on the air simply because they used the words "holocaust" and "genocide," which in Israel are reserved only for what happened to the Jews. This kind of policy is perpetuated by what Shimon Peres did, stupidly, instead of trying to widen the circle of acknowledgment and understanding of what might happen to people, whether in Rwanda or to the Armenians or the Bosnians or elsewhere in the world where these horrible things have occurred and where all human beings have an interest in making sure that they don&#39;t happen again. They want to organize memory in such a way that it&#39;s focused exclusively on certain groups and not on other groups that suffered these historical calamities.
YOU&#39;VE SPOKEN out on many occasions on the right of return. Are you making any headway on getting recognition of a right of return?
I THINK we are, especially in people&#39;s awareness that there is a right of return. I don&#39;t mean only necessarily to Palestine. People cannot be driven from their homes or even choose to leave their homes and not have the right to return. That&#39;s the larger principle. That right was left out of the Oslo peace process, invidiously, though Palestinians now constitute the largest number of disenfranchised refugees since World War II still in existence and still to be found in refugee camps.
The right of return can also serve to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians in Arab countries, Syria and others, where they haven&#39;t been patriated and been given rights of residence, work, or travel. So it&#39;s not just in Israel-although Israel is the main cause of this-but elsewhere in the Arab world in general where Palestinians are treated harshly.
I would like to think that this is part of a bigger movement drawing attention to the rights of immigrants to enter countries if they&#39;ve been driven from their own. If they&#39;re not able for political and physical reasons to return, they should be given rights of residence wherever they are. It&#39;s a worldwide phenomenon that deeply interests me.
We live in a period of migration, of forced travel and forced residence, that has literally engulfed the globe. This has resulted in a series of very reactionary immigration laws, not only in Israel, that are motivated by some myth of purity that citizens of these countries, like Italy, Sweden, Britain, and the U.S., have a right to ward off these lesser people, these inferior people-from Africa and Asia mostly-who seek refuge or to return to their homes.
The principle is the same, whether people are not allowed to return to their homes in Palestine or are not allowed to find new homes in countries like Lebanon, the U.S., or Sweden because they&#39;re considered to be strangers and alien. The whole concept of who is a stranger, who is an alien, and who is a native has to be rethought to include the fate of people whose ancestors were exterminated and people who came in and forcibly became settler colonists in countries like Israel and the United States. It&#39;s a vast phenomenon and urgently in need of rethinking in ways that I hope the Palestinian right of return movement can dramatize.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BADEN, Austria, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Serbia said on Tuesday it was searching for peace in the Balkans by resisting a Kosovo Albanian drive to declare independence in the coming months, and urging that talks due to end in 24 hours be prolonged.

The Albanians said they posed no threat to peace and saw no point in pressing ahead with negotiations which began in 2006 and have so far failed to find any possibility of compromise.

"Attaining peace, stability and prosperity is of paramount importance. We are in the business of making peace and stability in the ... Balkans," said Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic.

"It is worth continuing to search for peace and stability," he told reporters during a break in the last-ditch talks at this snowed-on spa resort in Austria.

Kosovo&#39;s prime minister-in-waiting Hashim Thaci, a former guerrilla who battled Serb forces in their 1998-99 war, denied any threat to peace, saying fresh conflict was out of the question.

"There will be no more war, no more killing, no more crisis in the region. That&#39;s our commitment," Thaci said. "There will also be no more delay."

Serbia warns that "one unilateral act leads to another, and another", in the words of Jeremic. Kosovo&#39;s secession could lead to "fundamental destabilisation" of the region.

Western powers back Kosovo&#39;s independence after 8 years under United Nations tutelage and NATO protection as "the only viable" solution to a dispute in which compromise is impossible.

But Serbia warns of violent unrest, and has raised the possibility that Serbs whose mini-republic makes up half of Bosnia could demand, in their turn, to secede from that state.

"There are only 24 hours left in this process and the positions of both sides are diametrically opposed," said Thaci.



FLAG, ANTHEM AND FOOTBALL TEAM

Kosovo Albanians, the United States and the European Union say the talks will end when mediators make their report to the U.N. by Dec 10. Russia, third pillar of the mediating &#39;troika&#39;, says they should carry on if there is hope of a deal.

Serbian President Boris Tadic, on the second day of the talks, appealed to Kosovo Albanians to accept an offer of nearly all the rights and symbols of an independent state, short of the republic they are demanding.

Tadic said Serbia was offering Kosovo most rights "and symbols that are normally reserved only for sovereign states" including access to international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.

Kosovo could have its own flag and its own international sports teams, but Serbia "reserves the right to exclusive representation" in the U.N., the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe.

Serbia would also "maintain the right to associate herself with the province&#39;s foreign policy, defence, border control and the protection of Serbian heritage" - all red lines for Kosovo.

The Albanian response was negative: "Serbia&#39;s offer is a recipe for frozen conflict," said spokesman Skender Hyseni. "I am afraid nothing spectacular will happen" in the remaining 24 hours, he added.

Serbia&#39;s ally Russia this summer blocked a Western-backed plan granting independence at the U.N. Security Council.

Diplomats say the major Western powers, who bombed in 1999 to end a wave of ethnic cleansing by Serb forces trying to crush a guerrilla insurgency, are now determined to recognise Kosovo.

Russian mediator Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko said Moscow would "insist" on continuing the negotiations after Dec 10. "But we need strong, good arguments to do this."
__________________________________________________ ____________________

BADEN, Austria (Reuters) - Serbia and Russia are pressing for more time to settle the future of Kosovo and head off a declaration of independence at the start of crunch talks on Monday that offered no hope of compromise.

Counting on Western support, Kosovo Albanians say they will declare independence from Serbia after a deadline for negotiations to end expires on December 10.

Russia, Serbia&#39;s main backer, conceded there was no chance of a breakthrough at the two-day talks in the Austrian spa town of Baden. But its envoy said Moscow would "insist" the talks continue after the December deadline, which the West says is final.

"We will insist on the continuation of the status process through dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina," envoy Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko told the Belgrade daily Blic.

Serbia, too, looked beyond the Baden meeting and its likely failure. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the mediators if compromise proved elusive, "we would have a duty to agree to resume the talks and establish a new negotiating process."

"No one should have any doubt that we will annul any unilateral act, and treat unilateral independence as a null, void and non-binding phenomenon," he said.

Kostunica repeated an offer of autonomy, and told reporters: "Serbia will not let an inch of its territory be taken away."

The talks, due to end on Wednesday morning, are the 6th round of a final search for a deal launched at the end of August after Russia&#39;s threat to veto a Western-backed plan granting Kosovo independence.

Led by American, Russian and EU envoys, they follow 13 months of U.N.-led talks that ended in deadlock in March.

All sides are braced for a declaration of independence by the 90-percent Albanian majority in the next three months.

Diplomats say recognition should follow quickly from the major Western powers who in 1999 unleashed NATO bombers to end a wave of ethnic cleansing by Serb forces trying to crush a guerrilla insurgency. Kosovo has been U.N.-administered since.

OBSTRUCTION

"This is the last meeting, after two years of talks," said ex-rebel fighter Hashim Thaci, Kosovo&#39;s likely next prime minister after winning last weekend&#39;s parliamentary election.

"We can negotiate for 100 years more with Serbia but for the independence of Kosovo we can have no compromise," he told Reuters at the 13th century Schloss Weikersdorf hotel.

Asked if he saw any justification for an extension as suggested by Russia&#39;s Botsan-Kharchenko, EU envoy Wolfgang Ischinger said: "My answer is &#39;No&#39;."

"It&#39;s not for the troika, and not for members of the troika, to speculate about what might happen after the 10th," he said.

"Our mandate ends and this opportunity which the international community has offered through the troika ends on the 10th," when the mediators report back to the United Nations.

Serbia has instructed government ministers to draw up an &#39;Action Plan&#39; in the event of a unilateral declaration - "the blackest scenario", said deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic.

Analysts predict roadblocks, obstruction of trade and electricity supplies and possibly the establishment of Serbian-controlled areas in Kosovo, similar to those set up in Bosnia and Croatia 16 years ago.

"We are very much aware that with a declaration of independence ... we are going to be faced with some challenges," outgoing Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku said on Sunday. "We have nowhere to go and we are ready to face all the challenges."

[hajduk]

Only in the Balkans
Misha Glenny
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n09/glen01_.html

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BELGRADE/PRISTINA, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Serbia could apply hardball tactics if Kosovo declares independence, making life harder, more expensive and frustrating for the landlocked province&#39;s 2 million people.

Talks between Belgrade and Kosovo&#39;s ethnic Albanian majority ended in Austria on Wednesday with no agreement, and Serbia is drawing up an "action plan" for the period after Dec. 10, when mediators submit their conclusions to the United Nations.

Kosovo Albanians say they will declare independence soon, probably in the next three months. U.S. envoy Frank Wisner urged both sides to keep their promise to avoid a slide to violence.

Serbian Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovac has repeatedly said there will be no military reaction. But Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica refuses to discuss other plans for what his deputy calls "the blackest scenario".

He will reject any declaration and, according to Serb media, may withdraw ambassadors from capitals that recognise Kosovo.

Serbia could refuse to recognise Kosovo passports, forcing travellers to make a big detour to get to Western Europe. It could cut off electricity supplies and block power supply routes. Kosovo buys 40 percent of its power from Serbia, the rest from Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania.

"Macedonia and Greece usually have power shortages so Kosovo gets electricity from Serbia or from Bulgaria -- but even then the transit route goes through Serbia," a Serb Energy Ministry official told Reuters.

But it would not make such a move lightly, mindful of its impact on Kosovo&#39;s Serb minority, marginalised and looking to Belgrade as the provider of basic services.

"If we cut off the power supply, we would be cutting it to the Serbs as well," the official said.

A source in one Serbian ministry said Serbia "could make life more difficult in Kosovo if it wanted".

"Goods from Serbia are the cheapest in Kosovo, so if Serbia for any reason blocks borders or stops supplying Kosovo it would make life in the province more expensive," the source said.

"Serbia wouldn&#39;t necessarily say it is closing the borders, but find a pretext, for example say Kosovo has foot and mouth."



EXAGGERATING POWER

But Kosovo officials say Serbia&#39;s moves are unlikely to have any long-term impact.

Reality reflects the eight years the province has spent out of Serbia&#39;s reach. Kosovo has been under U.N. rule since 1999, when NATO expelled Serb forces accused of killing civilians while fighting separatist rebels.

It has its own state administration -- part local, part U.N.-run -- and its citizens use midnight-blue "travel documents" issued by the U.N. mission, which are however not recognised by Serbia. Police, schools, and hospitals are all locally managed.

It has an independent water supply, gets mobile telephony services from Monaco, and routes commercial flights outside Serb airspace using NATO air control. Its only practical links with Serbia are in power, trade and road transport.

"If Serbia reacts, they won&#39;t only cause problems to Kosovo but Macedonia, Albania and Greece as well. Kosovo is a transit route for these countries," Nezir Sinani, spokesman for Kosovo&#39;s power company KEK.

Besim Beqaj from Kosovo&#39;s Chamber of Commerce says the Serbs are exaggerating their power. Imports and transit trade from Serbia account for around 15 percent of total trade, and most products come from the European Union and Macedonia.

"We&#39;ve already thought of this and told our partners in the region what we import from Serbia. If Belgrade acts, they will bring the goods from other countries. There will be a momentary crisis but very soon everything will be normalised," he said.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

BADEN, Austria, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Serbs and Kosovo Albanians meet for a final hour of talks on Wednesday, along with the trio of mediators that has struggled in vain to break the deadlock over the future of the breakaway province.

"We&#39;re just wrapping this up," said a diplomatic source at the spa hotel outside Vienna where negotiations have been going on since Monday without any sign of a breakthrough.

The mediators, from the European Union, the United States and Russia, were due to hold a news conference later in the Austrian capital and will make final visits to Serbia and Kosovo next Monday.

The destiny of Kosovo should become clearer after they make their report to the United Nations, due by Dec. 10.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica says the independence demanded by Kosovo&#39;s 90 percent Albanian majority cannot be legally obtained by a unilateral declaration backed by the West.

"For Serbia only a solution within the Security Council is acceptable," Kostunica said on Tuesday. "These negotiations have lasted for two years. The way they started is the way they must end -- in the Security Council."

Kosovo Albanian President Fatmir Sejdiu said: "The Kosovo parliament will have the final word on status," and a declaration would be made "in coordination" with the West.

The declaration would come "in a time not far away from now", he said.

The United States and European Union say the mediation ends with the report to the United Nations. 10. But Serbia&#39;s ally Russia has already blocked independence in the Security Council and says it will "insist" on further negotiation.

Serbia says blocking independence will preserve peace in the fragile Balkans. But Kosovo&#39;s prime minister-in-waiting Hashim Thaci, a former guerrilla who battled Serb forces in the 1998-99 war, denied any threat of conflict.

"There will be no more war, no more killing, no more crisis in the region. That&#39;s our commitment," Thaci said. "There will also be no more delay."

After eight years under U.N. control and NATO protection, and with no compromise in sight, the West sees independence under EU supervision as the only viable solution to the dispute.

Kostunica refused to detail an "Action Plan" his government is drawing up in anticipation of a unilateral declaration, but Serbia warns of violent unrest, and has raised the possibility that Serbs whose mini-republic makes up half of Bosnia could demand, in their turn, to secede from that state.

Serbian President Boris Tadic appealed to Kosovo Albanians to accept an offer of nearly all the rights and symbols of an independent state, short of the republic they are demanding.

"Serbia&#39;s offer is a recipe for frozen conflict," said Kosovo spokesman Skender Hyseni, forecasting "nothing spectacular" in the dying hours of the talks.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

BADEN, Austria, Nov 27 (Reuters) - The future of Kosovo cannot be decided unilaterally by its Albanian majority and their Western backers but rests with the United Nations alone, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Tuesday.

"For Serbia only a solution within the Security Council is acceptable," Kostunica said at the end of a second day of last-ditch talks in Austria.

"These negotiations have lasted for two years. The way they started is the way they must end -- in the Security Council."

There has been no glimmer of compromise between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians since international mediation began in earnest in 2006. Kosovo is getting ready to declare independence and has the promise of Western recognition.

"The Kosovo parliament will have the final word on status," Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu told reporters, adding that a declaration would be made "in coordination" with the West.

The United States and European Union say the mediation ends with a report to the United Nations by Dec. 10. But Serbia&#39;s ally Russia has already blocked independence in the Security Council and says it will "insist" on further negotiation.

"This process will not end on Dec. 10," Kostunica said. "It will end and must end in the Security Council." He said any other way would be "a crime, a sort of crime" that would seriously damage international law and the United Nations.

Serbia says its resistance to Kosovo independence is also intended to preserve peace in the fragile Balkans.

Kosovo&#39;s prime minister-in-waiting Hashim Thaci, a former guerrilla who battled Serb forces in the 1998-99 war, denied any threat to peace, saying fresh conflict was out of the question.

"There will be no more war, no more killing, no more crisis in the region. That&#39;s our commitment," Thaci said. "There will also be no more delay."



"NOTHING SPECTACULAR"

Western powers back Kosovo&#39;s independence after 8 years under United Nations tutelage and NATO protection as "the only viable" solution to a dispute in which compromise is impossible.

But Serbia warns of violent unrest, and has raised the possibility that Serbs whose mini-republic makes up half of Bosnia could demand, in their turn, to secede from that state.

"There are only 24 hours left in this process and the positions of both sides are diametrically opposed," said Thaci.

Kosovo Albanians, the United States and the European Union say the talks will end when mediators make their report to the U.N. by Dec 10. Russia, third pillar of the mediating &#39;troika&#39;, says they can carry on provided there is hope of a deal.

Serbian President Boris Tadic appealed to Kosovo Albanians to accept an offer of nearly all the rights and symbols of an independent state, short of the republic they are demanding.

Serbia was offering Kosovo most rights "and symbols that are normally reserved only for sovereign states", he said, including access to international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.

Kosovo could have its own flag and its own international sports teams, but Serbia "reserves the right to exclusive representation" in the U.N., the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe.

Serbia would also "maintain the right to associate herself with the province&#39;s foreign policy, defence, border control and the protection of Serbian heritage" - all red lines for Kosovo.

"Serbia&#39;s offer is a recipe for frozen conflict," said Kosovo spokesman Skender Hyseni. "I am afraid nothing spectacular will happen" in the remaining 24 hours.

[hajduk]

Kosova & Kashmir: Muslims Must Share the Blame
By Jamaaluddin al-Haidar

Twenty-something years ago, when my parents reverted to Islam, I was an adolescent teen. I was a child of the black nationalist/liberation movement of the 60&#39;s, who refused to stand for the pledge of allegiance to the US flag. This patriotic display of love for massa and his 400 years of brutalizing us, was customary and mandatory at the start of public school classes in those days. I always felt that black children should be exempt from it because the constitution at that time (and still does) defined blacks as three-fifths of a human being. I was once expelled from elementary school for convincing the entire class to pledge allegiance by placing their hands on their butts instead of over their hearts.

I was the kid on the playground who challenged the school bully saying "you can&#39;t whip me &#39;cause I&#39;m a revolutionary&#33;".....I got whipped often.... but I was still a revolutionary. While the other kids wore cartoon stickers and buttons, I wore "Free Huey" and "Africa for Africans" buttons.

I was the kid who won the school speech contest with my own anti-Vietnam War and memorial tribute to the innocent victims of the Mai Lai massacre. When school officials convinced me to change the topic to a more palatable one for the citywide DAR- (Daughters of American Revolution) sponsored contest, I submitted a speech to the lily-white, ultra-conservative group on Benjamin Franklin, only to scrub it and recite the anti-Vietnam War speech once I got on stage before the judges and audience. Needless to say, I was disqualified and summarily escorted from the auditorium...but I had my victory...because afterall.....I was a revolutionary.

I thought the revolution started in 1969. I didn&#39;t realize that the 1969 riots in Detroit were just that until I was in high school and happened to see a copy of the Congressional Committee Report. My memories of those fateful days and nights were re-kindled as I read the report. Memories filled with visions of being shoved under a table while the house filled with gun toting, black beret-wearing men and women who were shooting out of the windows at someone or something on the street...daylight brought visions of armored cars and tanks full of white soldiers patrolling through my neighborhood shouting and pointing weapons in what was a 24-hour vigil.

Nearly a decade later, I&#39;m experiencing culture shock, as I sit on the floor of a masjid full of people that don&#39;t look or talk like me. They are unbelievably courteous and friendly. They hug and kiss me a lot, and even hold my hand. Soon I see a box being passed around, it has Arabic writing on it. I don&#39;t understand this foreign language but I see men putting money into it. So I reach into my pocket and pull out a dollar and place it in the box. Minutes later I see another box being passed around. For a moment, it reminded me of the times my grandmother would take me to church and the how I complained about the collection plate being passed around four and five times during one service. I said to myself "here we go again.... another one of these money-grabbing schemes in the name of religion".

As the second box eased closer to me, I reached into my pocket and pulled out another dollar. That&#39;s when I saw it. On the box was the same kind of strange script that I could not understand. However, underneath the script was a drawing of an opened book, a rifle, and a grenade. I realized then that there was another component to this strange religion. I realized that my parents had not "sold-out". They didn&#39;t abandon the revolution/liberation movement. They "graduated" and added the one component that was missing from the movement all of those years....Islam.

Soon I would learn that there is no struggle (jihad) greater than for the pleasure of Allah....for raising the banner of Tawheed....for the liberation of his people from institutions and debilitating systems of man and establishing his sovereignty in the land.

Recently, some twenty-something years later, I visited the same masjid. I spent a few days with the jamaat. The place has changed a lot in 20 years. The believers have changed. They regularly host kaffir politicians there now. They even distributed a list of their approved candidates. They put a Jewish lawyer at the top of the ticket for governor and then distributed the list of candidates (all of whom are kaffir) as the "Muslim slate."

I witnessed one such gathering there that really surprised me. A visiting Shaikh was addressing the audience. The mayor of the city, who arrived late, entered the meeting hall, and in the middle of the Shaikh&#39;s talk, the place erupted in applause and standing ovation for the mayor.

They don&#39;t raise money for weapons anymore. Instead they lobby the kaffir politicians and beg them to use their weapons and sacrifice the lives of their beloved sons and daughters to defend the Muslims. However, they do appease their guilt-conscious somewhat by throwing money at agencies that feed and clothe the besieged Muslims. But what about liberation? Where has the liberation box gone?

In their literature, one of the Christian relief agencies use the phrase "if you give a man a fish you feed him for one day. If you teach a man how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime".

Muslims should say " If you give a besieged Muslim, food, clothing, and shelter you make him a fed, clothed, and sheltered slave. If you give him Quran and Sunnah, a rifle, and a grenade, the besieged Muslim will liberate himself....feed himself, cloth himself, and not be put out of his own house&#33;"

Muslims must re-discover and implement jihad bis saif, as well as the support and defense of mujahideen as serious obligatory duties in this Deen. We must stop making excuses for that which Allah has ordained in Qur&#39;an and that which his Messenger utilized in his seerah. We must stop permitting some of our spineless Muslim leaders from making excuses and adopting an apologetic posture towards jihad bis saif as well.

We must develop and promote the attitude that it is an honor and blessing to support and defend the mujahideen. If necessary we must make seventy excuses for them and not permit the Zionist media and the Zionist-occupied governments and their stooges in Muslim nations to castrate these mujahideen from the body of the believers. We must also beware of madhaabs and those anti-madhaab folks who are just as dangerous. Their arrogance and clique mentality and exclusivity can effectively cause the naive amongst us to abandon the mujahideen also. More effectively than Zionist media in some cases.

Our brothers and sisters in Kosova and Kashmir are under some very dire circumstances. Throwing money at the problem will help some but it won&#39;t bring about any solution to the crisis. Our mission, just as it should&#39;ve been in Bosnia, should be a two-pronged mission. Surely there is the humanitarian need that must be met, however, there is also the long-term need for liberation that must also be met.

In addition to collecting monies, food, medical, and other needed supplies and delivering it to our brothers and sisters we must also mount political pressure on our Islamic leaders at home and on the leaders of the Muslim nation-states.

We first have to free our leaders from the shackles of petro-dollars and other pimps overseas that have "turned out" so many of them that they can hardly speak a word of their own volition. Those leaders who don&#39;t want to be independent of their masters overseas should be replaced one way or the other.

Free-thinking leaders should organize a mass campaign of protest against those embassies and consulates representing Muslim nation-states who have thus far issued at best, only veiled threats, all the while neglecting to use their armies and weapons to liberate the Muslims of Kosova and Kashmir.

The least that we can do is what I have done. Fax, write letters or send email to these embassies and consulates demanding that they aid the liberation of Muslims with moral, logistical, and physical support. Is this so hard to do? If we can send faxes to kuffar begging them to bomb our enemies and to rescue our own, we certainly should be able to send them to the Muslim organizations and the representatives of the Muslim nation-states. We must remind them of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and the consequences that led to it being abolished. We must demand that they declare "null and void" these UN treaties that usurp their sovereignty and aid and abet the kuffar at the expense of the Muslims. These leaders have no authority to make the Muslim populations of their nation-states subservient to these illegal Treaties.

Understand brothers and sisters, that if the rape and maiming of Muslim girls in Bosnia and Kashmir, the torturous agonizing starvation of Muslims of Iraq, and the abandonment of the Islamic Solution in Philistine has not moved these leaders to do anything, they will need to be pressured. We do this on two fronts....

1. the souci-political one - mass protest against the representative bodies of these Muslim nation-states and charging them with capitulation to illegal treaties and abandoning Muslims under siege. Identifying, exposing and protesting against their agents and "money men" in the local Muslim communities.

2. the physical one - identifying and supporting the legitimate Islamic movements that are simmering in their own homelands.

As Muslims we must began to understand that these knee-jerk, poorly-thought out and poorly-planned responses that we are so quick to adopt are merely sad imitations of kufr policies and procedures. Are we like the donkey with loads of books on his back? Because he&#39;s only carrying the books instead of utilizing them for guidance he is subject to the whims of anyone who comes along and yanks on his bridle. We have Quran, Hadith, and an extensive Islamic history that we can call on to solve most of these problems.

If my brother has a blister wound I have antiseptics and anti-biotics yet I choose to only clean the wound and give him a bandage, I have only treated the symptom. I&#39;ve done nothing for his long-term welfare. If we don&#39;t act more sensibly towards the long term interests of our brothers and sisters we are part to blame for their suffering.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia warned on Thursday it would defend Serb rights in Bosnia against Western-inspired threats with as much determination as it is applying to prevent the Western-inspired secession of its own Kosovo province.

"Preserving Kosovo and Republika Srpska are now the most important goals of our state and national policy," Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said, in a statement for the first time overtly linking two potential, ethnically based crises.

Pledging support to Serb kin in Bosnia, who had Belgrade&#39;s full backing in the 1992-95 Bosnia war under ultranationalist strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Kostunica said there was now "an open threat to the essential interests of the Serb people".

Kostunica said he told Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik he could count on Serbia&#39;s full support in a dispute which flared at the weekend, over an edict changing the rules of law-making in Bosnia&#39;s complex post-war system of government.

A Bosnian Muslim leader accused Kostunica of fuelling a crisis in Bosnia as leverage in Serbia&#39;s Russian-backed campaign to stop Kosovo Albanians declaring independence after December 10 if negotiations on the province end with no deal, as most expect.

Bosnia&#39;s Muslim community together with Bosnian Croats make up half the country, sharing power with its Serb half in an unstable, uneasy and now tottering partnership.

TWO-WAY SECESSION CRISES?

"Vojislav Kostunica&#39;s statements today represent a flagrant interference in internal matters of Bosnia-Herzegovina," said Haris Silajdzic, Muslim member of Bosnia&#39;s three-man presidency.

"Their clear goal is the simultaneous culmination of crises in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo at the moment when the Kosovo issue is being decided" in a bid to "maximize (Serbia&#39;s) position in negotiations on Kosovo" Silajdzic said.

Past threats by the Bosnian Serbs to secede from Bosnia if the Albanian majority in Kosovo wins independence prompted strong warnings from Bosnia&#39;s international peace overseer that any move to dismantle the dual state would be stopped.

Linking the future of Kosovo and Bosnia raises the specter of radical changes of border and forced population shifts in the Balkans, eight years after the West went to war over Kosovo to stop the last ethnic conflict in the break-up of Yugoslavia.

But on Thursday, the ultranationalist Socialist Party of the late Milosevic went further than Kostunica, saying Serbia "should recognize the independence of the Bosnian Serb Republic" if Kosovo becomes independent with Western recognition.

Dodik on Monday threatened to quit Bosnia&#39;s fragile central government unless the current overseer, Miroslav Lajcak, rescinds an order reducing the quorum required to pass laws -- a step he says he took to stop obstructionist absenteeism.

The Serbs of Bosnia are determined to defend their extensive autonomy against Western-backed efforts to forge a more unified state than the duopoly created at the end of the war by the flawed Dayton Peace Accords.

Kostunica said he agreed with Dodik that the edict was a threat to Dayton, which set up the two-part state, in the same way a U.N. envoy&#39;s plan for an independent Kosovo would violate U.N. Resolution 1244, confirming Serbia&#39;s legal sovereignty.

Bosnia&#39;s international peace overseer Miroslav Lajcak said he did not know what prompted Kostunica, schooled in international law, to make such a statement. But he "knows as a legalist that what he is stating is not true".

"I dismiss most resolutely every artificial linkage of the Dayton peace agreement and the Resolution 1244," Lajcak said.

Kostunica said Lajcak&#39;s measures were aimed at "abolishing Republika Srpska" -- the policy advocated by Silajdzic in the interests of forging a unitary state Serbs vow never to permit.

[hajduk]

ACADEMICS AGAINST NATO&#39;S WAR IN THE BALKANS

We reject these false dilemmas:

* Support NATO intervention or support the reactionary policy of the Serbian regime in Kosovo?

The NATO air-strikes, forcing the withdrawal of the OSCE forces from Kosovo, have facilitated and not prevented a ground offensive by Serb paramilitary forces; they encourage retaliation against the Kosovar population by the worst Serb ultra-nationalists; they consolidate the dictatorial power of Slobodan Milosevic, who has crushed the independent media and rallied around him a national consensus which it is necessary on the contrary to break in order to open the way to peaceful political negotiations over Kosovo.

* Accept as the only possible basis of negotiation the &#96;peace plan&#39; elaborated by the governments of the United States or the European Union or bomb Serbia?

No durable solution to a major political conflict internal to a state can be imposed from the outside, by force. It is not true that &#96;everything has been tried&#39; to find a solution and an acceptable framework for negotiations. The Kosovar negotiators were forced to sign plan which they had initially rejected after being led to believe that NATO would involve itself on the ground to defend their cause. This was a lie which maintained a total illusion: none of the governments which support the NATO strikes wants to make war on the Serbian regime to impose the independence of Kosovo. The air-strikes will perhaps weaken a part of the Serbian military apparatus but they will not weaken the mortar fire which, on the ground, is destroying Albanian homes, or the paramilitary forces who are killing the fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army. NATO is not the only or above all the best fulcrum for an agreement. One could find the elements of a multi-national police force (embracing notably Serbs and Albanians) in the ranks of the OSCE to enforce a transitional agreement. One could extend the negotiations to include the Balkan states destabilized by the conflict: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania.One could at the same time support the right of the Kosovars to self-government and the protection of the Serb minority in Kosovo; one could try to respond to the aspirations and fears of the different peoples concerned by links of co-operation and agreements among neighbouring states, with Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania. None of this has been tried.

We reject the arguments which seek to justify the NATO intervention:

* It is not true that the NATO air-strikes are going to prevent a regional flare-up, in Macedonia or in Bosnia-Herzegovina: they are going on the contrary to feed the flames. They are going to destabilize Bosnia-Herzegovina and without doubt menace the multi-national forces responsible for applying the fragile Dayton accords. They are already setting Macedonia alight.
* It is not true that NATO is protecting the Kosovan population and its rights.
* It is not true that their bombing of Serbia opens the way to a democratic regime in Serbia.

The governments of the European Union, like that of United States, perhaps hoped that this demonstration of force would compel Slobodan Milosevic to sign their plan. Haven&#39;t they thereby displayed naivete or hypocrisy? In any case this policy is leading not only to a political impasse, but to the legitimation of a role for NATO outside any international framework of control.

This is why we demand:

* an immediate halt to the bombing;
* the organization of a Balkan conference in which the representatives of the states and of all the national communities within these states take part;
* defence of the right of peoples to self-determination, on the sole condition that this right is not fulfilled on the back of another people and by the ethnic cleansing of territory.

EDWARD SAID, COLUMBIA
ALEX CALLINICOS, YORK
NOAM CHOMSKY, MIT
PETER LINEBAUGH, TOLEDO
GREGOR MCLENNAN, BRISTOL
GEORGE DAVEY-SMITH, BRISTOL
ELLEN MEIKSINS WOOD, USA
DAVID HOWELL, YORK
CHRIS NORRIS, CARDIFF
ROBIN BLACKBURN, CAMBRIDGE
MALCOLM POVEY, LEEDS

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BELGRADE (Reuters) - The United States alone can choose whether the Balkans experience stability or lawlessness, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Friday, after the failure of negotiations with Kosovo Albanians.

Washington can either continue to back eventual independence for the breakaway province of Kosovo or uphold a United Nations resolution which affirms Serbian sovereignty, he said.

"The stability and peace of the whole region now depends on a U.S. decision whether it will respect U.N. Resolution 1244 or will opt for a gross violation of the resolution and the UN Charter," he told Serbia&#39;s Beta news agency.

Resolution 1244, adopted in 1999, authorizes U.N. administration of the province under NATO security, which began that year after the Western alliance drove out Serb forces to end a ruthless crackdown on Albanian separatists.

The resolution affirms the sovereignty of now defunct Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is the successor state.

"If the U.S. would say it respected Resolution 1244 and its key provisions guaranteeing the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia, and ensuring the substantial autonomy of the Albanian minority, then compromise would be certainly found which would satisfy crucial interests of both Serbs and Albanians," Kostunica said.

"At this point, it is clear that all responsibility lies with America and its choice between law and stability, on one hand, and lawlessness and long-term instability on the other." Stability could not be built on "force", he said.

The failure of internationally mediated negotiations at a conference in Austria this week, while no surprise after many months of deadlock, has rung alarm bells in Western capitals.

Mediators will visit Serbia and Kosovo for the last time on Monday, before reporting to the United Nations by December 10.

Serbia dismisses reports it might take military action if Kosovo Albanians declared independence early next year as they have pledged to do, in coordination with the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and other EU member states.

But it is drawing up an "action plan" of concrete measures in anticipation of an independence decision Kostunica vows to immediately declare null and void. Analysts believe punitive trade and diplomatic measures are being readied.

Major powers involved in peace-making in the Balkans since 1992 are concerned Kosovo Serbs would break away from Kosovo in their turn, and that Bosnian Serbs might demand the right to secede from their union with Bosnian Croats and Muslims.

The West believes Kosovo&#39;s current position, under international protection but in legal limbo, is unsustainable. If independence were refused, violence could erupt in Kosovo, possibly spilling over into ethnically divided Macedonia, and southern Serbia, as it did in 2000 and 2001.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Friday suspending Russia&#39;s participation in a key post-Cold War arms treaty, a move which could allow it to deploy more forces close to western Europe.

Putin&#39;s moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty follows months of increasingly aggressive rhetoric directed against the West ahead of a parliamentary election on Sunday and a presidential vote next March.

"President Putin signed the federal law on suspending the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty," the Kremlin said in a short statement. The bill was passed by parliament this month and needed the president&#39;s signature to become law.

The United States, the European Union and NATO had urged Putin not to suspend the treaty, seen as a cornerstone of European security.

But Putin, who has sought to restore the Kremlin&#39;s clout after the chaos which accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union, countered that NATO members had not ratified an amended version of the pact and had flexed their muscles near Russia&#39;s borders.

The suspension, which will come into effect from Dec 12-13, would allow Moscow to boost military forces on its western and southern borders, although Russian generals have said that will not happen immediately.

Polls show that talking tough about Russia standing up to foreigners strikes a chord with millions of Russians who yearn for the Soviet Union&#39;s once mighty superpower status.

Putin has also been sparring with the United States and European Union over plans for a missile defense shield in Europe and proposed independence for Serbia&#39;s Kosovo province.

Signed in 1990 and updated in 1999, the CFE treaty limits the number of battle tanks, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters deployed and stored between the Atlantic and Russia&#39;s Ural mountains.

It was originally negotiated among the then-22 member states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and Russia says it is outdated.

Moscow argues it has been used by an enlarged NATO to limit Russian military movements while NATO builds up forces close to Russia in contravention of earlier agreements.

Western partners have refused to ratify an amended version of the pact until Russia pulls its forces out of Georgia and Moldova as it promised in 1999 when the treaty was reviewed.

Moscow&#39;s key problem with the treaty are flank limits which prevent Russia from moving tanks and artillery around its own territory, Russia&#39;s top generals say.

NATO has said it would be worrying to see large amounts of equipment limited by the treaty suddenly moving around.

But Russia&#39;s top general, Yuri Baluyevsky, said this month said there would be no immediate movement of forces after the moratorium came into effect.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

BELGRADE, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Serbia has no plans to intervene militarily if its United Nations-run breakaway Kosovo province declares independence, Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovac said on Thursday.

"Serbia does not see KFOR (the NATO force in Kosovo) as the enemy," Sutanovac told reporters. "Any military action now would look like the one in 1999."

NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 to expel Serb forces accused of killing thousands of civilians in Kosovo while battling ethnic Albanian separatists there.

The province&#39;s 90 percent Albanian majority is demanding independence after eight years as a UN protectorate, but Serbia has said it will only go as far as giving it maximum autonomy.

A final round of talks on Kosovo&#39;s future ended on Wednesday with no compromise, and Albanian leaders said the province would declare independence soon.

The West and Russia have urged both sides to work hard to prevent any outbreaks of violence.

Sutanovac said he was convinced the 16,000 NATO soldiers in Kosovo "would intervene and stop the destabilisation of Kosovo which could lead to the destabilisation of the entire Balkans."

He dismissed media reports quoting unnamed Serb officials as saying "Belgrade would do everything short of sending tanks" if Kosovo declared independence. Such talk by unauthorised people causes "unacceptable chaos," he said.

Sutanovac was speaking at a presentation detailing Serbia&#39;s progress in NATO&#39;s Partnership For Peace agreement, which Serbia signed a year ago.

He said it was still too early to say whether Serbia would join the alliance or remain at the preliminary level of cooperation. "Nobody (at NATO) has called us and we&#39;re not ready," Sutanovac said. "We need to focus on the &#39;PfP&#39;.

The issue is controversial in Serbia, where most citizens remember the 1999 bombing bitterly, and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has repeatedly called for military neutrality.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

HELSINKI, Nov 29 (Reuters) - A defence row between Turkey and Cyprus could endanger European security forces in Kosovo by preventing closer cooperation between the EU and NATO missions there, a top EU official said on Thursday.

Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn sounded the warning a day after the failure of internationally mediated talks between Belgrade and Pristina on the future of the breakaway Serbian province, whose ethnic Albanian leaders want independence.

The EU is gearing up to take over responsibility for policing in Kosovo from the United Nations and had sought tighter cooperation between its 1,600-strong mission and the 16,000 NATO peacekeepers who will remain there.

NATO-member Turkey blocked those plans in protest against a longstanding Cypriot veto of closer defence ties between it and the 27-member bloc, with which Ankara began entry talks in 2005.

"Let&#39;s finally move on that issue. It&#39;s a real European problem. It&#39;s hurting the European Union, its citizens and potentially our soldiers and policemen," Rehn said.

"If there are representatives here from Turkey and the Republic of Cyprus, please take my point and pass it to your capitals," he said at an event in Helsinki.

NATO and EU officials are braced for possible violence in Kosovo between the ethnic Albanian majority and minority Serbs. The two sides have sought to overcome the Turkish blockade with informal agreements on the ground governing how the two missions should interact in situations such as riots.

Turkey&#39;s stance has also affected cooperation between NATO&#39;s 40,000-strong peace force in Afghanistan and a much smaller EU police mission of around 150 staff.

Turkey wants Brussels to persuade EU member Cyprus to drop its veto over Ankara&#39;s bid to become an associate member of the European Defence Agency (EDA), the body set up to nurture EU-wide defence industry policy, diplomats said.

It also wants to be consulted more on EU security policy, arguing it is already a major participant in EU-led missions -- including Kosovo, with troops in the south of the province.

Turkey&#39;s accession talks have been complicated by the division of Cyprus, partitioned since a Turkish invasion in 1974 that was triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

MADRID (Reuters) - A clash between Russia and the United States over election monitoring on Thursday darkened a meeting of the OSCE, which has helped set the continent&#39;s security framework since the end of the Cold War.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe&#39;s election monitoring body has pulled out of monitoring Russia&#39;s parliamentary elections on Sunday due to conditions imposed by Moscow, which used the opening day of the two-day ministerial meeting in Madrid to demand that the body be reformed.

The United States accused Russia of trying to cripple the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which monitors elections for the OSCE.

"We do not believe that any participating OSCE state should have anything to fear or hide from ODIHR," said U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, in an address to the ministers.

"We have seen a hollowing out of democracy, unfortunately, in some parts of the OSCE region," Burns said, in a clear reference to Russia and other ex-Soviet states.

Sunday&#39;s elections are expected to confirm the continuing grip on power of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Disagreements over the organization&#39;s future are part of a broader rift between Russia and the West, which also includes clashes over the future of Serbia&#39;s breakaway region of Kosovo and Iran, suspected by the West of trying to build atom bombs.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Washington was threatening the future of the OSCE by blocking changes to ODIHR, which he told ministers divided "members into first and second class countries."

"This is not the first time that we see such attitude," Lavrov told Russian news agencies. "Unfortunately, it does not give extra hopes for the future of the OSCE."

ACCUSATION

Pro-Kremlin politicians say OSCE observers, who have often said post-Soviet elections fall short of democratic standards, are biased.

But the United States won an apparent victory on Thursday when Kazakhstan, which is bidding for the chairmanship of the OSCE in 2009, pledged to defend the election monitoring ODIHR.

"Kazakhstan commits to preserve ODIHR and its existing mandate and will not support any future efforts to weaken them," said Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin.

Kazakhstan, whose chairmanship bid has been backed by Russia, had initially supported Moscow&#39;s proposals for the election monitoring body.

The apparent Kazakh change of stance, which the United States had demanded, could bolster its chances of winning the chairmanship, at least in 2010.

Despite the election dispute, there were signs of goodwill on another major issue, with Russia saying it still wanted a deal to allow it to remain within the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), which it is set to suspend in two weeks.

"We are open even now to dialogue in the quest for a mutually acceptable solution," Lavrov told ministers.

Russia told current OSCE chairman Spain that it was willing to continue talks on the treaty even after its suspension went ahead.

"My Russian colleague told me that there is a political will to reach a deal but we shouldn&#39;t talk about dates or set time limits," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said after meeting Lavrov.

Russia and the United States were also able to work constructively together, along with France, to formulate a new set of basic principles to reach a peaceful settlement for the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, the OSCE said.

Talks continued over whether to extend the OSCE mission in Kosovo, a proposal backed by Western countries, who say it will be necessary whether the Albanian majority declare independence from Serbia or not.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

WASHINGTON, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Predicting tough times ahead, the NATO commander in Kosovo called on Wednesday for clear guidance on how his force should act if the Serbian province declares independence as expected.

French Lt. Gen. Xavier de Marnhac also said the problem of tense relations between Kosovo&#39;s ethnic Albanian majority and Serb minority would eventually reach a "biological end" as the average age of the Serbs was much older.

Ethnic Albanians and Serbs failed in three days of talks in Austria to reach an agreement on Kosovo&#39;s final status, mediators said on Wednesday. Leaders of the 90 percent Albanian majority are preparing to declare independence within months.

De Marnhac said his KFOR peacekeeping force was prepared for a rise in tensions but declared: "It&#39;s going to be tough and to expect to do that without breaking eggs, forget it. We will definitely break some eggs."

Speaking by videolink from Pristina, he said: "We need, from a military perspective, to have a very clear understanding on what is the international community intent here in Kosovo."

He said this was particularly true for the Serb-dominated north if Serbs and the Serbian government refused to accept the authority of an ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo government.

Western powers are widely expected to accept Kosovo independence under European Union supervision. But Belgrade, backed by Russia, insists Kosovo should remain part of Serbia.

The province, with a population of around 2 million, has been under U.N. administration since NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 to end Serb repression of ethnic Albanians.

At the briefing organized by the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, de Marnhac said the Serbian government had exerted increasing influence in the administration of Serb areas of Kosovo.

He said it appeared Belgrade was considering "some kind of separate ruling of these areas."

POLICING GAP

De Marnhac also said he was worried there could be a gap in the capabilities of Kosovo&#39;s international police force while it made the transition from a U.N. to an EU mission.

"Any gap that might happen in the changing of the international police presence here in Kosovo is a major concern for me," he said.

Albanian riots erupted in Kosovo in March 2004, killing 19 people and catching NATO flat-footed.

Asked if he had requested more troops for his 16,000-strong force, de Marnhac said he could call on reserve forces outside Kosovo but had not done so yet. One such battalion was conducting mission rehearsals in Kosovo now, he said.

In his briefing, de Marnhac also noted the average age of Kosovo&#39;s Albanians was 28, while the figure for Serbs was 54.

"In the mid to long term there will be some kind of biological end to the problem here because, you know, one of the population(s) will simply disappear," he said.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

Kosovo talks end without deal
http://www.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=71648

[hajduk]

BEYOND THE BOMBS
Helping to Rebuild the Balkans

Background

The tragedy in Kosovo clearly demonstrates that reaching for a gun or dropping bombs are not solutions to conflict; that U.S./NATO military attacks do not protect human rights, foster dialogue, nor lay the foundation for sustainable peace. Citizens who value peace and justice must oppose militarism, assist victims, and promote strategies that can help create a sustainable peace.

The roots of the carnage in Yugoslavia and its Kosovo region include the politics of religion, race and class - in Yugoslavia, Europe and the United States. They include cycles of war, slaughter, dispossession and revenge; the abuse of Slavic land and people by generations of rulers obsessed with power. They stretch back to the Crusades and the conflict of empires, into the post-war period when ethnic Albanian immigration into Kosovo was used by nationalist leaders as a pretense for violence. But these roots also include the economics of U.S. militarism: rampant weapons sales fueled by East-West tensions throughout the past 50 years; official and covert Western support for the dissolution of Yugoslavia along nationalist lines; and our nation&#39;s definition of its "superpower" role as military supremacy more than moral leadership.

More recently, the roots of Kosovo lie in the flawed Dayton and Rambouillet meetings. Neither set the foundation or created institutions for sustainable peace and neither included the voices of civil society groups and women. Both reinforced unilateral, short-term responses to complex political problems. And both led inexorably to the mass expulsions and atrocities in Kosovo, the increasing destruction of the civilian infrastructure in Serbia, the hardening of extremist attitudes and actions on both sides of the conflict, an overwhelming refugee problem, and loss of life throughout the region.

In Bosnia and Kosovo, we have been presented with two equally bad alternatives: stand by in the face of human suffering, or bomb. This is a false and tragic choice, but the absence of articulated alternatives lets militarism fill the void. NATO bombing of Serbian cities is harmful; it feeds the roots of violence and kills the roots of a sustainable peace. Ironically, standing by does the same: the absence of Western support for a democratic, civilian, non-violent alternative led to both the Serbian para-militaries and the KLA. As peace activists, we must understand both sets of roots; we must respond to the call for both peace and justice, because neither alone will do in such a complex and tragic situation. And in all this we are aware of how the voices of peace activists are often lost in the maelstrom of militarism. But we must act, in the present and for the future. In our country, confusion is widespread, due in the main to media manipulation. People are deeply moved by the refugee crisis, but, by experience, leery of the escalation of violence and the U.S. role as "global cop."

Some costs of current U.S./NATO policy

The rush to do something -anything - and the absence of a longer-term preventive plan during the past 10 years, has led the U.S. and NATO to do more harm than good. NATO bombing has given the Milosevic government a new wave of nationalist support across Serbia, and exacerbated the repression of civilian opposition. It has disempowered democratic and multicultural civic groups in Serbia and Kosovo. It has polarized those people who might rebuild Yugoslav society. It has drawn Russia back into confrontational politics (where Duma members use the term World War III to describe the current situation). It has damaged the infrastructure of Serbia, with bombs falling in communities that house toxic and even nuclear facilities.

It must be clear to all that Kosovo would have been better off to continue following a strategy of nonviolent direct action as the East Germans and Filipinos did, rather than the KLA strategy of violence that provoked or excused Serbian aggressive retaliation. The devastating, tragic outcome demonstrates the ineffectiveness of preferring violent change over supporting nonviolent groups. It demonstrates the importance of support for nonviolent direct action by citizens groups in the US and elsewhere, and respect and encouragement for nonviolent direct action by the US government, rather than assuming violent action is the only realistic and effective strategy. Similarly, some reports say that before the bombing, the democratic forces in Serbia had a 50% chance of winning the next election because of dissatisfaction with the Serbian government. Now unfortunately the bombing has united all factions behind the present government.

Continued bombing will wreak more havoc on Serbians and Kosovars, and promote nationalist movements in both areas. It will expand and intensify the threat of toxic damage to people in cities and farms, including damage to missile plant, fuel depots, civilian nuclear facilities and the potential release of depleted uranium. It will also expand and intensify the number of refugees across the Balkans, increasing massive human, financial and political problems. Finally, it will solidify the hegemony of NATO and the disempowerment of truly multilateral organizations like the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE is a 55-member organization that includes East and West Europe as well as the United States and Russia. NATO bombing may put pressure on the Milosevic government to pull back troops and control paramilitary police in the short term, and may maintain the alliance&#39;s "credibility," but it can neither protect civilians, nor resolve the conflict, nor help rebuild the fabric of Yugoslav society in the long term. NATO bombing has "created a desert and called it peace."

Principles for alternative strategies

Short and long-term alternative strategies need to be based on principles that can protect human rights and de-escalate violence now, while helping to build a new framework for preventing and/or resolving such conflicts in the future:

1. Strategies must deal with the roots not just the symptoms.

2. Strategies must not exclude, but rather include all parties in resolving the conflict - in this case, a range of Serbian and Kosovar groups, as well as OSCE partners (including Russia).

3. Strategies must take independent initiatives for peace (including positive responses to Serbian initiatives) rather than prolonging war to achieve a Pyrrhic victory.

4. Strategies must use trained, multilateral peacekeeping teams from the UN and civilian monitors from the OSCE (not NATO) -- institutions whose purpose is to protect civilians.

5. Strategies must help heal and rebuild villages, cities and civil society, including massive and sustained humanitarian aid for all displaced persons and support for democratic civil society organizations.

Strategies that Peace Action supports now

1. An immediate cease fire in the bombing, with the offer of new negotiations in response to significant pullbacks of Serbian military forces. A cease-fire will ease the destruction of Serbian and Kosovar communities, provide a context for new negotiations, and maintain international pressure to negotiate.

2. Immediate political and financial support for appropriately trained and sizeable peacekeeping teams that include Russian and other European contingents, not NATO troops. The OSCE, whose civilian monitors were in Kosovo prior to the bombing, is well equipped for this kind of bridge-building between parties in conflict, and could broker a deal. An OSCE contingent of 20,000 people could play a vital role. Peacekeeping teams have the goal of protecting civilians and separating warring parties only - not punishing or replacing the current Serbian government.

3. New negotiations, hosted by the OSCE and the UN, and including Russia. Unlike Dayton, these must include non-governmental organizations in Serbia and Kosovo; continuation of the cease-fire for all warring parties should be part of the negotiation process.

4. Support the peace initiatives of other countries if consistent with Peace Action&#39;s policy.

5. Massive aid for the refugees, designed to ease suffering, reunite families, protect the remaining social structures in the Kosovar and Serbian communities, and reduce the escalation of ethnic tensions in the region.

Strategies Peace Action can support in the future

1. Repayment of UN dues owed by the US, to support the development of a sustainable, viable UN-coordinated economic reconstruction, as well as a creditable police-oriented peacekeeping force.

2. Long-term economic, technical and medical support to rebuild damaged societies in Serbia as well as Kosovo. One root of German fascism was the punishment wrought by the victorious powers in WWI; large-scale economic aid in Europe helped reduce that threat in post World War II Europe.

3. Long-term support for non-governmental, non-violent groups across Serbia. This involves support for schools, teachers, and civic leaders who need to build on what they know about their own cultures so they can construct sustainable, democratic governments that are multicultural rather than ethnically separatist. This means nurturing the roots of peaceful, just communities, rather than the roots of ethnic strife.

4. Extended negotiations to address the needs of ethnic Serbs and Albanians in a rebuilt Kosovo, facilitated by "neutral" third parties, cognizant of but not bound by the history of antagonism in the region.

5. A total cut-off of U.S. weapons transfers to the region, and acceleration of disarmament negotiations with Russia.

6. US ratification of the treaty calling for an International Criminal Court, so that atrocities committed by governmental and other nationalist leaders can be punished without resort to war.

Actions we can take as peace activists

1. Lobby elected representatives using the principles and strategies outlined above.

2. Educate our neighbors about these principles and alternatives through street work, outreach to houses of worship, and the use of local media.

3. Press for massive and sustained increases in aid to victims, in both Kosovo and Serbia; aid should be focused on non-governmental groups whose goal is to help rebuild civil society in these areas.

4. Contribute directly to relief agencies that are helping to heal, rebuild and prevent further destruction.

5. Demand immediate payment of US dues to the UN. (US failure to pay its dues has crippled peacekeeping as well as humanitarian resources.)

6. Oppose the expansion and celebration of NATO (including local actions around the new US Postal Service stamp commemorating NATO&#39;s 50th anniversary).

7. Link with other networks of activists and NGOs around the world. The forces of democracy and peace are everywhere and they are growing, but they are often unseen and silent. We can learn from activists around the world, and they from us. Rebuilding Kosovo and resisting militarism will require the joined energies of activists at home and abroad.

8. Oppose the militarization of US policy, both domestic and foreign. Prison construction at home and weapons sales abroad (through an expanded NATO) are bad for the economy, for people and for democracy.

9. Understand, listen, learn. As US peace activists, our understanding of these new issues needs work. We need to learn more about alternatives to bullying and bystanderism. By listening carefully and openly, learning about the multiple roots of conflict, understanding other perspectives form our own, we can begin to build a new kind of consensus - rooted in shared principles and the common ground of human empathy.

Sources for this draft statement

1. Peace Action statement (3/29/99)

2. Just Peacemaking, edited by Glen Stassen

3. Cora Weiss, comments in Burlington, VT, April 13, 1999.

4. James Carroll, "Clinton&#39;s War" (Boston Globe, 3/30/99) Kennedy School of Government (4/8/99)

5. American Friends Service Committee statement (4/5/99)

6. Statement of Coordinating Committee of The Greens/Green Party USA (ZNet)

7. Edward Said, "Protecting the Kosovars" (ZNet 4/5/99)

8. Message from Milica Dedijar in Belgrade (ZNet 4/5/99)

9. MADRE&#39;s Talking Points of Yugoslav Crisis (4/2/99: ZNet)

10. Background paper by Al Fishman (3/99)

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BELGRADE (Reuters) - The United States alone can choose whether the Balkans experience stability or lawlessness, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Friday, after the failure of negotiations with Kosovo Albanians.

Washington can either continue to back eventual independence for the breakaway province of Kosovo or uphold a United Nations resolution which affirms Serbian sovereignty, he said.

"The stability and peace of the whole region now depends on a U.S. decision whether it will respect U.N. Resolution 1244 or will opt for a gross violation of the resolution and the U.N. Charter," he told Serbia&#39;s Beta news agency.

Resolution 1244, adopted in 1999, authorizes U.N. administration of the province under NATO security, which began that year after the Western alliance drove out Serb forces to end a ruthless crackdown on Albanian separatists.

The resolution affirms the sovereignty of now defunct Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is the successor state.

The United States is not alone in viewing independence as the only viable option for Kosovo, whose 90 percent Albanian population has demanded a clean break with Serbia for the past eight years, following a war which cost over 10,000 lives.

The great majority of the EU&#39;s 27-member states also support statehood if no compromise can be reached with Serbia.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, during a news conference in Nice on Friday with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, said no one wanted to humiliate Serbia or challenge its main big power backer, Russia.

"The Kosovars will have their independence. The Serbs must understand that it&#39;s about neighbors, and that they have to live together," he said. "We would like it to happen at the opportune time ... when no one feels humiliated. Because what we want is peace between the Kosovars and the Serbs."

COOL DOWN TIME

But referring to the legal problems inherent in independence without U.N. endorsement, Sarkozy said French and other NATO troops keeping the peace in Kosovo need clarity, and if further talks can achieve it, Paris is not opposed.

"We don&#39;t want our soldiers ... in an inextricable legal situation," he said. "If we have to give ourselves a few more weeks to cool things down ... France believes that is preferable to considering that December 10 at 2400, everything has to stop."

The date is the deadline for a report to the U.N. by U.S., Russian and EU mediators who wound up their mission in Baden, Austria after four months of talks capped by a three-day conference which ended in deadlock.

The U.S. and EU say the mediation process ends then.

NATO&#39;s Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Friday alliance troops would stick to keeping peace in Kosovo after December 10 even though "it doesn&#39;t look good".

"It should be very clear that NATO&#39;s commitment to the establishment of a peaceful and democratic Kosovo will not end on December 10," he told a seminar on Kosovo in Vienna.

"We will be around on the 11th and 12th and however long is necessary to remain a critical stabilizing influence in the region. No violence will be tolerated by KFOR ... in the sensitive period ahead," he said.

Kostunica said "compromise would be certainly found which would satisfy crucial interests of both Serbs and Albanians" if only Washington affirmed Serbian sovereignty.

"It is clear that all responsibility lies with America and its choice between law and stability, on one hand, and lawlessness and long-term instability on the other," he said.

The failure of the Baden conference, while no surprise, has rung alarm bells in Western capitals. The three mediators will visit Serbia and Kosovo for the last time on Monday.

Serbia dismisses reports it might take military action if Kosovo Albanians declare independence early next year as they have pledged to do, in coordination with Western backers. But it is drafting an "action plan" which includes punitive measures.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Friday suspending Russia&#39;s participation in a key post-Cold War arms treaty, a move which could allow it to deploy more forces close to western Europe.

Putin&#39;s moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty follows months of increasingly aggressive rhetoric directed against the West ahead of a parliamentary election on Sunday and a presidential vote next March.

"President Putin signed the federal law on suspending the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty," the Kremlin said in a short statement. The bill was passed by parliament this month and needed the president&#39;s signature to become law.

The United States, the European Union and NATO had urged Putin not to suspend the treaty, seen as a cornerstone of European security.

But Putin, who has sought to restore the Kremlin&#39;s clout after the chaos which accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union, countered that NATO members had not ratified an amended version of the pact and had flexed their muscles near Russia&#39;s borders.

The suspension, which will come into effect from Dec 12-13, would allow Moscow to boost military forces on its western and southern borders, although Russian generals have said that will not happen immediately.

Polls show that talking tough about Russia standing up to foreigners strikes a chord with millions of Russians who yearn for the Soviet Union&#39;s once mighty superpower status.

Putin has also been sparring with the United States and European Union over plans for a missile defense shield in Europe and proposed independence for Serbia&#39;s Kosovo province.

Signed in 1990 and updated in 1999, the CFE treaty limits the number of battle tanks, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters deployed and stored between the Atlantic and Russia&#39;s Ural mountains.

It was originally negotiated among the then-22 member states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and Russia says it is outdated.

Moscow argues it has been used by an enlarged NATO to limit Russian military movements while NATO builds up forces close to Russia in contravention of earlier agreements.

Western partners have refused to ratify an amended version of the pact until Russia pulls its forces out of Georgia and Moldova as it promised in 1999 when the treaty was reviewed.

Moscow&#39;s key problem with the treaty are flank limits which prevent Russia from moving tanks and artillery around its own territory, Russia&#39;s top generals say.

NATO has said it would be worrying to see large amounts of equipment limited by the treaty suddenly moving around.

But Russia&#39;s top general, Yuri Baluyevsky, said this month said there would be no immediate movement of forces after the moratorium came into effect.

[Tower of Bebel]

Jesus&#33; Hadjuk, you don&#39;t have to post everything on Kosova you can get your hands on.


Originally posted by socialist world
Kosova

After elections – before explosions
Western capitalist powers unable to resolve burning national question

Sascha Stanicic, SAV, CWI Germany, Berlin
Assembly elections took place in the UN protectorate of Kosova (referred to as Kosovo by Serbs) on 17 November. The outcome of the election changed nothing in the power structure in the region which is still formally a Serbian province but under UN administration – the UNMIK. But despite this fact, the crisis in Kosova will deepen as the election has revealed the deep dissatisfaction of the masses.

Only 38 to 43 percent of the electorate (according to different sources) turned out to vote. Of those who did participate, 34 percent voted for the Democratic Party of Kosova (PDK) led by the former Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) leader Hashim Thaci. The PDK replaced the Democratic League of Kosova (LDK) as the strongest parliamentary group but will not be able to form a ‘government’ on its own. But these two major bourgeois political forces do not have any fundamental differences but rather represent different factions of the Kosovan elite which have managed to enrich themselves in the eight years since the NATO war against Serbia brought Kosova under UN control.

Since then the status of this region, which has a population made up 90 percent of Kosovan-Albanians, and around five percent each of Serbs and other minorities such as Roma, has been under dispute. This year the so-called Ahtisaari plan (named after the Finnish UN representative) called for “conditional independence” in which self-governed Serb enclaves were to be formed but control and final decision-making would in reality still lie with the imperialist powers – now the European Union. Many Kosovan-Albanians reject this plan as it would mean de facto ethnic division and no real self-determination while Serbia and Russia reject it because it would mean the end of formal Serbian rule over Kosova. Russia sees any solution with the label ‘independence’ as a dangerous precedent for regions like Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Chechnya or Transdniester where independence movements could see a formally independent Kosova as tailwind for their aspirations.

For the Kosovan workers, youth and unemployed the decisive question, however, is which programme can lead to an end of poverty, hunger, mass unemployment and economic backwardness and for full democratic and national rights.

Today 40 percent of the population live in poverty and another 15 percent in extreme poverty. Mass unemployment is estimated to stand at 60 percent. Mines have not re-opened after the 1999 war because of disputes around the question of ownership and privatisation – in a country with rich natural resources of brown coal, lead, zinc etc. Privatisation in other sectors of the economy has led to lay-offs and workers not receiving their wages. No wonder that worker and youth protests are increasing. They see how the UN administration loots their country while the ordinary working people don&#39;t know how to survive.

Given this situation, the western imperialist powers must fear that without granting some kind of ‘independence’ there could be a revolt or even possibly a civil war, against foreign control of Kosova. They favour giving more power to their vassals in the Kosovan political elite while keeping final control in their hands. At the same time, they face a dilemma because anything which is called ‘independence’ could spark off further conflicts in other Balkan countries such as Bosnia-Hercegovina where the Serb population may use such a development to demand formal independence for their ‘Serb Republic’, which is still part of Bosnia.[...]

You can read the rest of it here:Socialist world (http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2007/11/28kosova.html)

[hajduk]

first thank you comrade for this text
second,i think that this issue is very important becouse it involve two powerful states whitch have nuclear wheapon,so in that manner is very important to observe what happened and what others who are valid to speak about issue,think

[hajduk]

Noam Chomsky and Edward Said On Kosovo
http://www.democracynow.org/1999/4/12/noam..._edward_said_on (http://www.democracynow.org/1999/4/12/noam_chomsky_and_edward_said_on)

[hajduk]

more news at 11

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Friday suspending Russia&#39;s participation in a key post-Cold War arms treaty, a move which could allow it to deploy more forces close to western Europe.

Putin&#39;s moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty follows months of increasingly aggressive rhetoric directed against the West ahead of a parliamentary election on Sunday and a presidential vote next March.

"President Putin signed the federal law on suspending the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty," the Kremlin said in a short statement. The bill was passed by parliament this month and needed the president&#39;s signature to become law.

The United States, the European Union and NATO had urged Putin not to suspend the treaty, seen as a cornerstone of European security.

But Putin, who has sought to restore the Kremlin&#39;s clout after the chaos which accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union, countered that NATO members had not ratified an amended version of the pact and had flexed their muscles near Russia&#39;s borders.

The suspension, which will come into effect from Dec 12-13, would allow Moscow to boost military forces on its western and southern borders, although Russian generals have said that will not happen immediately.

Polls show that talking tough about Russia standing up to foreigners strikes a chord with millions of Russians who yearn for the Soviet Union&#39;s once mighty superpower status.

Putin has also been sparring with the United States and European Union over plans for a missile defense shield in Europe and proposed independence for Serbia&#39;s Kosovo province.

Signed in 1990 and updated in 1999, the CFE treaty limits the number of battle tanks, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters deployed and stored between the Atlantic and Russia&#39;s Ural mountains.

It was originally negotiated among the then-22 member states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and Russia says it is outdated.

Moscow argues it has been used by an enlarged NATO to limit Russian military movements while NATO builds up forces close to Russia in contravention of earlier agreements.

Western partners have refused to ratify an amended version of the pact until Russia pulls its forces out of Georgia and Moldova as it promised in 1999 when the treaty was reviewed.

Moscow&#39;s key problem with the treaty are flank limits which prevent Russia from moving tanks and artillery around its own territory, Russia&#39;s top generals say.

NATO has said it would be worrying to see large amounts of equipment limited by the treaty suddenly moving around.

But Russia&#39;s top general, Yuri Baluyevsky, said this month said there would be no immediate movement of forces after the moratorium came into effect.

[hajduk]

Duplicity Revisited
The similarities between Israel and Yugoslavia
Martin D Brown

The past week has seen major upheavals in both Serbia, with the ousting of Slobodan Milošević, and in Israel, as the peace process fails and the region teeters on the brink of war.

At first glance, there seem to be few similarities between the two, but I would suggest that the manner in which the international community has reacted to them illustrates a fundamental duplicity in international relations—a duplicity that undermines the very tenets of the "New Humanism" supposedly so prevalent in contemporary foreign affairs.

If nothing else, these events should provide a salutary lesson to the peoples of Eastern Europe. For these events sharply illustrate that, in the grand scheme of "Great Power" (admittedly an anachronistic term, but I know of none more suited) strategy and interest, the region hardly registers. Trouble in the Middle East swiftly reveals who is really interested in what, the sudden overthrow of dictatorial ex-Communists included—a point worth reiterating in case the dangling carrot of EU enlargement might have lulled some into thinking otherwise.

Why is this the case? Quite simply because trouble in the Middle East has global significance, but murder and mayhem in the Balkans does not. The break-up of Yugoslavia saw Europe dither for a decade as the Balkans burnt.

By contrast, a few weeks of disturbances in the Middle East has seen the world&#39;s statesmen flock to Israel to help mediate a speedy solution.

Coat-tails of American exceptionalism

Such comparisons can be taken further. On the one hand Serbia, a pariah state responsible for heinous crimes against humanity, is seen as fair game for blatant political coercion, crippling economic sanctions and violent intervention. On the other, Israel is free to act however she sees fit to protect her citizenry and her territorial integrity.

Riding on the coat-tails of "American exceptionalism," she is able to invade neighbouring countries at will, ignore the censure of the international community and suppress Palestinian protests with the full range of measures available to the state.[1]

I do not for a moment reject Israel&#39;s right to protect her national security, nor the necessity of such reactions in the past. I am merely highlighting the fact that, when attempting to do much the same, other states will quickly find the leash pulled tight by the international community.

One man&#39;s terrorist...

Whilst I wouldn&#39;t like to draw any direct parallels between Serbia&#39;s actions against the KLA in Kosovo and Israel&#39;s against the present Palestinian protests, there are some similarities. However, whereas Israel is a trusted ally of America, Serbia happens to be in a relatively unimportant part of the globe, has no advantageous natural resources and (unlike during the Dayton peace process) her political usefulness has long since passed.

Moreover, the influence of Serbia&#39;s erstwhile ally, Russia, who ultimately gave NATO an exit strategy from last year&#39;s "air display," can no longer compete in the New World Order against America&#39;s.

This difference is further illustrated by the strenuous efforts being made by some of the world&#39;s leading statesmen to find a peaceful solution to the present impasse in Israel. Compare this to the biased peace talks at Rambouillet and the inclusion of a blatantly unacceptable section in the proposal (Appendix B, paragraph 8) that demanded NATO be allowed to occupy Kosovo and have free access all across the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The Serbian Parliament&#39;s unsurprising rejection of this proposal and its demand that the OSCE and UN facilitate further negotiations were ignored. The West&#39;s cause thus "legitimised," the bombing started the next day.[2]

Revolution? What revolution?

Although the West has been quick to celebrate Vojislav Koštunica&#39;s victory over Milošević and another East European "revolution," the fall of the last Communist bastion too, Pat FitzPatrick gave short thrift to such suggestions in his article in last week&#39;s Central Europe Review, Delusions of Dominoes.

He&#39;s absolutely right, of course; the events of the last week do not constitute a "revolution" in Serbia. Indeed, as FitzPatrick persuasively argued, these developments represent continuity far more than change.

Indeed, we know it is not a "revolution," as it doesn&#39;t fit the criteria. The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines revolution as "Changes of the most fundamental type-transformations not only of the structure of government but of the whole polity. Such change is not limited to political life but transforms also the social order, the moral basis and the values of the whole society." [3]

The above processes have clearly not occurred in Serbia. The political institutions of the Federation remain, Koštunica&#39;s nationalism is well documented, he has already guaranteed that Milošević won&#39;t face trial in The Hague and promised that Kosovo will remain part of Yugoslavia.

Ironically, this last point suits NATO and the international community perfectly, as they are determined to preserve the principle of uti possidetis and prevent Kosovars from self-determining—a desire that was conspicuous by its absence when Europe was dealing with Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

The point is, of course, that the West desperately wanted it to be a revolution, so that it can invite Serbia into the democratic family of nations and thus "forget" about the troubles over the last decade. A revolution would conveniently solve all these problems and allow attention to be concentrated elsewhere—somewhere more important.

Wither EU expansion?

What, then, will be the outcome? One thing is certain: more effort and time will be expended in trying to find a solution to the troubles in Israel than to finding a solution to the situation in the Balkans. More money will follow, too.

But there may be other, unintended and unwelcome results as well. The EU summit in Biarritz is supposed to finalise the community&#39;s intentions on enlargement prior to December&#39;s Treaty of Nice. But much attention will have already been diverted to the troubles at the other end of the Mediterranean-not least since the French, the current holders of the EU&#39;s presidency, have a deep interest in events in Israel.

Moreover, if, as some doom merchants prophesise, (See The Guardian&#39;s Warning from history points to crash) the Middle East crisis is prolonged and widened, it could trigger an economic recession. Thus, a hesitant EU might find it even more difficult to promote the costly enlargement process to an already sceptical population.

Seems like old times

Perhaps the most ominous developments in Israel are the attacks on symbols and signs of ethnic co-existence and a shared past. As bad as the mob slayings of soldiers and pictures of helicopter gunships bombarding civilians are, it is the attacks on Jewish and Muslim holy sites and enclaves that portend a deeper problem.
Now we are hearing talk that the two sides can no longer live intermingled with one other. To my mind, such talk heralds the possibility of the physical removal of populations, of physical separation.

These are matters that Eastern Europe, especially the former Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic and Poland, are, sadly, all too familiar with. Forced population transfers, so long the preferred method of solving ethnic complications in these corners of the world, might soon be making an unwelcome comeback in the Middle East.

Footnotes:

1. This, of course, is nothing new. The Israeli historian Avi Shlaim charts Israel&#39;s relations with the Arab world and her policy of dealing from a position of unassailable strength, a policy he that argues has long scuppered any lasting peace in the region. The Iron Wall, Penguin Press, London, 2000.

2. For a comprehensive and critical examination of these events see Masters of the Universe? NATO&#39;s Balkan Crusade, edited by Tariq Ali, Verso, London, 2000, which includes essays by Susan L Woodward, Edward Said, Oskar Lafontaine and Noam Chomsky. Also G M Tamás, "The Two Hundred Year War. Searching for the origins of the Kosovo conflict—in the eighteenth century."

3. See also the definitions of the third generation of revolutionary theorists Eisenstadt, Trimberger and Skocpol et al. A good synopsis of their ideas can be found in Goldstone, J, "Theories of Revolution," World Politics Vol 33, No 2, January 1980, pp 425-453.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BELGRADE, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Kosovo&#39;s political limbo is unsustainable and its future must be decided, EU mediator Wolfgang Ischinger said ahead of a final visit to the region on Monday before reporting to the United Nations.

Ischinger and mediators from the United States and Russia were due in Serbia and its breakaway southern province of Kosovo after four months of negotiations ended in failure last week.

They are expected to present to Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaders a draft version of a report that must be submitted to the United Nations by Dec. 10.

Kosovo&#39;s 90-percent Albanian majority says it will then declare independence "in coordination" with its Western backers, probably in early 2008.

Ischinger told the Belgrade daily Blic there were no more options to explore that could lead to compromise between Serbia&#39;s offer of broad autonomy and the Albanian demand for independence after eight years of U.N. rule.

He said the report from the EU-U.S.-Russia &#39;troika&#39; would not recommend how the U.N. should proceed -- an impossible task, given the clear split between Washington and Moscow on Kosovo&#39;s independence and whether or not negotiations should continue.

"Our report to the U.N. secretary-general will present the entire process of negotiations and how and in what measure did the parties participate," the German diplomat said.

"It is very difficult for the Troika to recommend what to do after Dec. 10. We&#39;ll leave that to our governments."

A declaration of independence was one possible scenario, he said. "I believe this act will be coordinated as much as possible with the EU, U.S. and other countries. One thing is certain: the status quo is unsustainable and a decision is necessary".



NATO BOMBING

Kosovo has been under U.N. rule since 1999, when NATO bombs expelled Serb forces accused of the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanian civilians while battling separatist rebels. Almost 18 months of negotiations, led first by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari, have failed to produce any hint of compromise.

Russia blocked Ahtisaari&#39;s plan for EU-supervised independence at the U.N. Security Council, and says talks must continue beyond December.

The United States and European Union says mediation ends with the mediators&#39; report, and there are signs of increasing unity within the 27-member EU to support a declaration of independence.

Serbia has warned of a domino effect of violent unrest in the Balkans if Kosovo becomes independent, raising the possibility that minority Serbs in Bosnia and Albanians in Macedonia could in turn demand to secede from their states.

Serbia&#39;s minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, said the contents of the draft report should be "negotiable".

Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, whose country assumes the EU presidency on Jan. 1, said: "It is essential that the path to independence is coordinated internationally".

"We need a little more time for that," Rupel told German business daily Handelsblatt, but added: "The Kosovars must definitely not wait another year for independence."
__________________________________________________ _____________________

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe joined the United States on Monday in demanding Russia probe alleged abuses in an election won overwhelmingly by President Vladimir Putin&#39;s party, and Germany denounced the poll as undemocratic.

European states expressed alarm over the outcome of Sunday&#39;s parliamentary poll after rights watchdogs said the campaign had been marred by biased media coverage and abuse of government resources in favor of Putin&#39;s United Russia.

But European reaction was tempered by what analysts said was acknowledgement that Moscow, whose cooperation the West seeks in international disputes from Iran to Kosovo, was increasingly impervious to criticism from outside.

With almost all votes counted in the State Duma (lower house) election, Putin&#39;s United Russia had won 64.1 percent of votes -- nearly six times as many as his nearest rival -- amid allegations of electoral fraud and official obstruction of the work of international observers.

"It is vital that the Russian Central Election Commission urgently investigates all allegations of electoral abuses," Britain&#39;s foreign ministry said in a statement, echoing a similar call from Washington on Sunday.

It expressed disappointment that ODIHR (the OSCE&#39;s election arm) had not been able to observe the election. The ODIHR cancelled plans to monitor the poll after a row with Moscow over delays in issuing visas.

France took a similar line, with a foreign ministry spokeswoman expressing the hope that Moscow would "shed light" on the allegations of voting irregularities.

Sharper reaction came from German Chancellor Angela Merkel&#39;s government, seen as less close to Putin than that of her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder.

"There can be no doubt. Measured by our standards, it was neither a free, fair nor democratic election," spokesman Thomas Steg told a regular news conference.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also criticized in unusually strong terms the election and demanded Russia clear up irregularities surrounding the vote.

The Kremlin said the vote provided a ringing endorsement of Putin, who is now expected to try and hold onto the reins of power after his term ends next year. But critics accused authorities of ensuring victory was never in doubt.

There was no immediate reaction from NATO or the European Union Presidency, but the EU commissioner responsible for ties between Brussels and Moscow said there had been clear abuses.

"We saw some violations of basic rights, notably free speech and assembly rights," EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told reporters in Berlin.

The 27-member EU wants to negotiate a new "strategic partnership" with Russia but is struggling to get to grips with an energy giant enjoying the fruits of high prices for oil and showing increasing assertiveness on the world stage.

PUTIN "LIKE CHAVEZ"

"This election campaign was an illustration of what certain ideologies in Kremlin call managed democracy. The emphasis is on the first part of the concept," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said on his website, citing biased reporting from "&#39;made-to-order&#39; TV channels" in Putin&#39;s favor.

Graham Watson, leader of the liberal faction in the European Parliament, said the election process showed Putin was "a populist with the trappings of a dictator".

"He is the same category as Hugo Chavez, only he is more dangerous," he added in a statement, likening Putin to the left-winger leader of oil-rich Venezuela.

Analysts in Brussels said the landslide victory for Putin&#39;s party would likely mean the EU having to deal with an even more self-confident Kremlin that would pursue a policy of "divide-and-rule" over Europe&#39;s national governments.

"I guess the attitude is one of unsurprised resignation," said Michael Emerson, Russian expert at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies.

"I would guess that the first conclusion to be drawn by the EU countries is that they must carefully work together in their relations with Russia so that the image of weak division is not the one that prevails."

[hajduk]

Susan Sontag and the rape of American thinking
by Jared Israel
http://globalresistance.com/articles/jared/susan2.htm

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BELGRADE, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Serbia should organise protests and military exercises to warn Kosovo and its Western backers it will not tolerate a declaration of independence by the breakaway province, a Serb Orthodox Church leader said on Tuesday.

Bishop Artemije, the most senior Orthodox Church official in southern Serbia, said in an open letter that Serbia must act decisively "the day before" and give a serious warning of what might happen if Kosovo declared independence.

Serbia should close the border between Kosovo and Serbia for three days, call in monitors from China, Russia, India and Pakistan, and mobilise army reservists, Artemije wrote.

"We should organise military exercises in areas close to Kosovo and we should organise massive demonstrations in Belgrade and other cities so everybody realises how important Kosovo is to Serbia," he said in the letter to local media.

Almost 18 months of internationally mediated talks, concluded last week, failed to produce a compromise between Serbia&#39;s offer of autonomy and the independence demands of Kosovo&#39;s 90-percent Albanian majority.

Kosovo plans to declare independence within months.

The United States and almost all European Union member states support Kosovo&#39;s move as the best option for stability in the Balkans. Serbia says independence is out of the question for a territory it regards as its religious heartland.

The southern province has been under U.N. rule since 1999 when NATO bombs expelled Serb forces accused of killing ethnic Albanian civilians while battling separatist rebels.

Artemije wrote Belgrade should act before it is too late because any actions coming the day after a declaration of independence would be "pointless".

"There is no Kosovo problem," Artemije concluded. "There is a problem of the Albanian minority in Serbia that deserves a solution based on the way similar problems were solved in all democratic countries of the world."

The Serb Orthodox Church has been very vocal on the protection of more than 1,000 Serb monasteries and churches in the province, and it is also trying to reclaim large amounts of land it owned before World War Two. Some 140 religious monuments have been attacked by vandals since the end of the 1998-99 war.

Nenad Lajbensperger, a historian at the Serbian Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, said Kosovo&#39;s almost mythical status in Serbian history had been ingrained in the national psyche.

"The Church was what kept Serb identity alive during Ottoman rule, and that identity and culture was preserved through churches in Kosovo that still stand today," he said.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

BELGRADE, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Russia insisted on Monday the U.N. Security Council should have the final word on Serbia&#39;s breakaway Kosovo province, putting it on a collision course with the West days before mediators report to the United Nations.

Moscow&#39;s Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, visiting Belgrade with fellow envoys from the EU and United States after the failure of talks last week, said the four-month dialogue had been the most serious since the 1998-99 war, and should continue.

"The Security Council began considering this question and this question will be finally resolved in the Security Council," the diplomat told a news conference.

He said later in Kosovo that there was "room for continued negotiation", something the West says would be pointless. Russia, which holds a veto in the U.N. Security Council, has already blocked one Western-backed independence plan.

American mediator Frank Wisner said it would be up to individual governments to decide how to proceed after the mediators&#39; report is submitted to the United Nations by Dec 10.

"It is a matter for governments to take over and carry forward thereafter," he said. "Our positions as national governments have been articulated elsewhere. There are no surprises there."

Washington and almost all EU member states support Kosovo&#39;s independence from Serbia as the best option for stability in the Balkans and leaders of Kosovo&#39;s 90-percent Albanian majority say they will declare it within months.

The mediators will submit their report to the United Nations by next Monday, after failing at talks last week to bridge the gap between Serbia&#39;s offer of broad autonomy and the Kosovo Albanian independence demand.



NO "HASTY DECISIONS"

"This report will conclude that the two sides have not been able to reach agreement," said EU mediator Wolfgang Ischinger. It would not prescribe a solution, or a way forward. "We are not making any proposals that could surprise anyone."

Kosovo has been under U.N. rule since 1999, when NATO bombs expelled Serb forces accused of the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanian civilians while battling separatist rebels. Almost 18 months of negotiations, led first by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari, have failed to produce compromise.

Ischinger told the Serb daily Blic that a unilateral declaration of independence was one possible scenario.

"I believe this will be coordinated as much as possible with the EU, U.S. and others," he said. "One thing is certain: the status quo is unsustainable and a decision is needed."

The U.N. Security Council is expected to discuss the report on Dec. 19.

"This is the end of the process," Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu said after meeting the envoys in Pristina. "Very soon we will take steps in coordination with our partners."

Serb Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said Serbia had time "to convince certain Council members it is better to continue talks than take unilateral steps that would destabilise the region".

In Tirana, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi urged Kosovo not to rush to any "hasty decisions" that might undermine the unity of the 27-member EU, which is due to take over supervision of the territory from the United Nations.

"This big operation will be irreparably ruined if there were hasty gestures on December 10," he said. Diplomats say a declaration is unlikely before mid-January.

[hajduk]

Vojislav Kostunica – Milosevic’s Opponent or Successor?

Vojislav Kostunica – Milosevic’s Successor?

Milosevic’s election rival Kostunica daily states that he will not renounce his deepest national emotions; in Kosovahe posed smiling with a rifle in hand and has persistently defended Karadzic.

On Sunday, August 13, Nenad Canak, president of the Social Democratic League of Vojvodina, called upon Serbian voters, in spite of everything, to “plug their noses” and to vote for the united opposition. When the issue is removing Milosevic from power, the citizens of Serbia would likely be prepared to eliminate their “sense of smell”, but this time, that will not be enough. The contribution is, no more, no less, than common sense.
The reason for this can be shown not only through recollections on the democratic balance of Serbia in the last decade, but also through analysis of the realistic, strategic opinions of the politics embodied in the candidacy of Vojislav Kostunica. Certain citizens of Serbia have not a personal aversion, but rather an aversion in principle to Kostunica, when they recall his smiling face in Kosovatwo and a half years ago when he posed for photographers, rifle in hand. Other citizens of Serbia have not a personal aversion, but rather an aversion in principle to Kostunica, when they recall his persistence defense of Radovan Karadzic and his national concept which took the lives of thousands of people in Bosnia. That principle, in other words, has come out of the belief that Vojislav Kostunica defended those individuals and those political options which have been proclaimed criminal by the rest of the democratic world. These recollections in and of themselves would not be so frightful were it not Kostunica himself that were provoking them. As the presidential candidate for the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, in recent days he has not passed up a single opportunity to emphasize that he has not turned his back on his “deepest national emotions and political inclinations”. Serbs, who otherwise suffer from collective amnesia for the simple reason that one cannot live with the sheer amount of evil, certainly do not need a politician who would remove the vampires of the past from their graves. In addition, this is what Vojislav Zeselj is already doing, suggesting that they return all of the “lost Serbian land”. It is certain that in this political rhetoric, Kostunica cannot compete.

Of course, it is not recommended to teach politicians the ABCs of politics, where one of the first rules is that politics stems from reason, and not from emotion. The issue is a simple exchange of themes, which is often in practice by the governing regime. Each analysis based on the rationalization of the problems in Serbia is cast aside with the argument that everyone who loves the Serbian nation cannot think so critically and heartlessly of the last decade of Serbian history. What is the problem? The problem is simply that there has not been a politician who could explain to the nation several basic facts. First, that the Serbian state, which we often refer to, perhaps subconsciously, as a concept of space, does not exist. It is not known where its borders begin, and where they end. Second, the Yugoslav state also does not exist. Montenegro is only on paper a member of the allied states. In addition, even if everything within the Yugoslav alliance were in the best order, the fact is that it is still not an internationally recognized state. Third, that the Serbian economy is on its last legs, and that in the last ten years everyone that could has left, especially highly educated experts. Also that the nation was severely demolished during NATO bombing, and that in the last ten years, technology has not been upgraded or replaced, the nation has been isolated from the world and has been subject to a regime of harsh sanctions. We can continue, however, and this is sufficient for the apocalyptic mosaic which is filled by the main actors of Serbian politics, who do not have the courage to admit that the centuries old dream of a Greater Serbia has been historically defeated.

Complete Failure

In spite of everything, Vojislav Kostunica holds most important his “national emotions”, which imply, as he himself said, the rejection of verbal and material support from the United States, for the US, along with Milosevic is “most responsible for the many years of suffering endured by the Serbian people”. Of course, he does not mention the suffering of all those people who were the victims of Milosevic’s national policies, the policies which Vojislav Kostunica has been a supporter of all these years. Indeed, he even announced that he would quickly normalize relations with those countries that Serbia was not at war with, meaning Europe, and most slowly, of course, with its neighboring states. It could be said that this, from the foreign policy perspective, is completely characteristic for Serbia. Like when the ruling regime suggested to its citizens that Russia was willing to enter into a world war for the sake of Serbia, and then when all of those hopes were not fulfilled, they remained firm in their belief that the Russian and Western interests were opposite, now Kostunica is trying to “play” on the opposite interests of Europe and America. Like in the former story, Serbia is an important weight on the scales of disbalance, and Kostunica is no more or less than an important factor in world politics. Then where exactly, is the problem in the conflict between the head and the heart?

It is in the inability to realistically see the position of Serbia in the world, and to see the possible exit from the complete failure which is threatening an entire nation and county. Kostunica can not see this because he simply loves his nation and his people so much that he is not capable of seeing that Serbia is a small country, with not enough people to fulfill the role which was intended for them. Therefore, he tried, in his imaginary world, where he is seen as an important man, to speak arrogantly and to make demands. To whom? To America. It would be very nice, and Kostunica would be seen as the “tough guy” of European anti-Americanism if the Americans only cared about that, which, unfortunately, they don’t. The only one who should care about what kind of future relations they will have with America would be Serbia itself. Not only because this is a world superpower, unusually important for the European continent, but also because during the 20th century, Serbia has received significant financial and economic aid and political support from America. However, besides the Kosovaconflict and the battle against the Turks in the world politics and activities of the intellectual elite, nothing else functions as historical knowledge, and I assume that Kostunica is not acquainted with that portion of Serbian history.

Orwellian Fata Morgana

There is something strange in failure. That is a refusal to look the truth in the eye. The regime does this by increasing the result of “renewal and construction”, with an attempt to reaffirm their “indefiniteness” and its role as the main opponent in the fight against the “New World movement”. Television spots with flowery meadows and fat cows who feed upon them and happy young men and women which will ensure the biological renewal of Serbia are further arguments for the projection of this picture of the present and future. The united opposition has given its contribution to this Orwellian fata morgana emphasizing that they will certainly beat Milosevic in the elections, and that with Vojislav Kostunica at the head, as an example of a principled and uncorrupt man. Principled in what? Likely in this political orientation in which various public opinion polls have shown that Kostunica is a candidate who is respected by the voters of the competition. For example, the public polls showed that 19% of radicals were prepared to vote for him. Of course, all of these calculations count if over 70% of the voters in Serbia go to the polls, which is, of course, enough to see the intentions to falsify of the election results by the old regime. But this is not all. To be or not, Serbia assumes the accusation of all those who do not feel that Kostunica is an alternative to Milosevic, and this with the exceptional claim that each citizen who does not go to the polls has “practically given their vote to Milosevic”. In this short “history of failure”, it is also important to note the particular candidate Vojislav Mihailovic of the Serbian Renewal Movement, like the opposition’s accusations directed at Vuk Draskovic that he is “Slobo’s man”. Indeed, their argument fails with the two attempted assassinations that Vuk barely survived, but otherwise, it could pass.

What is the truth? There is a huge likeliness that Milosevic will win the elections not because he is a democrat, but because he is not. Vojislav Kostunica, who is the head of the Democratic Party of Serbia received an average of 10% of the vote at previous elections does not have the energy, nor the ability to convince, nor an outlined program for the future. For years he read his statements from his party’s headquarters, statements which were often, due to their nationalistic-patriotic atmosphere, or support for Milosevic’s national concepts, also broadcast on national television. On the other hand, Kostunica’s election campaign will be based on, as his campaign staff have announced, the slogan “we will not change anything in order to change everything”. He himself added that his campaign would “exclude the language of hate and revenge and everything that goes along with it”.

I believe that this kind of an election promise says only how the Democratic Opposition of Serbia has underestimated the citizens of its own nation. If a man is of sound reason, it is difficult for him to go to the polls and vote for a person who claims that he will change nothing, and in so doing will change everything. I have to pinch myself every time I hear this slogan, to see if I am awake or dreaming. A Serbian peasant long ago immortalized this nebulous idea by his own politician in the old Serbian phrase, which combines within it the philosophy of the absurd and Einstein’s theory of relativity, which says: “It can be, but does not have to mean anything”. The only rational justification for this type of a statement is the fact that in Serbia, politics is a very dangerous profession. Hanging one’s dirty political wash out to dry and calling upon the responsibility of others can cost someone their head, which all of the actors in the opposition know well enough.

Nebulous Ideas

Therefore, they are trying, perhaps, to anesthetize the regime and its voting body by promising that nothing will happen if the Democratic Opposition of Serbia wins at the next elections. Naive, of course, but in this complete disorientation it is possible. There remains the question of how certain members of the united opposition, who certainly share Kostunica’s perspectives, and who themselves are examples of courage in judging the policies which have brought the Serbs ten years of war, and could accept his candidacy which assumes supporting his well known “emotions” and “beliefs”? Nenad Canak was likely trying to explain this when he said:“Kostunica is not the future of this country, but rather he is a man who needs to play the role of the first step to removing Milosevic from his position, and that is all”. One must raise the question as to whether among all of the Serbian opposition there exists a man who could be the future of Serbia. If not, then wouldn’t it be, as a moral act, necessary to inform the public and inform them that Serbia does not have a political alternative? That its democratic opposition is not capable of thinking of the future outside of the continuity of those national options which has brought the country, the Serbian people and its citizens complete failure?

Three Realities

Perhaps the Serbian opposition did not have the time for this type of self-awareness&#33; Furthermore, in the last months, they have only been dealing with “quotas” belonging to their individual parties, or rather the number of seats which they need to ensure for themselves. In addition, the licitations concerning who should take which of the promised political functions. After the split of the Serbian renewal movement, they are now engaged in internal showdowns and messages to Vuk Draskovic to forget about coalitions at the local level. However, he has been responding with the same measures, dislocated from the Belgrade suburbs, in Budva, under the constant fear of a new assassination attempt. While the Serbian opposition exists in its own special reality, the citizens are living in another, and Milosevic and his people in a third. All three realities are in conflict with one another.

What is the solution in the end? I can only agree with my friend, journalist Peter Lukovic who, commenting on Kostunica’s candidacy, sided with those citizens who “took out passports yesterday, so that today they could flee to a world where there is no room for the likes of Milosevic and Kostunica”. I also support his standpoint that the dilemma between winners and losers is fictitious, for who cares when it comes out the same? I am well aware that because of my standpoint, I could be proclaimed a person who damages the historical decision: vote against Slobo&#33; But what can I do – principles, united with common sense are all I have left in my life. And in Serbia, the country in which I live, that alone is something.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec 5 (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Wednesday it was confident Kosovo Albanians would not rush the West into a decision on the territory&#39;s fate after a Dec. 10 U.N. report on failed negotiations with Serbia.

"I fully sympathise with everybody who says we now need a solution very soon," the head of the U.N. administration in the territory, Joachim Ruecker, told a news conference. "But I also think it is very, very important to get the next steps right."

Ruecker said leaders of Kosovo&#39;s 90-percent Albanian majority understood the need to let the U.N. and European Union draw conclusions from the report, "and then go from there."

Kosovo Albanians say the next step is a declaration of independence, defying Russia and ending eight years of U.N.-imposed limbo since NATO bombs wrested control of the province from Slobodan Milosevic&#39;s Serbia.

But Kosovo&#39;s prime minister-apparent, ex-guerrilla fighter Hashim Thaci, has stressed the declaration will be made "in close coordination" with those countries likely to recognise it - the United States and major EU states.

Political sources in Kosovo say such a move is unlikely before mid-January, and might have to wait until after Serbia holds a presidential election -- possibly in late January - to avoid boosting the chances of Serb ultranationalists.



NATO BRACED

Mediators from the United States, Russia and the European Union ended four months of inconclusive talks last week in Austria, saying compromise had proved impossible.

Russia insists the issue be decided by the U.N. Security Council. Moscow has already blocked a Western-backed plan for EU-supervised independence by threatening to use its veto.

The mediators say their report, which is due by Monday, will not prescribe a solution, or a way forward. The Security Council is expected to discuss the document on Dec. 19.

Washington and almost all EU member states support Kosovo&#39;s independence as the best option for stability in the Balkans.

But they want to coordinate a declaration to minimise the fallout and protect the unity of the 27-member EU, which is preparing to deploy 1,800 police officers and judges.

"I know the people of Kosovo have enough maturity to let those international mechanisms work, let them draw their conclusions and then go from there to the following steps, which have to be decided by governments," said Ruecker.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO allies bombed for 11 weeks to halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanian civilians - the 90-percent majority.

A 16,000-strong NATO-led peace force is braced for possible unrest or a backlash from the Serb north when Kosovo Albanians strike out alone. Serbia says it is lining up counter-measures, which could include a trade embargo and border closures.

[hajduk]

The NATO-Media
Lie Machine
“Genocide” in Kosovo?
By Edward S. Herman & David Peterson

NATO’s “humanitarian” enterprise in Kosovo was built on a structure of lies, many of them flowing from NATO headquarters and officials of the NATO powers, and uncritically passed along by the mainstream media of the NATO countries. One of the great ironies of Operation Allied Force, NATO’s brief 1999 war against Serbia, was that Yugoslavia’s broadcasting facilities were bombed by NATO on the claim that they were a “lie machine” serving the Yugoslav apparatus of war. This was contrasted with the NATO media, which in the view of NATO officials, and in that of media personnel as well, were “objective” and provided what Richard Holbrooke described as “exemplary” coverage. It never occurred to media leaders and journalists that Holbrooke’s accolade should embarrass them—although were Slobodan Milosevic to have lauded the Serb media’s performance as “exemplary” we suspect their NATO-bloc counterparts would have interpreted this as proof of the “lie machine” accusation. The double standard runs deep.

An important reason for the congruity between Holbrooke’s and the media’s views was the sense of self-righteousness that accompanied Operation Allied Force. The belief that NATO was fighting a “just war” against an evil enemy had been so well cultivated over the prior decade that for the media, “getting on the team” and thereby promoting the war effort seemed perfectly consistent with “objective” news reporting. This perspective, which was not shared by most governments and media outside NATO, or by a vigorous but marginalized media within the NATO countries, was ideal from the viewpoint of the NATO war managers, as it made their mainstream media into de facto propaganda arms of NATO. Ultimately, this gave NATO and its dominant governments a freedom to ignore both international opinion and international law—and to destroy and kill—that would have been far more difficult to achieve if their media’s performance had been less “exemplary.”


Genocide Politicized

One of the many successes of the NATO-media lie machine was effectively pinning the label of “genocide” on the Serbs for their operations in Kosovo. “Genocide,” like “terrorism,” is an invidious but fuzzy word, that has long been used in propaganda to describe the conduct of official enemies. It conjures up images of Nazi death camps and is frequently used along with the word “holocaust” to describe killings that are being condemned. On the Nazi-Jewish Holocaust model, genocide implies the attempt to wipe out an entire people. But in the Genocide Convention of 1948 the word was defined more loosely as any act “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.” The Convention even included in genocide acts that were causing serious “mental harm” or inflicting “conditions of life” aimed at such destruction. This vagueness has contributed to its politicization, and Peter Novick notes how in the 1950s its users “focused almost exclusively on the crimes—sometimes real, sometimes imagined—of the Soviet bloc” (The Holocaust in American Life).

It is a notorious fact that the Clinton administration carefully refrained from using the word genocide to apply to the huge 1994 Rwanda massacres of Tutsis by the Hutus. To have allowed the word to be used there would have suggested a need to act, and having decided not to act, the decision to avoid using an emotive word that might have mobilized public opinion on the need to act followed accordingly. By contrast, in the case of Kosovo, the decision to act demanded the mobilization of opinion to support violent intervention, so the aggressive use of the word genocide followed.

In the context of the wars over the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and in its opportunistic use elsewhere, the word genocide has been applied loosely wherever people are killed who are deemed “worthy” victims. In our view this is not only opportunism but also a corruption of meaning of a word whose unique sense implies not just killing or massacre but an attempted extermination of a people, in whole or substantial part.


Genocide Pinned on Serbia

The word genocide was applied to the Serbs in the early 1990s by some Western analysts and journalists who had aligned themselves with other Yugoslav factions (notably the Bosnian Muslims), but it came into intense use during the NATO 78-day bombing campaign and briefly thereafter. In good part this escalated usage was a result of the virtual hysteria of NATO leaders at the Serb reaction to their bombing, which had been put forward as necessary to stop Serb brutalities against the Kosovo Albanians but which caused their exponential increase. With the help of the media, and cries of genocide, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Gerhard Schroeder, and other NATO spokespersons were able to transform the consequences of their bombing strategy—the refugee crisis—into its retrospective justification.

To make their case the NATO leaders needed generous numbers of victims, stories of Serb terror, and images of women and children in flight or being put on expulsion trains, allowing recollections of trains to Auschwitz. The number allegedly “missing” and suggested to represent massacre victims by William Cohen on May 16 was 100,000, a figure which peaked at 500,000 in a State Department estimate. Both during and after the bombing campaign the main interest of the cooperative NATO media was in finding victims; a scramble to unearth and report on “mass graves” was launched. There were many victims, but the media’s appetite for them was insatiable and their gullibility led them to make numerous errors, exaggerations, and misrepresentations (see Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, eds., Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, forthcoming from Pluto press, for many illustrations). Numerous published images of departing Albanian woman and children were linked to the “Holocaust,” although as one British commentator noted “the Nazis did not put Jews on the train to Israel, as the Serbs are now putting ethnic Albanian Kosovars on the train to Albania” (Julie Burchill, Guardian, April 10, 1999).

The word genocide was applied to Serb operations in Kosovo even before the NATO bombing, although the number killed in the prior 15 months was perhaps 2,000 on all sides and despite the fact that there was no evidence of an intent to exterminate or expel all Albanians. The Kosovo conflict was a civil war with defining ethnic overtones and brutal but not unfamiliar repression (less ferocious than that carried out by the Croatian army against the Krajina Serbs in August 1995, in which some 2,500 civilians were slaughtered in the course of a few days). Even for the period of the bombing the term genocide is ludicrously inapplicable. The Serb reaction to bombing, while frequently savage, was based on their correct understanding that the KLA was linked to NATO and that NATO was giving it air support (Tom Walker and Aidan Laverty, “CIA Aided Kosovo Guerrilla Army,” Sunday Times [London], March 13, 2000). Their brutalities and expulsions were concentrated in KLA stronghold areas, and those expelled were sent not to death camps but to safe havens outside Kosovo. The intensive postwar search for killings and mass graves has produced under 3,000 dead bodies from all causes—killings of the same order of magnitude as the 1995 Krajina massacres of Serbs, carried out with U.S. support.

In short, the use of the word genocide for Serb actions in Kosovo was gross propaganda rhetoric designed to mislead as to the facts and to provide the moral basis for aggressive intervention. It paralleled the use of the War Crimes Tribunal to indict Milosevic in the midst of the NATO bombing campaign—an indictment that was also designed to justify NATO’s increasingly civilian-oriented (and illegal) bombing of Serbia by demonizing the head of the state under NATO attack.

Media & Left NATO Propaganda

Having encouraged the disintegration of Yugoslavia from 1991, and actually obstructed peaceful solutions to the problem of protecting minorities in breakaway states, the policies of Germany and the United States in particular assured ethnic violence. Their chosen villain was Serbia, and an intense official and media focus on Serb crimes followed. This involved not only selectivity of outrage and a misreading of causes and locus of responsibility, but also a demonization process helped along by the one-sided, ahistorical portrayal of events frequently infused with disinformation (as in the British news station ITN’s fabrication of a “death” or “concentration” camp at the Trnopolje refugee center in 1992; see Thomas Deichmann, “The Picture That Fooled the World,” Living Marxism, Feb. 1997).

Demonization and the continuous purveying of atrocity news created a moral environment receptive to charges of genocide. This reached deeply into the liberal and left communities and media, with many liberals or leftists passionate supporters of “doing something,” including the NATO bombing war. This was to be expected of the New Republic, where the notion of collective Serb guilt a la Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, conveniently justifying attacking Serbian civil society and committing war crimes, found a happy home. (Stacy Sullivan, “Milosevic’s Willing Executioners,” New Republic, May 10, 1999). But it also affected the Nation, whose UN Correspondent Ian Williams was pleased to see the UN bypassed in the interest of humanitarian bombing (April 2, 1999), and where Kai Bird (June 14, 1999) and Christopher Hitchens (November 29, 1999, among others) both found Serb behavior “genocidal” in the course of their quasi-defenses of NATO policy. Only Hitchens seemed to suggest that the Serbs were trying to exterminate a people (based on ludicrous arguments; see Herman, “Hitchens on Serbia and East Timor,” Z Magazine, April 1999).

In the mainstream media, genocide was used even more lavishly and uncritically. Often it was presented in the form of assertions by officials, with numbers like Cohen’s 100,000, but reporters or commentators rarely if ever challenged the figures or questioned whether the actions designated as genocidal were intended to exterminate a people. It was rare indeed to mention the difference between trains to Auschwitz and to the Albanian border, as did Julie Churchill in the Guardian.

Genocide was used as a symbol of aversion and disapproval, justifying extreme measures against the “dictator” and his people—the media felt impelled to call Milosevic a “dictator” even though this put a crimp in condemning “ordinary Serbs” as responsible for his actions, but they managed to do both at the same time (Anthony Lewis, “The Question of Evil,” NYT, June 22, 1999). Some commentators were carried away by their own passion, David Rieff, a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Chistopher Hitchens favorite, asserting that “the Milosevic regime was trying to eradicate an entire people” (“Wars Without End?,” NYT, September 23, 1999). But most commentators were satisfied with using the word without getting specific as to meaning or providing facts. They never acknowledged any military rationale to the post-bombing expulsions and killings: it was evil people doing evil things for evil reasons.

In a masterpiece of the NATO anti-genocide apologetics genre, the New York Times provided Sebastian Junger’s “A Different Kind of Killing” (NYT Magazine, February 27, 2000), where it is explained that even if the number of bodies found in Kosovo were not of genocidal scope and some stories turned out to be untrue, nevertheless “A single murder can be considered an act of genocide if it can be shown that there was an intent to kill everyone else in that person’s group.” Junger then recounts his visit to the site of an unclaimed body of a teenage woman, allegedly kidnapped, raped, and killed by Serbian “irregular forces.” Junger then says that, “it was not until this century that a mechanized army carried out such crimes in the service of its government. That is genocide; the rest is just violence.” Junger makes not the slightest effort to show that the “irregular forces” had done this as part of a government plan and “in the service of its government” rather than on their own, or that the KLA or U.S. army didn’t carry out similar acts. In short, this is completely worthless nonsense—but it pins the word genocide on the official enemy, and therefore the New York Times allows this travesty to appear in its sunday magazine.


Some Comparative Data

We can also measure the spectacular politicization of the word genocide by comparing its lavish use in describing Serb conduct in Kosovo with its minimal use for Turkey’s treatment of its Kurds in the 1990s (indeed, for decades) and Indonesia’s treatment of East Timorese in 1999 as well as in earlier years. The force of this comparison is strengthened by the facts that Turkey killed far more Kurds in the 1990s than the Serbs killed Albanians in Kosovo, not only before the bombing (whose number presumably elicited the “humanitarian” intervention) but even including those killed during the 78-day bombing and war (see Chomsky’s New Military Humanism). Indonesia’s invasion-occupation led to the death of almost a third of the East Timor population (1975-1980), and Indonesia was subsequently responsible for the 1998-1999 slaughter and expulsion of a still untold number of East Timorese associated with a UN-sponsored election. The number of East Timorese killed in this latest round of Indonesian terror far exceeded the pre-bombing total of Kosovo Albanian victims—estimates run from 3,000-6,000 killed even before the August 30, 1999 referendum unleashed unrestrained Indonesian destruction and murder—and the grand total for 1999 is surely far larger than the overall total of Kosovo Albanians killed by the Serbs in 1998 and 1999.

But as Turkey and Indonesia are clients of the United States and the recipients of aid, military supplies, and diplomatic support from the United States, Britain, and the Western powers generally, their human rights crimes are never referred to by Western officials as genocide. In fact, in a droll feature of the NATO campaign against Serb genocide in Kosovo, Turkey, a member of NATO, took part in the war against Yugoslavia with direct bombing missions and the provision of bases for flights of other NATO powers, perhaps generously reallocating its own forces from the ethnic cleansing of Kurds to “humanitarian” NATO service.

Given this warm relationship between the NATO powers and Turkey and Indonesia, we would expect the NATO media to follow in the footsteps of their leaders and treat Turkey and Indonesia kindly, refraining from serious investigative effort and the enthusiastic searches for “mass graves” they pursued in Kosovo, and avoiding the use of an invidious word like genocide in reference to these client states, no matter how applicable and inconsistent with their usage of the word as regards Serbia. This expectation is fully realized.

We will limit ourselves here to usage in the New York Times, although we believe the findings applicable to the general run of mainstream media. In the Times the bias is startling, and has some unexpected sidelights. The accompanying table shows that in the year 1999, the word genocide was ascribed to the Serbs in Kosovo in 85 different articles, including 15 that began on the front page, and in 16 editorials and op-ed columns. In some of these articles the word was used repeatedly. (In one remarkable example, during the current year and outside our sample proper, Michael Ignatieff repeated the word genocide 11 times in a single op-ed [February 13, 2000]).

By contrast, the word showed up in the Times in only 9 items referring to East Timor in 1999, only once in an editorial or opinion piece, and only 15 times for East Timor in the entire decade of the 1990s. The word was never used in a front-page article during the 1990s. Furthermore, no Times reporter or editorial writer ever used the word genocide in application to East Timor over the entire period, 1975-1999. (That is to say, in all instances where the word did appear, it did not express the opinion of the Times writer, but was attributed to another source.) Anthony Lewis, who repeatedly referred to Serb action as genocidal and called for Western intervention there, spoke of “human rights abuses in East Timor” (July 12, 1993), but he never called it genocide or urged intervention. Barbara Crossette repeatedly complimented Suharto for bringing “stability” to the region. In a notable mention of the word genocide, veteran Times reporter Henry Kamm explicitly denied its application to East Timor, calling such usage “hyperbole,” and allocating the mass deaths to “cruel warfare and the starvation that accompanied it on this historically food-short island” (February 15, 1981).

Equally remarkable, the table also shows that the word genocide was never once used in application to Turkey and its treatment of its Kurds in 1999, and was used only five times for such a relationship in the decade of the 1990s, never in a front-page article. However, in a wonderful illustration of how the Times follows the line of U.S. foreign policy, the table shows that Iraq’s mistreatment of its Kurds in the years 1990-1999 was described as genocidal 22 times, in five cases in front-page articles.


In short, only “worthy victims”—that is, the victims of officially designated enemies like Yugoslavia and Iraq—suffer from genocide; those that are unworthy, like East Timorese and the Turkish Kurds, are merely subject to “cruel warfare” and adverse natural forces, as Henry Kamm explained in regard to East Timor. So the Western media and “international community” will be mobilized on behalf of the former, and the latter will be compelled to suffer in silence. But as we have stressed, there never was genocide in Kosovo, so that the NATO war there was based on a lie. And that lie, like the May 27 indictment of Milosevic by the War Crimes Tribunal, served mainly to provide a moral cover that allowed NATO to bomb the hostage population of Serbia into submission. That population now joins Iraq’s in being subject to further “sanctions of mass destruction” whose effects offer a much closer fit to “genocide” than the Serb actions which, allegedly, precipitated NATO’s war.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec 6 (Reuters) - A Kosovo TV station has for months displayed a number at the top of screens, counting down the days until mediators report to the United Nations on failed talks on the breakaway Serbian province&#39;s future.

TV21&#39;s countdown ends on Monday, when the report will be delivered. The station&#39;s chief, Eugen Saracini, says it has become a countdown to nothing.

The Russian, U.S. and European mediators acknowledge their report on four months of talks with representatives of Serbia and Kosovo&#39;s ethnic Albanian majority will not resolve differences over the province&#39;s status or propose a way forward.

In the absence of a deal, Kosovo&#39;s ethnic Albanian leaders say they will declare independence. This will set up a showdown with Serbia and Russia, Belgrade&#39;s big power backer, which oppose the southern province breaking away.

But weeks or months could pass before the independence declaration, even though it has broad Western backing.

"Kosovo will not declare independence the day after Dec 10," Hajredin Kuci, an ally of Kosovo prime minister-apparent Hashim Thaci, told Reuters. "But we will do it very soon after, in coordination with our allies."

Even a date to make the declaration may not be set before mid-January because talks on a coalition government are barely under way following an election in Kosovo last month.

The United States and almost all 27 EU member states regard Kosovo&#39;s independence as the best option for stability in the Balkans, which suffered years of conflict in the 1990s after the collapse of Yugoslavia.

But they want a handover from U.N. to EU supervision of Kosovo and hope to avoid any sudden moves that might undermine EU unity.

"I know the people of Kosovo have enough maturity to let those international mechanisms work. Let them draw their conclusions and then go from there to the following steps," Kosovo&#39;s U.N. administrator, Joachim Ruecker, said on Wednesday.

"It is very, very important to get the next steps right."



U.N. TO DISCUSS REPORT

The U.N. Security Council will discuss the report on Dec 19. Russia will seek more talks, which the West believes pointless.

Kosovo&#39;s 2 million Albanians, around 90 percent of the population, vastly outnumber the about 100,000 Serbs who live mainly in scattered enclaves protected by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

Serbia lost control of Kosovo -- which it reveres as its religious heartland -- in 1999, when NATO carried out bombing raids for 11 weeks to halt killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians by Serb forces fighting separatist guerrillas.

The issue lay dormant until 2004, when Albanian riots caught 16,000 NATO troops off guard.

By threatening to use its veto as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, Russia this year prevented the U.N. adopting a Western-backed independence plan drafted by envoy Martti Ahtisaari after a year of talks.

But U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said this week the Ahtisaari plan remained "the appropriate way to proceed."

"I think from our perspective, the outcome for this is and should be clear to everyone," he said.

In return, Albanians are expected to commit to the Ahtisaari plan that calls for a powerful EU overseer and offers the Serb minority extensive autonomy and protection of their monuments.

Serbia is promising counter-measures that could include an economic embargo on Kosovo, border closures and a diplomatic slap in the face of states that recognise the province as the last country to emerge from the former Yugoslavia.

NATO is concerned clashes could erupt in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica and Serbs in the north could try to break away. It is also watching for any signs that Serbs in neighbouring Bosnia could secede.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

(Reuters) - Internationally mediated negotiations between Serbia and its breakaway Kosovo province formally end on Monday, when a troika of envoys delivers a report on the process to the United Nations.

Here are some possible scenarios for what could happen next.

SERBIA, RUSSIA ASK FOR MORE TALKS

Serbia and its ally Russia insist more negotiations are needed, and any final outcome should go through the United Nations Security Council. The United States and most European Union members are convinced there is no room for compromise between Serbia&#39;s offer of autonomy and the Kosovo Albanians&#39; demand for independence. Diplomats say Western capitals will move quickly to make the handover from U.N. to EU supervision as foreseen by a U.N-sponsored plan that Russia blocked earlier this year. Serbia might press its point with counter-measures, including trade blockades or border closures.

KOSOVO SETS DATE FOR INDEPENDENCE DECLARATION

Kosovo Albanian politicians have said they will set a date for a unilateral declaration of independence after consulting Washington and Brussels. The timing will probably depend on the coordination of U.N. and EU diplomats on the handover from one mission to the other, as well as on the date of presidential elections in Serbia which local media say could fall between mid-January and late February. The West would rather wait until after the election is over to avert a protest vote that would put a hardline nationalist president in power.

MINORITY SERBS FLEE

A recent survey among Kosovo&#39;s minority Serbs showed that some 70 percent believe violence will escalate in the province once the Albanian majority declares independence. Some 46 percent said they would then leave an independent Kosovo "at any cost", while a further 23 percent said they would leave once they secured "a minimum" of living conditions elsewhere.

SERBIA SEEKS PARTITION OF KOSOVO

Although the Serb government states publicly that it does not want a partition of Kosovo, it has for years been setting up parallel institutions in the northern, mostly Serb part that borders Serbia proper. It has been picking up the bills for healthcare, education and public administration, and encouraging minority Serbs to look to Belgrade as their capital in all respects, to the extent that a de-facto partition is almost unavoidable. Serbia has also raised the possibility that Serbs in Bosnia could, in their turn, secede.

PROSPECTS OF VIOLENCE

The restive Albanian minorities in neighboring Macedonia and in Serbia&#39;s southern Presevo Valley are looking closely at Kosovo, with some hardline local leaders already speaking of land swaps especially if Kosovo is partitioned. Although many guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army gave up their weapons after the end of the 1998-99 war, tens of thousands of weapons are believed to be still hidden in the province, many in the hands of criminal gangs. Small nationalist groups -- both Serb and Albanian -- have pledged to take up arms to defend their respective causes, but the 16,000 NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo act as guarantee against major violence.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

(Reuters) - Internationally mediated negotiations between Serbia and its breakaway Kosovo province formally end on Monday, when a troika of envoys delivers a report on the process to the United Nations.

Here is a brief profile of Kosovo, an ethnic crossroads in the heart of the Balkans and the cause of NATO&#39;s first "humanitarian war" in 1999.

HISTORY

* Kosovo is a southern province of Serbia, about the size of Connecticut or Qatar. It was first inhabited by Illyrian and Thracian tribes, ruled by the Romans then populated by Slavs in the 6th century. It became part of the Kingdom of Serbia in the early 13th century, with a mixed population of Serbs, Albanians and Vlachs. The Nemanjic dynasty made it the spiritual heartland of Serbia, giving lands to the Orthodox Church and building monasteries that stand today.

ETHNIC MAKEUP

* Serbs were a majority until they were defeated by the Ottoman Empire at the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. Over the next 500 years many left while the Albanians, converts to Islam, grew in number. Mutual expulsions and migration from Albania in the early 20th century changed Kosovo&#39;s makeup. Today, 2 million Albanians form 90 percent of the population. Some 100,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, many in scattered enclaves protected by NATO.

POLITICS & ECONOMY

* Landlocked and poor apart from mineral deposits, Kosovo was an autonomous region of the Socialist Yugoslav Federation and had effective self-government in 1974. But ethnic tensions escalated in the 1980s as Yugoslavia began to crumble and economic conditions deteriorated. Populist Slobodan Milosevic used Serb nationalism as a springboard to power in 1989, restricting Albanian rights in education and local government. Strikes, protests and violence led to Belgrade declaring a state of emergency in 1990, sending in the Yugoslav army and police.

WAR

* Albanians have officially demanded independence since renegade elections in 1992 made pacifist leader Ibrahim Rugova president of a self-declared republic. The demand was ignored as Serbs fought for pieces of Croatia and Bosnia, and support shifted to armed struggle by the Kosovo Liberation Army, a guerrilla force. Serb forces hit back so hard in 1998 that 100,000 Albanians fled to the hills and NATO powers warned Milosevic they would not tolerate another round of "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans. Peace talks in France failed and in March 1999 NATO started bombing to force Serbia to withdraw. Some 800,000 Albanians fled or were expelled to Macedonia and Albania before Milosevic gave in 78 days later. As his forces pulled out, an estimated 180,000 Serbs left as well.

LIMBO

* Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations with NATO peacekeeping since June 1999. Unemployment is more than 50 percent among the overwhelmingly young population. Kosovo&#39;s uncertain future status virtually precludes outside investment. Spasms of ethnic violence, mostly by Albanians against Serbs, together with criminal gangs trafficking in contraband and people, have tarnished its image with the West. Albanian leaders say only independence from Serbia can cure these ills.

[hajduk]

Kosovo Peace Accord
By Noam Chomsky

On March 24, U.S.-led NATO air forces began to pound the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY, Serbia and Montenegro), including Kosovo, which NATO regards as a province of Serbia. On June 3, NATO and Serbia reached a Peace Accord. The U.S. declared victory, having successfully concluded its "10-week struggle to compel Mr. Milosevic to say uncle," Blaine Harden reported in the New York Times. It would therefore be unnecessary to use ground forces to "cleanse Serbia" as Harden had recommended in a lead story headlined "How to Cleanse Serbia." The recommendation was natural in the light of American history, which is dominated by the theme of ethnic cleansing from its origins and to the present day, achievements celebrated in the names given to military attack helicopters and other weapons of destruction. A qualification is in order, however: the term "ethnic cleansing" is not really appropriate: U.S. cleansing operations have been ecumenical; Indochina and Central America are two recent illustrations.

While declaring victory, Washington did not yet declare peace: the bombing continues until the victors determine that their interpretation of the Kosovo Accord has been imposed.

>From the outset, the bombing had been cast as a matter of cosmic significance, a test of a New Humanism, in which the "enlightened states" (Foreign Affairs) open a new era of human history guided by "a new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated" (Tony Blair). The enlightened states are the United States and its British associate, perhaps also others who enlist in their crusades for justice.

Apparently the rank of "enlightened states" is conferred by definition. One finds no attempt to provide evidence or argument, surely not from their history. The latter is in any event deemed irrelevant by the familiar doctrine of "change of course," invoked regularly in the ideological institutions to dispatch the past into the deepest recesses of the memory hole, thus deterring the threat that some might ask the most obvious questions: with institutional structures and distribution of power essentially unchanged, why should one expect a radical shift in policy -- or any at all, apart from tactical adjustments?

But such questions are off the agenda. "From the start the Kosovo problem has been about how we should react when bad things happen in unimportant places," global analyst Thomas Friedman explained in the New York Times as the Accord was announced. He proceeds to laud the enlightened states for pursuing his moral principle that "once the refugee evictions began, ignoring Kosovo would be wrong...and therefore using a huge air war for a limited objective was the only thing that made sense."

A minor difficulty is that concern over the "refugee evictions" could not have been the motive for the "huge air war." The United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported its first registered refugees outside of Kosovo on March 27 (4000), three days after the bombings began. The toll increased until June 4, reaching a reported total of 670,000 in the neighboring countries (Albania, Macedonia), along with an estimated 70,000 in Montenegro (within the FRY), and 75,000 who had left for other countries. The figures, which are unfortunately all too familiar, do not include the unknown numbers who have been displaced within Kosovo, some 2-300,000 in the year before the bombing according to NATO, a great many more afterwards.

Uncontroversially, the "huge air war" precipitated a sharp escalation of ethnic cleansing and other atrocities. That much has been reported consistently by correspondents on the scene and in retrospective analyses in the press. The same picture is presented in the two major documents that seek to portray the bombing as a reaction to the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. The most extensive one, provided by the State Department in May, is suitably entitled "Erasing History: Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo"; the second is the Indictment of Milosevic and associates by the International Tribunal on War Crimes in Yugoslavia after the U.S. and Britain "opened the way for what amounted to a remarkably fast indictment by giving [prosecutor Louise] Arbour access to intelligence and other information long denied to her by Western governments," the New York Times reported, with two full pages devoted to the Indictment. Both documents hold that the atrocities began "on or about January 1"; in both, however, the detailed chronology reveals that atrocities continued about as before until the bombing led to a very sharp escalation. That surely came as no surprise. Commanding General Wesley Clark at once described these consequences as "entirely predictable" -- an exaggeration of course; nothing in human affairs is that predictable, though ample evidence is now available revealing that the consequences were anticipated, for reasons readily understood without access to secret intelligence.

One small index of the effects of "the huge air war" was offered by Robert Hayden, director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies of the University of Pittsburgh: "the casualties among Serb civilians in the first three weeks of the war are higher than all of the casualties on both sides in Kosovo in the three months that led up to this war, and yet those three months were supposed to be a humanitarian catastrophe." True, these particular consequences are of no account in the context of the jingoist hysteria that was whipped up to demonize Serbs, reaching intriguing heights as bombing openly targeted the civilian society and hence required more fervent advocacy.

By chance, at least a hint of a more credible answer to Friedman&#39;s rhetorical question was given in the Times on the same day in a report from Ankara by Stephen Kinzer. He writes that "Turkey&#39;s best-known human rights advocate entered prison" to serve his sentence for having "urged the state to reach a peaceful settlement with Kurdish rebels." A few days earlier, Kinzer had indicated obliquely that there is more to the story: "Some [Kurds] say they have been oppressed under Turkish rule, but the Government insists that they are granted the same rights as other citizens." One may ask whether this really does justice to some of the most extreme ethnic cleansing operations of the mid &#39;90s, with tens of thousands killed, 3500 villages destroyed (seven times the number in Kosovo, according to Clinton&#39;s "victory address"), some 2.5 to 3 million refugees, and hideous atrocities that easily compare to those recorded daily in the front pages for selected enemies, reported in detail by the major human rights organizations but ignored. These achievements were carried out thanks to massive military support from the United States, increasing under Clinton as the atrocities peaked, including jet planes, attack helicopters, counterinsurgency equipment, and other means of terror and destruction, along with training and intelligence information for some of the worst killers.

Recall that these crimes have been proceeding through the &#39;90s within NATO itself, and under the jurisdiction of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights, which continues to hand down judgments against Turkey for its U.S.-supported atrocities (several in 1998). It took real discipline for participants and commentators "not to notice" any of this at the celebration of NATO&#39;s 50th anniversary in April. The discipline was particularly impressive in the light of the fact that the celebration was clouded by somber concerns over ethnic cleansing -- by officially-designated enemies, not by the enlightened states that are to rededicate themselves to their traditional mission of bringing justice and freedom to the suffering people of the world, and to defend human rights, by force if necessary, under the principles of the New Humanism.

These crimes, to be sure, are only one illustration of the answer given by the enlightened states to the profound question of "how we should react when bad things happen in unimportant places." We should intervene to escalate the atrocities, not "looking away" under a "double standard," the common evasion when such marginalia are impolitely adduced. That also happens to be the mission that was conducted in Kosovo, as revealed clearly by the course of events, though not the version refracted through the prism of ideology and doctrine, which do not gladly tolerate the observation that a consequence of the "the huge air war" was a change from a year of atrocities on the scale of the annual (U.S.-backed) toll in Colombia in the 1990s to a level that might have approached atrocities within NATO/Europe itself in the 1990s had the bombing continued.

The marching orders from Washington, however, are the usual ones: Focus laser-like on the crimes of today&#39;s official enemy, and do not allow yourself to be distracted by comparable or worse crimes that could easily be mitigated or terminated thanks to the crucial role of the enlightened states in perpetuating them, or escalating them when power interests so dictate. Let us obey the orders, then, and keep to Kosovo.

A minimally serious investigation of the Kosovo Accord must review the diplomatic options of March 23, the day before "huge air war" was launched, and compare them with the agreement reached by NATO and Serbia on June 3. Here we have to distinguish two versions: (1) the facts, and (2) the spin -- that is, the U.S./NATO version that frames reporting and commentary in the enlightened states. Even the most cursory look reveals that the facts and the spin differ sharply. Thus the New York Times presented the text of the Accord with an insert headed: "Two Peace Plans: How they Differ." The two peace plans are the Rambouillet (Interim) Agreement presented to Serbia as a take-it-or-be-bombed ultimatum on March 23, and the Kosovo Peace Accord of June 3. But in the real world there are three "peace plans," two of which were on the table on March 23: the Rambouillet Agreement and the Serb National Assembly Resolutions responding to it.

Let us begin with the two peace plans of March 23, asking how they differed and how they compare with the Kosovo Peace Accord of June 3, then turning briefly to what we might reasonably expect if we break the rules and pay some attention to the (ample) precedents.

The Rambouillet Agreement called for complete military occupation and substantial political control of Kosovo by NATO, and effective NATO military occupation of the rest of Yugoslavia. NATO is to "constitute and lead a military force" (KFOR) that "NATO will establish and deploy" in and around Kosovo, "operating under the authority and subject to the direction and political control of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) through the NATO chain of command"; "the KFOR commander is the final authority within theater regarding interpretation of this chapter [Implementation of the Military Agreement] and his interpretations are binding on all Parties and persons" (with an irrelevant qualification). OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) has formal jurisdiction over civilian aspects of the agreement, in coordination with KFOR -- an occupying army, hence in a position to determine what happens. Within a brief time schedule, all Yugoslav army forces and Ministry of Interior police are to re-deploy to "approved cantonment sites," then to withdraw to Serbia, apart from small units assigned to border guard duties with limited weapons (all specified in detail). These units would be restricted to defending the borders from attack and "controlling illicit border crossings," and not permitted to travel in Kosovo apart from these functions.

"Three years after the entry into force of this Agreement, an international meeting shall to be convened to determine a mechanisms for a final settlement for Kosovo." This paragraph has regularly been construed as calling for a referendum on independence, though that is not specifically mentioned.

With regard to the rest of Yugoslavia, the terms for the occupation are set forth in Appendix B: Status of Multi-National Military Implementation Force. The crucial paragraph reads:

8. NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations.The remainder spells out the conditions that permit NATO forces and those they employ to act as they choose throughout the territory of the FRY, without obligation or concern for the laws of the country or the jurisdiction of its authorities, who are, however, required to follow NATO orders "on a priority basis and with all appropriate means." One provision states that "all NATO personnel shall respect the laws applicable in the FRY...," but with a qualification to render it vacuous: "Without prejudice to their privileges and immunities under this Appendix, all NATO personnel...."

It has been speculated that the wording was designed so as to guarantee rejection. Perhaps so. It is hard to imagine that any country would consider such terms, except in the form of unconditional surrender.

In the massive coverage of the war one will find little reference to the Agreement that is even close to accurate, notably the crucial article of Appendix B just quoted. The latter was, however, reported as soon as it had become irrelevant to democratic choice. On June 5, after the peace agreement of June 3, the press reported that under the annex to the Rambouillet Agreement "a purely NATO force was to be given full permission to go anywhere it wanted in Yugoslavia, immune from any legal process," citing also the wording (New York Times; also others). Evidently, in the absence of clear and repeated explanation of the basic terms of the Rambouillet Agreement -- the official "peace process" -- it has been impossible for the public to gain any serious understanding of what was taking place, or to assess the accuracy of the preferred version of the Kosovo Accord.

The second peace plan was presented in resolutions of the Serbian National Assembly on March 23. The Assembly rejected the demand for NATO military occupation, and called on the OSCE and the UN to facilitate a peaceful diplomatic settlement. It condemned the withdrawal of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission on March 19 in preparation for the March 24 bombing. The resolutions called for negotiations leading "toward the reaching of a political agreement on a wide-ranging autonomy for Kosovo and Metohija [the official name for the province], with the securing of a full equality of all citizens and ethnic communities and with respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." Furthermore, though "The Serbian Parliament does not accept presence of foreign military troops in Kosovo and Metohija,"

The Serbian Parliament is ready to review the size and character of the international presence in Kosmet [Kosovo/Metohija] for carrying out the reached accord, immediately upon signing the political accord on the self-rule agreed and accepted by the representatives of all national communities living in Kosovo and Metohija.The essentials of these decisions were reported on major wire services and therefore certainly known to every news room. Several database searches have found scarce mention, none in the national press and major journals.

The two peace plans of March 23 thus remain unknown to the general public, even the fact that there were two, not one. The standard line is that "Milosevic&#39;s refusal to accept...or even discuss an international peacekeeping plan [namely, the Rambouillet Agreement] was what started NATO bombing on March 24" (Craig Whitney, New York Times), one of the many articles deploring Serbian propaganda -- accurately no doubt, but with a few oversights.

As to what the Serb National Assembly Resolutions meant, the answers are known with confidence by fanatics -- different answers, depending on which variety of fanatics they are. For others, there would have been a way to find out the answers: to explore the possibilities. But the enlightened states preferred not to pursue this option; rather, to bomb, with the anticipated consequences.

Further steps in the diplomatic process, and their interpretation in the doctrinal institutions, merit attention, but I will skip that here, turning to the Kosovo Accord of June 3. As might have been expected, it is a compromise between the two peace plans of March 23. On paper at least, the U.S./NATO abandoned their major demands, cited above, which had led to Serbia&#39;s rejection of the ultimatum. Serbia in turn agreed to an "international security presence with substantial NATO participation [which] must be deployed under unified command and control...under U.N. auspices." An addendum to the text stated "Russia&#39;s position [that] the Russian contingent will not be under NATO command and its relationship to the international presence will be governed by relevant additional agreements." There are no terms permitting access to the rest of the FRY for NATO or the "international security presence" generally. Political control of Kosovo is not in the hands of NATO, Serbia, or the OSCE, but of the UN Security Council, which will establish "an interim administration of Kosovo." The withdrawal of Yugoslav forces is not specified in the detail of the Rambouillet Agreement, but is similar, though accelerated. The remainder is within the range of agreement of the two plans of March 23.

The outcome suggests that diplomatic initiatives could have been pursued on March 23, averting a terrible human tragedy with consequences that will reverberate in Yugoslavia and elsewhere, and are in many respects quite ominous.

To be sure, the current situation is not that of March 23. A Times headline the day of the Kosovo Accord captures it accurately: "Kosovo Problems Just Beginning." Among the "staggering problems" that lie ahead, Serge Schmemann observed, are the repatriation of the refugees "to the land of ashes and graves that was their home," and the "enormously costly challenge of rebuilding the devastated economies of Kosovo, the rest of Serbia and their neighbors." He quotes Balkans historian Susan Woodward of the Brookings Institution, who adds "that all the people we want to help us make a stable Kosovo have been destroyed by the effects of the bombings," leaving control in the hands of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army). The U.S. had strongly condemned the KLA as "without any question a terrorist group" when it began to carry out organized attacks in February 1998, actions that Washington condemned "very strongly" as "terrorist activities," probably giving a "green light" thereby to Milosevic for the severe repression that led to the Colombia-style violence before the bombings precipitated a sharp escalation.

These "staggering problems" are new. They are "the effects of the bombings" and the vicious Serb reaction to them, though the problems that preceded the resort to violence by the enlightened states were daunting enough.

Turning from facts to spin, headlines hailed the grand victory of the enlightened states and their leaders, who compelled Milosevic to "capitulate," to "say uncle," to accept a "NATO-led force," and to surrender "as close to unconditionally as anyone might have imagined," submitting to "a worse deal than the Rambouillet plan he rejected." Not exactly the story, but one that is far more useful than the facts. The only serious issue debated is whether this shows that air power alone can achieve highly moral purposes, or whether, as the critics allowed into the debate allege, the case still has not been proven. Turning to broader significance, Britain&#39;s "eminent military historian" John Keegan "sees the war as a victory not just for air power but for the &#96;New World Order&#39; that President Bush declared after the Gulf War." Keegan wrote that "If Milosevic really is a beaten man, all other would-be Milosevics around the world will have to reconsider their plans."

The assessment is realistic, though not in the terms Keegan may have had in mind: rather, in the light of the actual goals and significance of the New World Order, as revealed by an important documentary record of the &#39;90s that remains unreported, and a plethora of factual evidence that helps us understand the true meaning of the phrase "Milosevics around the world." Merely to keep to the Balkans region, the strictures do not hold of huge ethnic cleansing operations and terrible atrocities within NATO itself, in its Southeastern corner, under European jurisdiction and with decisive and mounting U.S. support, and not conducted in response to an attack by the world&#39;s most awesome military force and the imminent threat of invasion. These crimes are legitimate under the rules of the New World Order, perhaps even meritorious, as are atrocities elsewhere that conform to the perceived interests of the leaders of the enlightened states and are regularly implemented by them when necessary. These facts, not particularly obscure, reveal that in the "new internationalism...the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups" will not merely be "tolerated," but actively expedited -- exactly as in the "old internationalism" of the Concert of Europe, the U.S. itself, and many other distinguished predecessors.

While the facts and the spin differ sharply, one might argue that the media and commentators are realistic when they present the U.S./NATO version as if it were the facts. It will become The Facts as a simple consequence of the distribution of power and the willingness of articulate opinion to serve its needs. That is a regular phenomenon. Recent examples include the Paris Peace Treaty of January 1973 and the Esquipulas Accords of August 1987.

In the former case, the U.S. was compelled to sign after the failure of the 1972 Christmas bombings to induce Hanoi to abandon the U.S.-Vietnam agreement of the preceding October. Kissinger and the White House at once announced quite lucidly that they would violate every significant element of the Treaty they were signing, presenting a different version which was adopted in reporting and commentary, so that when the Vietnamese enemy finally responded to serious U.S. violations of the accords, it became the incorrigible aggressor which had to be punished once again, as it was. The same tragedy/farce took place when the Central American Presidents reached the Esquipulas Accord (often called "the Arias plan") over strong U.S. opposition. Washington at once escalated its wars in violation of the one "indispensable element" of the Accord, then proceeded to dismantle its other provisions by force, succeeding within a few months, and continuing to undermine every further diplomatic effort until its final victory. Washington&#39;s version of the Accord, which sharply deviated from it in crucial respects, became the accepted version. The outcome could therefore be heralded in headlines as a "Victory for U.S. Fair Play" with Americans "United in Joy" over the devastation and bloodshed, overcome with rapture "in a romantic age" (Anthony Lewis, headlines in New York Times, all reflecting the general euphoria over a mission accomplished).

It is superfluous to review the aftermath in these and numerous similar cases. There is little reason to expect a different story to unfold in the present case -- with the usual and crucial proviso: If we let it.

---

Postscript. It is irritating to have one&#39;s most cynical expectations verified, but within hours after the preceding was posted on the web, the standard story unfolded: Washington provided its interpretation of the Kosovo Peace Accord (and the subsequent UN Security Council Resolution), radically different from the text and quite similar to the Rambouillet conditions that the US had formally renounced. The media and other commentary adopted Washington&#39;s version as The Facts. Events otherwise proceeded on course, and will, with the same proviso.

[hajduk]

Kosovo Killing Fields?
By John Pilger

There is as yet no evidence that genocide took place in Kosovo. But that fact is nigh impossible to find in the press.

Kosovo is today&#39;s slow news. Slow news is news that is ignored or minimised. It is a highly effective, though generally unrecognised, form of censorship in democracies. The expulsion and terrorising of 240,000 Serbs and other minorities from Kosovo since Nato took charge is of little media interest. The Society for Endangered People says 90,000 Gypsies have been forced to flee an ethnic-cleansing campaign conducted on a grand scale by the Kosovo Liberation Army. But who cares about Gypsies, let alone the demonised Serbs?

Even slower news is the justification for this continuing violence, indeed for the Nato bombing that left several thousand civilians dead and maimed, both Serbs and Kosovars, and devastated the environment and economic life of the region. Nato embarked on this epic destruction, the then defence secretary George Robertson said last March, to "prevent a humanitarian catastrophe" and stop "a regime which is intent on genocide". The G-word was repeated many times. Bill Clinton referred to "deliberate, systematic efforts at . . . genocide".

The British press took their cue. "FLIGHT FROM GENOCIDE," said a Daily Mail headline over a picture of Kosovar children in a lorry. Both the Sun and Mirror referred to "echoes of the Holocaust". Figures were supplied. The US defence secretary, William Cohen, said: "We&#39;ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing . . . They may have been murdered." Geoffrey Hoon, then Foreign Office minister, put the Albanian dead at 10,000, adding that "the final toll may be much worse". A widely quoted US Information Agency factsheet claimed: "The number of unaccounted-for ethnic Albanian men ranges from a low of 225,000 . . . to over 400,000." Cherie Blair told the Sun she was "horrified about the rape camps".

In recent weeks, disquieting questions have been raised about this propaganda blitzkrieg. It seems that, although no place on earth has been as scrutinised by forensic investigators, not to mention 2,700 media people, no evidence of mass murder on the scale used to justify the bombing has yet been found. The head of the Spanish forensic team attached to the International Criminal Tribunal, Emilio Perez Pujol, says that as few as 2,500 were killed. In an interview with El Pais, he said: "I called my people together and said, &#39;We&#39;re finished here.&#39; I informed my government and told them the real situation. We had found a total of 187 bodies." He complained angrily that he and colleagues had become part of "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines, because we did not find one - not one - mass grave".

The FBI has found 200 bodies in 30 sites. The village of Ljubenic was believed to hold a mass grave of 350 bodies. Seven bodies were found. So far, 20 forensic teams operating in Kosovo have found 670 bodies. Perhaps the most significant disclosure, confirmed by the International Criminal Tribunal on 11 October, was that the Trepca lead and zinc mines contained no bodies. Trepca was central to the drama of the investigation: the corpses of 700 murdered Albanians were presumed hidden there. On 7 July, the Mirror reported that a former mine-worker, Hakif Isufi, had seen dozens of trucks pull into the mine on the night of 4 June and heavy bundles unloaded. He said he could not make out what the bundles were. The Mirror was in no doubt: "What Hakif saw was one of the most despicable acts of Slobodan Milosevic&#39;s war - the mass dumping of executed corpses in a desperate bid to hide the evidence. War-crimes investigators fear that up to 1,000 bodies were incinerated in the Auschwitz-style furnaces of the mine with its sprawling maze of deep shafts and tunnels."

All this was false.

This is not to say that evidence supporting a figure close to 10,000 may not yet materialise; fewer than half of the 400 "crime scenes" have been examined. But a pattern of truth versus propaganda is emerging. The numbers of dead so far confirmed suggest that the Nato bombing provoked a wave of random brutality, murders and expulsions, a far cry from systematic extermination: genocide. Other atrocities of particular media interest, such as the "rape camps" that so horrified Cherie Blair, are turning out to be fiction. Dr Richard Munz, the doctor at the huge Stenkovac refugee camp told Die Welt: "The majority of media people I talked to came here and looked for a story . . . which they had already . . . the entire time we were here, we had no cases of rape. And we are responsible for 60,000 people." He stressed that this did not mean that rape did not happen, but it was not the tabloid version. The same is true of the Milosevic regime. No one can doubt its cruelty and atrocities, but comparisons with the Third Reich are ridiculous.

These facts and the questions they raise have not been judged newsworthy. A data-base search reveals hardly a word in the news pages of the serious mainstream national papers, with the exception of the Sunday Times. The Guardian has published only a piece by their columnist Francis Wheen, critical of the author of an article on the Kosovo figures in the Spectator on 30 October. BBC News, to my knowledge, has remained silent on the subject.

This is understandable. With honourable exceptions, propagandists, not reporters, attended much of the Kosovo tragedy. Indeed, some journalists have been open in admitting that they, not Tony Blair&#39;s press secretary, deserve the credit for putting the government&#39;s case. The forbidden question was put last week by a troubled Andrew Alexander in his column in the Mail. "Could it turn out to be," he asked, "that we killed more innocent civilians than the Serbs did?"

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BELGRADE, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Serb Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Saturday warned Kosovo Albanians against an "illegal" declaration of independence and called for talks on the territory&#39;s future to resume.

He proposed new talks be held in Kosovo and Serbia instead of abroad. Almost 18 months of mediated talks, mostly in Vienna but also Brussels and London, have failed to reach accord.

"Serbia wants to negotiate and it&#39;s essential that a political and democratic settlement ... is found through talks," Kostunica told Serbian state news agency Tanjug.

Serbia was ready for negotiations "in any town in the province, and for the next round to be held in Belgrade."

Kostunica said Kosovo Albanians wanting "an illegal declaration of independence" instead of talks were launching "a dangerous experiment with unpredictable consequences".

A report made available by diplomats at the U.N. on Friday said there was no compromise to be found between Serbia&#39;s offer of autonomy and the Albanian independence demand after the mediated talks, which hit a Dec. 10 deadline.

The United States and almost all European Union member states support independence for the territory, seeing it as the best way to ensure stability in the Balkans.

But Russia, an ally of Serbia, asked again on Friday for talks to continue until the two sides reach an agreement. It has said it wants any final solution for Kosovo to go through the United Nations Security Council, where Russia has a veto.

"It is of the greatest importance that the Security Council support the proposal of Russia," Kostunica said. Serbia gives "its full support to this constructive Russian initiative which aims to avoid a great crisis."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday the United States was hindering the search for a solution, RIA news agency reported.

"Unfortunately, the fixation of some Western capitals -- above all Washington -- with independence for Kosovo and that there is no alternative to such independence ... is now the main hindrance on the path to a negotiated settlement," RIA quoted him as saying.



ETHNIC CLEANSING

NATO bombed Serbia for 11 weeks in 1999 to drive Serb forces out of Kosovo and halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year Serb counter-insurgency war.

The Security Council is due to discuss the mediators&#39; report on Dec 19. But Washington and the major EU powers have indicated they are ready to recognise Kosovo without a new U.N. resolution, and the EU is preparing to deploy a mission to take over supervision of the territory from the U.N.

Diplomats say Kosovo could declare independence in late January at the earliest, depending on the timing of a Serb presidential election expected between mid-January and March.

NATO ministers on Friday pledged to keep their 16,000-strong peace force in Kosovo at current strength, and make more troops available to deal with any outbreak of violence.

Analysts dismiss talk of war, but say low-level violence is to be expected. NATO fears that Serbs in the north, where they form the majority, could try to break away from an independent Kosovo, potentially sparking Albanian retaliation against isolated Serb enclaves elsewhere in the province.

An ugly mood is already developing. On Friday, Kosovo Serbs angry at Western backing of Kosovo&#39;s independence scuffled with NATO security officers during a village meeting with the province&#39;s U.N. overseer and top NATO commander.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Mediators on Kosovo&#39;s future dumped the problem on a divided international community on Friday, saying that rigid positions on sovereignty over the Serbian province had foiled agreement in four months of talks.

Their report to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made no recommendations on a way forward, making it almost certain the ethnic Albanian majority in breakaway Kosovo will go ahead with plans to declare independence early next year.

Key Western countries are expected to accept that move, but it is vigorously opposed by Serbia and by its ally Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council. The council will discuss the mediators&#39; report on Dec. 19.

In their report, made available to Reuters by diplomats, the so-called "troika" of mediators from the United States, Russia and the European Union said the talks between the Kosovo Albanians and Serbia&#39;s government had been useful. Both sides had pledged to refrain from violence, threats or intimidation.

"Both parties must be reminded that their failure to live up to these commitments will affect the achievement of the European future that they both seek," it said.

But, it said: "The parties were unable to reach agreement on the final status of Kosovo. Neither party was willing to cede its position on the fundamental question of sovereignty over Kosovo."

The mediators -- Frank Wisner of the United States, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko of Russia and Wolfgang Ischinger of Germany -- had already made no secret of the failure of the talks to cut a deal, an outcome widely predicted in the West.

The four months of talks were held at Russian insistence after Moscow blocked a Security Council resolution that would have cleared the way for independence. They had been up against a Dec. 10 deadline but, given the deadlock, ended last week.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign to halt killings and ethnic cleansing by Serb forces against the 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority in the province.

In Brussels, NATO nations pledged on Friday to provide enough troops to put down any violence as Kosovo heads toward a declaration of independence. In a minor incident reported on Friday, Kosovo Serbs angry at Western support for independence, scuffled with NATO security officers at a village meeting.

Meanwhile, Britain, France, Germany and Italy urged fellow European Union states in a letter to accept that negotiations on Kosovo&#39;s future had been exhausted and the time had come to settle its status -- without U.N. backing, if necessary.

&#39;SLIPPERY SLOPE&#39;

In a separate move that drew immediate fire from Russia, NATO countries agreed that their 16,000 KFOR peacekeepers could stay in Kosovo on the basis of their existing U.N. mandate, even after independence.

"KFOR shall remain in Kosovo on the basis of U.N. Security Council resolution 1244, unless the Security Council decides otherwise," NATO ministers said in a communique.

Washington and most EU states are likely to recognize a declaration of independence by Kosovo and are confident its leaders will wait until around late January to enable NATO and the European Union to prepare for it.

"There is still a lot of work to do to make sure we have full commitment to the principles embodied in the Ahtisaari plan," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of a U.N. blueprint for independence by special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, which has security provisions for Kosovo&#39;s Serbs.

The agreement that Security Council resolution 1244 can justify NATO&#39;s presence in Kosovo even after independence is crucial, as several nations such as Germany had harbored doubts over whether it could continue to apply.

Russia has not made clear whether it will challenge such an application of the resolution. But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov slammed it as potentially undermining basic standards of international law.

"Anybody who goes in contravention to those is on a very slippery downward slope and it certainly won&#39;t help the rest of us in Europe," he said after brief talks with NATO counterparts, referring to concerns it could encourage other separatist moves.

At the United Nations, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the negotiations, even though unsuccessful, had been a "worthwhile exercise" producing "serious results," and Moscow would urge the Security Council that they should carry on.

"When the time comes to consider the troika report in the Security Council, Russia will be arguing in favor of continuing the negotiation," Churkin said. Western countries are virtually certain to reject that proposal.

Churkin said Serbia had made concessions but he admitted that Belgrade had not been willing to surrender sovereignty -- the essence of the Kosovo Albanian demands.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

BRUSSELS, Dec 7 (Reuters) - NATO nations pledged on Friday to provide enough troops to put down any violence as Kosovo heads towards a declaration of independence from Serbia, expected within weeks.

Britain, France, Germany and Italy urged fellow EU states in a letter to accept that negotiations on Kosovo&#39;s future had been exhausted and that the time had come to settle its status -- without United Nations backing, if necessary.

In a separate move that drew immediate fire from Russia, NATO countries agreed that their 16,000 KFOR peacekeepers could stay in Kosovo on the basis of their existing U.N. mandate, even after independence.

"KFOR shall remain in Kosovo on the basis of U.N. Security Council resolution 1244, unless the Security Council decides otherwise," NATO ministers said in a final communique.

"We renew our commitment to maintain KFOR&#39;s national force, contributions, including reserves, at current levels and with no new caveats," they added, using the military term for limits that nations sometimes impose on what their troops can do.

Such caveats meant NATO was caught badly off guard during rioting in north Kosovo in 2004, which it struggled to control. The alliance has up to four reserve battalions -- each with several hundred troops -- on standby for trouble.

Washington and most EU states are likely to recognise a declaration of independence by Kosovo and are confident its leaders will wait until around late January to enable NATO and the European Union to prepare for it.

"There is still a lot of work to do to make sure we have full commitment to the principles embodied in the Ahtisaari plan," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of a U.N. blueprint for independence by special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, which has security provisions for Kosovo&#39;s Serbs.

The vast majority of EU member states are now seen as ready to accept Kosovo&#39;s independence but Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht, who hosted a dinner for EU and NATO counterparts on the eve of the meeting, said full consensus was elusive.

"If we do not get consensus, we are not in the driving seat," he told reporters.

A "troika" of U.S., Russian and European mediators failed to secure agreement between Pristina and Belgrade over Kosovo. A Western diplomat said they would deliver their report to the United Nations on Friday, before a Dec. 10 deadline for a deal.

The envoy told Reuters the report prescribed no way forward on the fate of the breakaway province, reflecting differences between the West and Serb ally Russia.



"SLIPPERY SLOPE"

The agreement that U.N. Security Council resolution 1244 can justify NATO&#39;s presence in Kosovo even after independence is crucial, as several nations such as Germany had harboured doubts over whether it could continue to apply.

U.N. Security Council veto-holder Russia has not made clear whether it will challenge such an application of the resolution. But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov slammed it as potentially undermining basic standards of international law.

"Anybody who goes in contravention to those is on a very slippery downward slope and it certainly won&#39;t help the rest of us in Europe," he said after brief talks with NATO counterparts, referring to concerns it could encourage other separatist moves.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged European nations, which are due to take over policing in Kosovo from the United Nations, to prevent a repeat of the violence seen in the Balkans in the wars of the 1990s.

"This is in Europe&#39;s backyard and European nations need to show real leadership ... we know from the mid-1990s the cost of Europe wringing its hands and failing to provide leadership."

A Western official familiar with the letter sent by Britain, France, Germany and Italy to other EU states on Friday said the four had suggested the EU should offer more help to Serbia in its goal of being named a candidate for membership of the bloc.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign to halt killings and ethnic cleansing by Serb forces against the 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority in the province, which Belgrade says must remain under its sovereignty.

[hajduk]

REPORT ON THE 25 OCTOBER 1999

PARIS CONFERENCE ON

" J U S T I C E A N D W A R "

A dozen speakers from seven countries presented a devastating case against NATO&#39;s illegal war against Yugoslavia at the international conference on "Justice and War" held in Paris on Monday, October 25. The speakers included jurists, experts and activists who have closely studied the background of the Yugoslav conflict and NATO intervention.



Alternatives to War

Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Future and Peace Research based in Lund, Sweden, attacked "the one biggest myth of the war": that there was "nothing else to do" about the Kosovo problem. Oberg, who before the NATO bombing had carried out some three dozen peace missions to Kosovo and acted as advisor to the Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, presented a long list of sensible, practical things that could have been done to help solve the Kosovo problem in a peaceful way. None had been tried by the Western powers. Instead, the United States chose war and backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) chieftain Hashim Thaqi, "the Albanian equivalent of Arkan" (the notorious Serb gangster), said Oberg.

Oberg stressed that none of the Western officials dealing with the Yugoslav problems had any understanding of peaceful reconciliation methods. The first thing to do to help solve a conflict, he stressed, is to listen to both sides, to understand their needs and their fears. This was never done. American journalist Diana Johnstone, who co-chaired the conference, accused the Clinton administration of aggravating and exploiting the Kosovo problem in order to inaugurate NATO&#39;s new mission of "humanitarian intervention". The "humanitarian" pretense is the public relations cover for NATO expansion eastwards for economic and strategic reasons.

Professor Raju George Thomas of Marquette University in Wisconsin (USA) warned of the extremely negative impact on international relations of NATO&#39;s illegal attack on a sovereign nation that had not committed any act of aggression. Other powers will be encouraged to emulate NATO&#39;s aggressive behavior in defense of their own national interests, while fear of NATO&#39;s unpredictable expansion is certain to trigger a new worldwide arms race. An American citizen of Indian origin, Professor Thomas stressed that India, like most of the world (with the exception of NATO countries), did not believe the "humanitarian" pretext for the NATO bombing and sympathized with Yugoslavia as the victim.



International Law and NATO Aggression

Roland Weyl, speaking on behalf of the International Association of Democratic Jurists, denounced NATO&#39;s "open contempt" for the United Nations and the post-World War II system of international law aimed at banning war. The bombing had no legal basis and would be unjustifiable even if the United States succeeded in turning the United Nations Security Council into a pliant rubber stamp to approve NATO military operations.

Two contrasting views of the ambiguous concept of "self-determination", in relation to Kosovo, were presented by Catherine Samary of the University of Paris and Barbara Delcourt, who teaches international law at the Free University of Brussels. While Samary tended to favor self-determination for Kosovo Albanians, Delcourt pointed out that under existing international law, self-determination did not imply secession except in regard to decolonization. If the right of self-determination is to be broadened, this should be done systematically by international convention, rather than ad hoc, Delcourt argued. Today we are no longer in the period of decolonization, but in a recolonization period where the "right to self-determination" mainly favors nationalists and great power manipulations.

On the subject of a hypothetical "law of humanitarian intervention", Olivier Corten, professor of international law at the Free University of Brussels, noted that any such law is open to differing interpretations as to when it is applicable. The purpose of a legal system is to provide procedures to mediate between differing evaluations. There is no law without procedure, he stressed. We are in danger of reverting to the 19th century practice of Great Powers which regularly invoked "natural rights" to justify use of military force.

Toronto lawyer Christopher Black explained that the ad hoc "International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY)" in The Hague is not a step toward a real international criminal tribunal (a project that has encountered U.S. opposition), but something quite contrary: a political tribunal instigated by the United States for political purposes. The ICTY receives funding and personnel from the United States government and private corporations, its chief justice describes U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as "the mother of the tribunal", it ignored a brief presented by an international group of lawyers calling for indictment of NATO leaders for war crimes, based on more solid evidence than the subsequent indictment of Yugoslav leaders. Its procedures are contrary to all the guarantees of the defense written into democratic legal systems, Black said.

Other speakers were Roman judge Domenico Gallo, who concluded that the circumstances did not justify NATO intervention; Zeljan Schuster, of the University of New Haven, who described various scenarios of economic and political effects on Yugoslavia of NATO bombing; and University of Paris historian Annie Lacroix-Riz, who drew from her vast knowledge of diplomatic archives to describe the extraordinary degree of continuity between present and past Great Power intervention in Yugoslavia.



Tentative Conclusions

Brian Becker of the International Action Center in New York represented an activist approach to the war strikingly absent in today&#39;s France. Becker&#39;s description of the IAC plans to hold hearings in various cities on the indictment against NATO leaders drafted by Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, aroused considerable enthusiasm among the people attending the conference, who were eager to offer support. Becker explained that the campaign will culminate in a people&#39;s tribunal in New York on next March 24, anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing. Ramsey Clark sent a message of greeting to the conference.

Participants in the conference intend to get together to plan further action.

In addition to support to the Ramsey Clark initiative, the conference strongly condemned economic sanctions as an unjustifiable continuation of war against the people of Yugoslavia.

It was generally agreed that:

· Economic sanctions are a warlike, not a peaceful measure: a means of continuing the bombing destruction by other means, in a "bomb now, die later" strategy already employed against the people of Iraq;

* Such methods as economic sanctions, "selective sanctions" and other encouragements to further secession and civil war in Yugoslavia are totally inappropriate means to produce "democratic change";
* Such deliberately divisive measures seem designed to preclude peaceful democratic change and instead provide NATO with a pretext for further armed intervention;
* A truly neutral tribunal should determine legal responsibilities for the 1999 war and assess damages and liability for reparations;
* Governments should provide humanitarian and reconstruction aid to all parts of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, without ethnic or political discrimination.

The conference also adopted by acclamation a proposal from the floor to protest against the exclusion by the humanitarian organization "Doctors Without Frontiers", on the day after it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, of its Greek chapter for having treated Serbian victims of the NATO bombing.

A message of personal testimony from Cedomir Prlincevic, former archivist and head of the Jewish community in Pristina, was read to the conference. Prlincevic, who was driven from his home by Albanian gangsters, accused NATO and KFOR of allowing KLA thugs to threaten, kill and drive out members of non-Albanian ethnic groups and steal their property. With NATO/KFOR support, the KLA had installed a reign of terror, he said.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BRUSSELS, Dec 9 (Reuters) - EU leaders are expected to agree this week that efforts to reach a negotiated solution to the Kosovo problem are exhausted, and offer to take responsibility for security and justice in the breakaway Serbian province.

A deadline for a negotiated deal on the fate of Kosovo expires on Monday. Mediators have submitted a report to the United Nations saying they were unable to find compromise between Serbia&#39;s offer of autonomy and the Albanian majority&#39;s demand for independence.

Here are some possible scenarios for what could happen next.



SERBIA, RUSSIA ASK FOR MORE TALKS

Serbia and its ally Russia insist more negotiations are needed, and any final outcome should go through the United Nations Security Council. The United States and most European Union members are convinced there is no room for compromise between Serbia&#39;s offer of autonomy and the Kosovo Albanians&#39; demand for independence. EU leaders are expected to agree at a summit this week to take over policing and justice in the province as foreseen by a U.N-sponsored plan that Russia blocked earlier this year. Serbia might press its point with counter-measures, including trade blockades or border closures.



KOSOVO SETS DATE FOR INDEPENDENCE DECLARATION

Kosovo Albanian politicians have said they will set a date for a unilateral declaration of independence after consulting Washington and Brussels. The timing will probably depend on the coordination of U.N. and EU diplomats on the handover from one mission to the other, as well as on the date of presidential elections in Serbia which local media say could fall between mid-January and late February. Analysts say the West will wait until after the election is over to avert a protest vote that would put a hardline nationalist in power -- but it could also offer Serbia a sweetener in the form of a pre-membership pact, and hope to pre-empt a backlash that way.



MINORITY SERBS FLEE

A recent survey among Kosovo&#39;s minority Serbs showed that some 70 percent believe violence will escalate in the province once the Albanian majority declares independence. Some 46 percent said they would then leave an independent Kosovo "at any cost", while a further 23 percent said they would leave once they secured "a minimum" of living conditions elsewhere.



SERBIA SEEKS PARTITION OF KOSOVO

Although the Serb government states publicly that it does not want a partition of Kosovo, it has for years been setting up parallel institutions in the northern, mostly Serb part that borders Serbia proper. It has been picking up the bills for healthcare, education and public administration, and encouraging minority Serbs to look to Belgrade as their capital in all respects, to the extent that a de-facto partition is almost unavoidable. Serbia has also raised the possibility that Serbs in Bosnia could, in their turn, secede.



PROSPECTS OF VIOLENCE

The restive Albanian minorities in neighbouring Macedonia and in Serbia&#39;s southern Presevo Valley are looking closely at Kosovo, with some hardline local leaders already speaking of land swaps especially if Kosovo is partitioned. Although many guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army gave up their weapons after the end of the 1998-99 war, tens of thousands of weapons are believed to be still hidden in the province, many in the hands of criminal gangs. Small nationalist groups -- both Serb and Albanian -- have pledged to take up arms to defend their respective causes, but the 16,000 NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo act as guarantee against major violence.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU leaders are expected to agree this week that efforts to reach a negotiated solution to the Kosovo problem are exhausted, and offer to take responsibility for security and justice in the breakaway Serbian province.

EU negotiator Wolfgang Ischinger will brief European Union foreign ministers on Monday on the results of four months of mediation efforts and urge them to help stabilize the Balkan territory by sending in police and justice officials soon.

Leaders of the 27-nation bloc are expected to declare in a statement at a summit on Friday that negotiations are over and that the future of both Serbia and Kosovo lies in the European Union, diplomats said.

They are also likely to confirm they are willing to dispatch police and justice missions and appoint a high representative to oversee Kosovo if asked by the Kosovo Albanian government and the United Nations Secretary-General.

"It is clear that the future of Serbia and Kosovo lies in the European Union. That&#39;s something that both sides agree on," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in an interview with Germany&#39;s Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

A troika of EU, U.S. and Russian mediators told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a report on Friday that their mission failed because neither side was willing to give way on the fundamental question of sovereignty over Kosovo.

The troika had been given a December 10 deadline for completing its report.

"We were given 120 days but if we had been given 1,200 days the outcome would have been the same," an aide quoted Ischinger as telling Solana.

RISKS PLAYED DOWN

The next step is for the U.N. Security Council to debate the mediators&#39; report on December 19 and try to agree on a resolution.

Agreement looks impossible since Russia continues to back Belgrade&#39;s rejection of independence for Kosovo, which Western powers see as the only viable and durable solution. Moscow and Belgrade have called for more talks.

Four or five of the 27 EU states, notably Cyprus and Greece, have misgivings about recognizing a unilateral declaration of independence by the Kosovo Albanians, partly out of fear of a precedent for ethnic or national groups at home.

EU leaders are likely to duck the independence question for now and focus on what they can agree on, while stressing the importance of staying united after they sign a major treaty to reform their institutions on Thursday in Lisbon.

The four European powers involved in supervising Balkans diplomacy -- Britain, Germany, France and Italy -- wrote to their EU partners on Friday, saying negotiations were exhausted and the Europeans would have to meet their responsibilities.

"(They) also suggested we should help Serbia by supporting its efforts to move more rapidly towards giving it candidate status (for EU membership)," a Western official familiar with the letter said.

Solana played down the risk of violence after the failure of mediation efforts, telling Welt am Sonntag: "I don&#39;t expect unrest after December 10. I expect the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians will be prudent and won&#39;t risk stability in the Balkans."

"I&#39;m confident that Belgrade and Pristina will keep their word not to resort to violence and will do nothing that could threaten security in Kosovo or elsewhere," he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was due to visit Cyprus on Sunday to confer with a fellow opponent of unilateral independence for Kosovo on the eve of the EU meeting.

Cyprus Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Markoullis told Reuters her government wanted a negotiated and agreed settlement backed by the U.N. Security Council.

"Otherwise we risk undermining the whole U.N. system and its institutions, and this could create a very dangerous precedent," she said in a reference to the fear that the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus could also gain recognition.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Kosovo Albanians appealed to the West on Sunday to "urgently" back their bid for independence from Serbia as a Dec. 10 deadline for a negotiated deal passes in failure.

"After eight years of uncertainty, the people of Kosovo urgently need clarity about their future," government and opposition leaders of the breakaway province said in a joint statement.

They repeated their commitment to a Western-backed plan for "supervised independence", including its offer of autonomy for the Serb minority, as "a solid basis to lead Kosovo and the region towards a brighter Euro-Atantic future."

Russia, using the threat of its U.N. veto, has blocked adoption of the plan at the U.N. Security Council.

But four more months of negotiations between Serbs and Albanians failed to produce agreement by a Dec. 10 deadline, and Kosovo is now expected to declare independence early in 2008 with Western backing.

The statement said the Kosovo leadership and parliament "intend to work in close coordination with our international partners to settle Kosovo&#39;s status."

U.S., Russian and European mediators had until Monday to broker a deal, but submitted a report to the United Nations on Friday saying neither side had given ground on sovereignty.

EU envoy Wolfgang Ischinger is to brief EU foreign ministers on Monday. Leaders of the 27-nation bloc are expected this week to declare negotiations at an end, and express readiness to take over supervision of Kosovo from the United Nations.

The United States and almost all EU member states support statehood for Kosovo. Serbia, backed by Russia, warns it would unleash chaos in the fragile Balkans.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Cyprus news agency on Sunday independence may aggravate tensions and lead to "the resumption of violence."

The province of 2 million people has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombed for 11 weeks to drive out Serb forces and halt their killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year counter-insurgency war.

The 16,000-strong NATO peace force, KFOR, is braced for unrest and a possible bid by the mainly Serb north to break away, potentially sparking Albanian attacks on Serb enclaves.

There was a visible increase in the KFOR presence on the streets of northern Kosovo.

On Saturday, a 550-strong German reserve force, temporarily reinforcing KFOR, conducted helicopter and ground exercises centred on Prekaz, once the heartland of the Albanian resistance to Serb rule.

In their statement, the Kosovo Albanian leaders said they remained committed to peace "and to do everything in our power to ensure the situation remains calm."
__________________________________________________ ____________________

BERLIN (Reuters) - EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana expects no violence in Serbia&#39;s breakaway province Kosovo after the deadline for mediated talks between Pristina and Belgrade expires on Monday, a German newspaper reported.

"I don&#39;t expect unrest after December 10," Solana was quoted on Sunday as saying in an interview with Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "I expect that the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians will be prudent and won&#39;t risk stability in the Balkans."

"I&#39;m confident that Belgrade and Pristina will keep their word not to resort to violence and will do nothing that could threaten security in Kosovo or elsewhere," he said.

Mediators on the future of Kosovo said in a report made available on Friday that four months of mediated talks between Belgrade and Pristina had failed to reach a deal because neither side would yield on the key question of Kosovo&#39;s sovereignty.

With no deal agreed, the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo is widely expected to declare independence early next year, a move key Western countries are likely to accept.

Despite their disagreements, Solana made it clear that there was agreement between Serbia and Kosovo about their future position inside Europe.

"It is clear that the future of Serbia and Kosovo lies in the European Union. That&#39;s something that both sides agree on," Solana said.

The United States and almost all EU member states support independence for the territory, seeing it as the best way to ensure stability in the Balkans. Kosovo Albanians say they will declare it within weeks.

But Russia, an ally of Serbia, asked again on Friday for talks to continue until the two sides reach an agreement. It has said it wants any final solution for Kosovo to go through the United Nations Security Council, where Russia has a veto.

Serbia also called on Saturday for further talks with Kosovo.

Analysts dismiss talk of war, but say low-level violence is to be expected. NATO fears Serbs in the north, where they form the majority, could try to break away from an independent Kosovo, potentially sparking Albanian retaliation against isolated Serb enclaves elsewhere in the province.

Diplomats say Kosovo could declare independence in late January at the earliest.

[hajduk]

The Kosovo/NATO Conflict:
Questions and Answers

By Michael Albert and Stephen R. Shalom

1. What are the roots of the Kosovo conflict?

Ethnic Serbs and Albanians give extended historical arguments going back as far as 1389 or 1912 or World War II. The basic issue is that the Kosovo province of Serbia (called Kosova in Albanian) has a large majority -- as much as 90 percent -- of ethnic Albanians with a roughly 10 percent Serbian minority. The Kosovo Albanians, however, are only about 16 percent of Serbia&#39;s total population. The Kosovo Albanians claim to be an oppressed minority within Serbia and want self-determination. The Kosovo Serbs claim to be an oppressed minority within Kosovo, and want protection from the Albanians. For Serbs, Kosovo, particularly in the north, is the site of many historical events and locales, their Jerusalem and Alamo rolled into one.

Yugoslavia consisted of 6 republics (Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina) and in 1974 Tito gave autonomous status to two provinces of Serbia, Kosovo and Vojvodina. Kosovo autonomy allowed its ethnic Albanians to develop their own institutions, but angered Serbian nationalists. The Yugoslav League of Communists (LCY) under Tito and after his death in 1980, suppressed nationalist ideology and political dissent.

In 1987, however, Slobodan Milosevic used anger over Kosovo to take control of the Serbian branch of the LCY. The previous leaders, Milosevic charged, had appeased the Albanians and failed to defend Serb interests. In 1989, Milosevic revoked Kosovo&#39;s autonomy, encouraging forcible Serb repression of the Albanian majority ever since. Most Albanian Kosovars now want complete independence.



2. What is the KLA?

The Albanian Kosovars fought Serb control in 1989 by non-violent resistance: they elected their own leaders, refused to cooperate with the Serb authorities, and established their own counter-institutions. Their "president" was Ibrahim Rugova, a follower of Gandhi, who urged his people to reject violence while working toward independence. Serbian repression in Kosovo since 1989 didn&#39;t attract much concern from Washington. In 1995, when the United States sponsored talks in Dayton, Ohio to end the fighting in Bosnia, Milosevic was feted as the key to peace and Rugova was excluded from the conference. Thereafter repression increased in Kosovo and Rugova had little to show for his non-violent approach.

In 1996, an obscure organization appeared on the scene, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, or UCK in Albanian), committed to armed struggle. They undertook some ineffectual attacks on police stations and sometimes Serb civilians, including Serbian refugees from the Yugoslav wars whom many Albanians viewed as colonizers intended to shift the demographic balance. In early 1998, Serbian special police assaulted three villages, killing more than eighty people, at least seventeen after they had been detained or surrendered. This attack drove thousands of Albanians into the KLA, and though still called terrorists by the Serbian authorities, they became a serious guerrilla army, with mass support. Over the next months the KLA took control of roughly 40 percent of Kosovo&#39;s territory. By late summer, however, Serbian forces retook most of the territory, their major tactic being to crush civilian support for the rebels by systematically destroying towns and villages and forcing thousands of people to flee.

It is difficult to tell the KLA attitude toward Serb civilians. Human rights groups have accused them of serious human rights violations, including compelling Serb villagers to leave their homes, with some killings, though not approaching the scale of atrocities committed by Serbian forces. The KLA claims not to target civilians, while acknowledging that abuses are committed by fighters in the field.



3. Why does everyone talk about the conflict spreading?

Massive refugee flows have the potential to destabilize many surrounding countries where there is a delicate ethnic balance. In Macedonia, for example, commentators fear that Albanian immigration would provoke the Albanian minority to secede or would even make it a majority, which the Macedonian majority is determined to prevent. And having hundreds of thousands of Albanians living in refugee camps brings visions of the Palestinians, with all the instability their plight has caused the Middle East. In addition, Albania has warned that it will not sit idly by if its compatriots across the border are slaughtered, and Serbia has made incursions into Albania to prevent the flow of weapons and recruits to the KLA. Finally, Turkey and Greece, long-time enemies, and Bulgaria as well might get involved. (Of course, it is a little odd for NATO to launch a war in order to prevent two NATO members --Turkey and Greece -- from going at each other.)



4. Is the U.S. motivated by humanitarianism in the Balkans?

No. But how do we prove such a claim? Suppose the U.S. is motivated to wage war and drop bombs in this instance by humanitarian concerns. If so, that would mean that concern for the plight of oppressed minorities and populations ranked very high in U.S. policy-making calculations. We would then expect, it follows, that in any case where large populations are suffering horrible repression Washington would try to intervene to stop the repression.

Now consider the reverse claim that U.S. foreign policy is never motivated by concern for the well being of local constituencies but will only opportunistically use related rhetoric for rationalization purposes when possible. If this were true, in contrast, we would expect that the U.S. would intervene in the affairs of other countries only to serve domestic elites in the U.S. or to aid local elites in other countries on behalf of U.S. elites, or perhaps to influence or enhance policies undertaken by other countries thought to benefit U.S. government and elite interests -- but with the human costs to victims playing virtually no role in the calculations.

Now look at the evidence.

* Before World War II, for example, the United States could have admitted many Jews fleeing from Hitler&#39;s Europe; it did not.
* During World War II, the United States could have bombed the death camp at Auschwitz, slowing down the Nazi killing machine; it did not.
* When hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in Indonesia in 1965; the killers were cheered on by the U.S. government who even provided lists of communists to exterminate.
* When the Pakistani army began slaughtering and raping hundreds of thousands of Bengalis in 1971, sending millions into exile, U.S. policy was to (in Kissinger&#39;s words) "tilt in favor of Pakistan."
* When Indonesia invaded East Timor, leading to the deaths of one third of the population, it received weapons and diplomatic support from Washington. Just this past week, White House press secretary Joe Lockhart was asked whether the United States supported independence for East Timor. "Not that I am aware of," he replied.
* When the Khmer Rouge was responsible for monstrous killings in Cambodia, the United States encouraged China to aid the Khmer Rouge and provided covert aid of its own.
* When the government of Guatemala killed 200,000 people in the 1980s, it was with United States aid and encouragement.
* When upwards of half a million people, mostly members of the Tutsi ethnic minority, were exterminated in Rwanda in 1994, the Clinton administration demanded that a UN force already on the scene be reduced and obstructed efforts to save lives, even failing to apply diplomatic pressure against the killers.

Investigation of all these cases and many more -- the Turkish treatment of Kurds in Turkey, for example -- reveals a consistent pattern which has nothing to do with concerns for repressed populations and everything to do with calculations of U.S. elite and geo-political interests. In every case policy would have been roughly opposite to what took place, if there had been humanitarian concerns. There weren&#39;t, and there aren&#39;t.



5. So why is NATO now bombing in the Balkans?

Just as killings by the (U.S.-trained) junta in Haiti did not concern U.S. policymakers until large numbers of refugees started fleeing to the United States, so too human rights abuses in Kosovo did not concern U.S. policymakers as long as they didn&#39;t threaten regional stability. But as the fighting in Kosovo escalated, with large numbers of displaced Albanian refugees, U.S. officials decided they needed to curb the problem--not to aid locally affected people, but to prevent losses to U.S. interests due to the conflict spreading into other parts of Europe.

In February and March at Rambouillet in France, the United States and its European allies invited the Albanian Kosovars and the Milosevic government to sign an agreement that provided for the withdrawal of Serbian security forces from Kosovo, the disarming of the KLA, autonomy for Kosovo, a NATO peacekeeping force, and follow-up final-status negotiations after three years. Milosevic said he was unwilling to accept foreign troops on his territory. NATO said it would bomb him if the Albanians signed and he didn&#39;t. (Compare this with U.S. mediation efforts in Northern Ireland where threatening to bomb a recalcitrant party was not part of the equation.) The Albanians reluctantly accepted the Rambouillet agreement and Milosevic refused.

Now the primary NATO goal became maintaining its credibility. The Clinton administration had invested heavily in expanding NATO, to make it a primary instrument of U.S. policy not only in Europe, but beyond. There is an elementary point of big power politics that no one denies: threats made need to be carried out if the credibility of future threats are to be maintained. And, likewise, threats carried out but not yielding total victory need to be escalated until the adversary is crushed.

So why make the initial threat to bomb? There is a predisposition in Washington to favor military solutions. A diplomatic approach would have strengthened the UN and international law and made Russia a player, all of which would interfere with U.S. freedom of action. Bombing, on the other hand, leads with the U.S. strong suit. It provides a rationale for U.S. domestic military spending, and an international arms bazaar. It tells the world that the U.S. response to problems with other nations is to bomb them. "What good is this marvelous military force," Albright asked Gen. Colin Powell a few years back, "if we can never use it?"



6. What effects do the bombings have?

In preparation for the bombing, relief workers (who might have continued to mitigate the suffering) and international observers (who might have continued to discourage the most blatant atrocities) were pulled out of Kosovo. The NATO bombing then provoked a horrific outburst of ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces as hundreds of thousands of Albanian Kosovars were driven from their homes. Because all reporters and international observers had left Kosovo, we do not know the human toll of Serb actions, but it surely considerably exceeds the toll for the previous year, during which some 2,000 ethnic Albanian civilians had been killed and about 250,000 ethnic Albanians had become refugees, most of them within Kosovo.

Even without the bombing, a Serbian offensive was likely imminent, but it is hard to believe it would have been as ferocious as what has occurred. The bombing incensed many even in Serbia&#39;s democratic movement, so one can only imagine how it must have affected Serb security forces in Kosovo. Unable to retaliate against NATO missiles and warplanes, they could be expected to lash out at those most vulnerable, ethnic Albanian civilians. Of course, none of this mitigates the responsibility for the atrocities on the part of those who carried them out. But if someone is holding a person hostage and you recklessly charge forward, leading to the death of the hostage, you also bear some responsibility -- all the more so if you rush in not out of true concern for the hostage, but for other reasons entirely. Many U.S. officials have acknowledged that they thought the bombing might well lead to a paroxysm of violence from Milosevic and that air power, the NATO tool of choice, could do nothing to stop that violence in the short run.

Bombing, of course, has had other implications as well. Within Yugoslavia the population has rallied to its leader, Milosevic. The democratic opposition, previously challenging Milosevic, now appears to be either dismantled, jailed, or, most chillingly, supporting him. As Zoren Djindjic, the leader of Serbia&#39;s Democratic Party and an organizer of pro-democracy demonstrations in 1996-97 put it, the "bombs have marginalized any dissenters here." Washington, he said bitterly, has spent more on one day&#39;s bombs than it ever spent helping the democracy movement in Yugoslavia. Montenegro, the smaller of the two Yugoslav republics, had previously passed a resolution questioning Milosevic&#39;s Kosovo policy, but the bombing has quieted its opposition as well. These results were predictable. And the level of hostility and tension in the whole region has climbed dramatically, making negotiations and a lasting peace, eventually obviously required, that much more difficult.

And then there is the horrible loss of life and means of sustaining life that mounts with each new raid of Belgrade and Yugoslavia as a whole. Bombing has a deadly logic of its own. What begins as "surgical" attacks inevitably expands. "We have to drop the bridges and turn out the lights -- there should be no more outdoor rock concerts in downtown Belgrade," Sen. John McCain told Newsweek. "Twelve days of surgical bombing was never going to turn Serbia around," wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. "Let&#39;s see what 12 weeks of less than surgical bombing does. Give war a chance."



7. But even if badly motivated, and even if they have some bad effects, won&#39;t the bombings at least restrain Milosevic?

Restrain him from what? The idea that doing something necessarily improves a situation is, of course, quite false. Some things may be beneficial. Others not. Yes, even an ill-motivated action can sometimes have a desirable effect and therefore deserve support, but in this case the bombing is not only ill-motivated, its effects are horribly detrimental as well. It has worsened the plight of the Albanian Kosovars, vastly increasing the flow of refugees and, due to the scale, created a catastrophe of the first order. It has diminished the internal opposition to Milosevic, and if reports are accurate perhaps destroyed it. It has undermined the UN, turned NATO into an offensive, interventionary institution, played havoc with international law, and further projected the U.S. as a country eager and willing to punish any deviations it discerns from its will with bombs, thus acting as a threat against countries throughout the world. All these effects are horribly negative and then there is the devastation of Yugoslavia itself, the immediate expansion of deaths and casualties, and the future expansion due to the wrecking of a country&#39;s infrastructure.

The remarkable thing is that there is little dispute about the above. Yes, our formulation has a moral tone that many others lack when recounting these facts, but the facts are not in doubt.



8. But can the U.S. really be that vile? Isn&#39;t this just left cynicism and a knee-jerk rejection of all U.S. actions?

Sometimes when a person or group holds roughly the same position repeatedly in different contexts it indicates that the person or group is gravitating to it reflexively or has lost touch with reason and is bending reality to fit his or her prejudices. And yes, there are likely critics of the bombing who have adopted a stance based not on evidence and sound reasoning, but on a pre-determined mindset, with facts bent to fit.

But, the facts of U.S. international relations, and of the limited options available in this case are really not in dispute. And the judgment drawn by critics of U.S.. policy are not leaps from those facts or distortions of those facts or subjective impositions on those facts, but rather very simple deductions from the facts, which, were the culprit any other nation, would be obvious to all.



9. How come there are conflicting viewpoints among leftists and progressives, some favoring bombing, some opposing it?

There has been an avalanche of media commentary emphasizing the immense and grotesque crimes in the Balkans for nearly a decade. It is natural that some folks, including many on the left, have become very impassioned about wishing to see those crimes curbed. This desire, perfectly reasonable on the face of it (though at times ignoring other and often worse cases of repression and violence in the world), has left some folks blind to the reality that just saying that a policy helps people doesn&#39;t mean that, in fact, the policy does help those people. The desire not to ignore the plight of the Kosovars is worthy. But to advocate policies that end up hurting the Kosovars, Yugoslavia as a whole, international law, the UN, and by the threat-effect all who might oppose U.S. pursuits, on grounds that at least it is doing something, is unworthy.



10. Why do many leftists inside Serbia deny that the Serbs have committed atrocities? Are we being misled about that?

There are many factors at work, no doubt. Ethnic conflicts frequently find leftists on opposite sides, swept up in the myths and distortions of their own ethnic group. (Think of the Palestine-Israeli or the Turkish-Greek conflicts.) Having bombs drop in your neighborhood and nation, which destroy the daily functioning of your society, has, we know from history, a tremendously galvanizing and homogenizing effect on people&#39;s views. More, there is likely also honest confusion. Facts available outside Yugoslavia may not be available inside, or at least may not be comprehensible there.

In matters such as this, testimony from people on the scene, from whatever persuasion, must be understood in context. Single events can be elaborated into whole theses, a common trick of the mass media, but in chaotic situations there are single events demonstrative of pretty much any kind of behavior one might wish to find. What matters most is not single examples or events, but widespread patterns of behavior and broad policies and their broad implications.



11. How come many right-wingers are against this action?

Some rightwingers reflexively oppose anything Clinton does (a draft-dodger can&#39;t lead us into war, etc.) But there are two other sources of rightwing opposition. One is the general point that elites can differ in their views as to what best serves U.S. elite interests. If it doesn&#39;t work as planned, which is certainly a reasonable projection of likelihoods, this operation may in fact leave NATO and the U.S. in a worse place than at its outset. Therefore, for those who doubt the bombing&#39;s capacity to lead to stable results that legitimate NATO, reduce risk of spreading conflict, etc., there is reason to oppose the policy.

Moreover, to some rightwingers, multilateralism -- even if it&#39;s NATO rather than the UN -- is suspect because it reduces to some extent U.S. freedom of action. If the situation in Kosovo might cause a crisis in southeastern Europe, let the Europeans deal with it. The right opposes peacekeeping operations ("the United States needs to husband its resources for great exertions, not dissipate them in a thousand stagnant fens" [Charles Krauthammer]). And where left critics of the bombing argue that it will not achieve -- and will in fact exacerbate -- any humanitarian objectives, the right is about as concerned about the suffering in Kosovo as it is about the suffering in America&#39;s cities.



12. What is the role of law in international relations and in this crisis? Where is the UN in all this?

U.S. officials frequently proclaim their adherence to international law, except when they don&#39;t want to. So, Washington ignored a ruling by the World Court on Nicaragua, vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to obey international law, and more generally acts unilaterally whenever it feels like. The same pattern pertains in this case, too.

The Charter of the United Nations -- which is a treaty signed by the United States and thus part of the "Supreme law of the land" -- prohibits the use or threat of force against other nations except in self-defense to an armed attack or if authorized by the UN Security Council. When the United States can bring along the Security Council it is delighted to do so (for example, during the 1991 war against Iraq), even if it takes blatant bribery to pressure other states to assent. But where such consensus is impossible, Washington has been happy to simply ignore the Security Council, claiming that it has authorization from previous Council resolutions, even though most other countries see no such authorization (the U.S.-British bombing of Iraq in December 1998, for example) or else advancing ludicrous claims that it is acting in self-defense (as in its recent missile strikes on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant).

Regional organizations like NATO simply do not have the right to act on their own. Article 53 of the UN Charter states that "no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without the authorization of the Security Council." So in the case of Kosovo, the U.S. and NATO, confronting a problem, turned not to the UN but to the Pentagon. The UN is not entirely under U.S. auspices and could, conceivably, act independently and in a humanitarian manner which would frequently conflict with U.S. interests and require changes in U.S. policies.



13. But aren&#39;t borders an abstraction? Shouldn&#39;t we be concerned with people rather than with nations? Why does it matter that Yugoslavia is a sovereign nation and that this is an internal conflict rather than between nations?

Borders exist. And the reason to be concerned about their violation even with good motivations much less by a unilateral and illegal force uninterested in the plight of the suffering, is because respect for borders is one of the few impediments to the mighty doing whatever they please with the weak. To establish the precedent that national sovereignty is inconsequential is to remove perhaps the major impediment to one nation sending troops, bombers, or missiles into another. Once that is done, there remains only debate over what is warranted, and in the world as we know it such debate is dominated by the most powerful states and their massive media machines, most particularly the U.S. (Military intervention, Richard Falk has reminded us, is like the Mississippi River: it only flows from North to South.) Thus, to deny the validity of national sovereignty is to effectively give the U.S. carte blanche to intervene when and where it decides -- which is, of course, from the U.S. perspective, a delightful by-product of the current events.



14. What is the right way to deal with crises like this? There are two questions: How can we reduce violence and get settlements, and what rights are national minorities entitled to?

Crises inside sovereign nations are complex problems on the international scene. Should Japan bomb Washington out of solidarity with blacks subjected to horrible conditions and violence in our inner cities? Would that improve or worsen the plight of blacks, have ancillary affects that were positive or negative from the point of view of justice and self-determination? The major means of impacting relations ought to be diplomacy, international opinion, and domestic movements. In some instances (as in the case of apartheid in South Africa) these may be rightly augmented with economic sanctions which are supported by the internal opposition. In other instances, however, sanctions can amount to a deadly and immoral weapon, having as their chief consequence huge and criminal casualties among civilians, as in Iraq in recent years. And yes, one can certainly imagine situations where a powerful state or community can and will devastate a minority ethnic group if there is not some form of more powerful intervention -- but this does not mean bombing by interested parties not seeking true peace and which will only aggravate crimes and divisions.

Most world problems, including most humanitarian crises, don&#39;t call for military solutions, but non-pacifists believe that there are some situations where force is the only option. If that force is wielded by the United States, however, it will be used to further U.S. elite interests rather than any humanitarian objective. Other countries, too, look out for their own elite interests, so the way to minimize the influence of the elite-serving agendas of individual governments is to put a humanitarian military force under democratic international control. International control must mean the UN General Assembly, not the Security Council which is set up in the most undemocratic way imaginable, with five countries (the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China) having veto power.

Even the General Assembly does not represent real democracy. There&#39;s no relation of votes to population, many members states are themselves undemocratic, and even those that are formally democratic are dominated by elites with money. True democratic control of a humanitarian force must await global social change, but in the meantime the General Assembly provides the best approximation.

Thus, in extreme cases, what is needed to prevent human travail is no doubt a true peace-keeping force, under the auspices of the General Assembly of the UN, prepared to stand between combatants and, if necessary, to defend itself and those being abused, to create conditions for negotiations.

What rights are national minorities entitled to? As a basic position, we must support self-determination as a fundamental democratic right. But there are some tough questions. What if a minority wants to secede, but within their territory live other minorities? Such situations have no simple solution, especially if the minority does not live in contiguous territory. What if a minority wishes to leave a country and take with it the bulk of the country&#39;s resources or assets, leaving a majority behind bereft of the means to sustain themselves?

A proper policy regarding national minorities requires a flexible mechanism of international law and adjudication, respected by the peoples and nations of the world, with binding powers that all abide, and with priority attention to ensuring that the powerful do not subjugate or otherwise delimit the options of the weak within or between countries. We are far from having any such mechanism, but U.S. flouting of international law moves us in precisely the wrong direction.



15. What should we demand for the Balkans?

* An end to the bombing.
* Pursue diplomacy, not rejecting out of hand every diplomatic overture (such as the Russian call for talks or Milosevic&#39;s offer of a cease-fire).
* An international peace keeping force overseen by the UN General Assembly to stand between the combatants.
* An international system, under the auspices of the General Assembly, to adjudicate and make decisions about the use of peace-keeping forces.
* And an insistence that other atrocities, often perpetrated or abetted or ignored by Washington because they serve U.S. interests, receive the same media visibility and humanitarian attention as the atrocities in Kosovo.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Kosovo said on Monday it would immediately start talks with its Western backers on a declaration of independence from Serbia, which would come "much earlier than May".

Leaders of Kosovo&#39;s 2 million ethnic Albanians made the announcement as a Dec. 10 deadline for a negotiated deal on the fate of the breakaway province passed without result.

"From today, Kosovo begins consultations with key international partners to coordinate the next steps to a declaration of independence," said Skender Hyseni, spokesman of Kosovo&#39;s "unity team" in negotiations with Serbia.

"Kosovo and the people of Kosovo urgently need clarity on their future," Hyseni said.

Kosovo has been in limbo since NATO expelled Serb forces in 1999 to stop the killing of civilians in a counter-insurgency war. Around 10,000 people died, the vast majority Albanians.

The 90-percent Albanian majority reject return to Serb rule. They have promised to coordinate a declaration of independence with the United States and the European Union, which is due to take over supervision of the territory from the United Nations.

Serbia, backed by Russia, opposes independence for land it sees as the historical cradle of the nation. Warnings of chaos in the Balkans appeared to have failed to divide the 27-member EU, which on Monday expressed almost "full unity" on the issue.

Asked to clarify speculation on the timing of a declaration, Hyseni said it would happen "much earlier than May". Diplomats say it could come in January or February, depending on the timing of an expected presidential election in Serbia.



BREAKAWAY

NATO&#39;s 16,000-strong Kosovo peace force is braced for violence, and a possible bid by the Serb north to break away. Around 120,000 Serbs remain, most in isolated enclaves. Kosovo&#39;s U.N. overseers have failed to extend any real control over the north, which backs on to Serbia proper and is run from Belgrade.

In the ethnically-divided town of Mitrovica, the likely frontline for any partition bid, Serbia&#39;s Minister for Kosovo opened a ministry office and promised Belgrade would "intensify" a network of parallel institutions for the Serb minority, beyond U.N. control.

Slobodan Samardzic said Serbia would "fight back" if Kosovo Serbs came under attack from Albanian hardliners. "Serbia will not give in," he told reporters. "It&#39;s not finished yet."

In a report submitted to the United Nations last Friday, mediators from the United States, European Union and Russia said four months of talks found no compromise between Serbia&#39;s offer of autonomy and the Albanian majority&#39;s demand for independence.

Washington and almost all EU states see Kosovo&#39;s independence as the best way to stability in the Balkans after the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The EU is preparing to send 1,600 policemen and an overseer to replace the U.N. mission.

Russia blocked a Western-backed independence plan at the U.N. Security Council this summer, after more than a year of Serb-Albanian talks, and has warned Kosovo&#39;s secession will set a precedent for other separatist regions. The West now appears ready to move ahead without a new U.N. resolution.

Kosovo Albanians are desperate for the jobs and investment they hope will come with statehood. Some 1,000 students marched in Kosovo&#39;s capital Pristina, chanting "Independence" and waving the U.S. flag. One placard read: "Europe, show unity."
__________________________________________________ _____________________

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Kosovo Albanian leaders said on Monday they will start immediate talks with Western backers towards an independence declaration as the EU edged closer to unity in support for Kosovo&#39;s drive to secede from Serbia.

With a United Nations deadline for agreement on the future of the breakaway province expiring on Monday, Russia warned any unilateral recognition could trigger problems around the world and undermine international law.

"From today, Kosovo begins consultations with key international partners to coordinate the next steps to a declaration of independence," Skender Hyseni, spokesman of Kosovo&#39;s negotiating team with Serbia, said in Pristina.

"Kosovo and the people of Kosovo urgently need clarity on their future...The institutions of Kosovo will deliver that clarity very soon," he said. He said a declaration would come "much earlier than May", referring to one rumored timeframe.

Serbia, firmly against independence, insisted that only the United Nations had the authority to determine Kosovo&#39;s future.

"That process belongs to the U.N. Security Council and to all countries that are members of the U.N., not to the EU," Serb Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic said on the sidelines of a conference in Belgrade about EU accession.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told reporters ahead of a European Union meeting on Kosovo that there was "virtual unity" on Kosovo within the bloc, whose internal divisions prevented it from halting the Balkans wars of the 1990s.

But the EU still lacks the full consensus which diplomats say would help to dissuade Serbia and Russia from any last-minute bid to derail the independence process.

"We are in support of a negotiated settlement... and we would not like to see anything undermining the international legal basis," Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou Markoullis said in Brussels of its concerns about a unilateral declaration.

Slovakia, keen not to encourage separatist moves by its own Hungarian minority, also said it would find it hard to recognize an independent Kosovo but Foreign Minister Jan Kubis said the EU could still deploy a planned 1,600-strong police mission there.

"The legal ground is the 1244 resolution and that resolution is valid," he said of the existing U.N. resolution governing international action in Kosovo.

"CHAIN REACTION"

Russia, which backs Serbia&#39;s opposition to independence, warned of the potential fallout from a unilateral declaration.

"It will create a chain reaction throughout the Balkans and other areas of the world," its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Nicosia after talks there.

"Nobody in the talks should be humiliated," said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin&#39;s personal envoy for EU relations, told reporters during a conference in Slovenia.

"The solution must never undermine international law."

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said independence moves should wait until after Serb polls in January. EU&#39;s chief Kosovo mediator urged Pristina to coordinate with Brussels.

Major powers in the Security Council are to debate Kosovo on December 19, but Moscow has said it will call for more negotiations -- something Washington and most EU states think is pointless.

Cyprus and to a lesser extent Greece have led a group of doubters concerned either because of their proximity to the Balkans or because of separatist movements on their territory.

In a report to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last Friday, mediators from the United States, the European Union and Russia said four months of talks had found no compromise on whether Kosovo should be independent or just autonomous.

CONTINGENCY PLANS

Kosovo has been in legal limbo under U.N. administration since NATO bombing in 1999 pushed out Serbian forces to end ethnic cleansing against ethnic Albanians.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told BBC radio NATO might have to reinforce its 16,000-strong KFOR peace force to deal with any outbreaks of violence if tensions spiked between Kosovo&#39;s 90 percent ethnic Albanians and its Serb minority.

Leaders of the 27-nation EU are expected to declare at a summit on Friday that negotiations have been exhausted and that the future of both Serbia and Kosovo lies in the EU.

The plan is for the EU to take over police and justice tasks from the United Nations and appoint a civilian representative in a supervisory role, while NATO troops remain in place.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The clock starts ticking on Monday toward a probable declaration of independence by Kosovo after extra-time negotiations failed to break a deadlock over the future of the breakaway Serbian province.

In a report to U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-moon last Friday, mediators from the United States, European Union and Russia said four months of talks had found no compromise on whether Kosovo should be independent or just self-ruled.

With the U.N. Security Council divided over what should happen next, Kosovo&#39;s 90-percent majority ethnic Albanians look set to formally declare independence some time in the first two months of next year.

That will be approaching nine years since NATO bombing pushed Serb forces out of Kosovo because of their ruthless tactics against an insurgency. The province has been under U.N. administration since then.

The United States and key European Union powers are gearing up to recognize an independent Kosovo, but Serbia says it will never accept that and is backed by its big-power ally Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council.

The United Nations ordered the four months of negotiations, despite the failure of previous talks, after Russia blocked a resolution that would have paved the way for independence. The deadline was Monday, but given the deadlock, the mediators reported days before that.

The first move comes in Brussels on Monday when EU mediator Wolfgang Ischinger will brief EU foreign ministers on the talks between the Kosovo Albanians, who demanded independence, and Serbia, which offered autonomy within the Serbian state.

Leaders of the 27-nation bloc are expected to declare in a statement at a summit on Friday that negotiations are over and that the future of both Serbia and Kosovo lies in the European Union, diplomats said.

CHANGE OF STATUS

In a week&#39;s time, the focus shifts to the United Nations, where the Security Council will debate the issue on December 19. But Russia has already said it will call for more negotiations, something Western and Muslim states think is pointless.

Western diplomats say Russia has to recognize it is virtually isolated. "The question for the Russians is have they changed their position? They&#39;ve had the further negotiating effort they wanted and there was no agreement," one senior Western envoy said.

"If there is no Russian change, then the idea is to change the status of Kosovo on the basis of existing (Security Council) resolutions," the envoy said. That would effectively take the issue away from the United Nations.

The key resolution is 1244, dating back to 1999, which set up the international presence in Kosovo following the NATO bombing. The West says there is nothing in it to prevent a move toward independence. Serbia and Russia disagree.

As envisioned by Western countries, the scenario would follow the outlines of a plan laid out earlier this year by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

The European Union would take over police and justice functions from the United Nations and appoint a civilian representative in a supervisory role. Some 16,000 NATO troops would continue to ensure order. Kosovo would declare independence. Those countries that wished to recognize it would do so. A limited U.N. mission would stay on.

One factor affecting the timing is a Western desire not to influence Serbian presidential elections, expected in January or February.

Still, no one can be sure how Serbs would react to Kosovo independence. Both Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians have pledged to refrain from violence, but there has been talk in Serbia of border closures and trade blockades, and NATO fears possible low-level clashes between Kosovo Albanians and minority Serbs.

[hajduk]

The Milosevic Indictment

By Stephen R. Shalom

Following World War II, a war crimes tribunal was held in Tokyo to try Japanese political and military leaders. There is no doubt that the defendants were responsible for appalling atrocities, but, as the Indian judge on the tribunal wrote in his dissenting opinion, the victorious allies had themselves committed grave crimes, and the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the most horrific war crimes of the Pacific War. But only the atrocities committed by the Japanese were punished. In short, the war crimes trial represented "victors&#39; justice."

In recent years there has been an effort to establish an International Criminal Court, a body that could prosecute serious crimes against humanity no matter who committed them. In multilateral talks, the United States did its best to weaken the authority of such a Court, and then in 1998 was one of only seven countries -- along with Libya, Iraq, and Israel -- to vote against its establishment, while 120 nations voted yes. Washington was determined to make sure that it would never be subject to the rule of law.

Earlier the UN Security Council set up two specialized war crimes tribunals, one dealing with Yugoslavia (set up in 1993) and one with Rwanda (set up in 1994). These received Security Council backing because they were framed in such a way as to make powerful states blameless. The enabling resolution for the Rwanda tribunal, for example, was worded so that French citizens who shipped arms to the killers in Rwanda and the French government could not be prosecuted.

Over the past six years, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted some 84 individuals for war crimes. But because the Tribunal is dependent on others to provide it with evidence, not all those who have committed serious atrocities have been indicted. In particular, the Croatian military leaders responsible for Operation Storm, in which two hundred thousand Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia were ethnically cleansed -- driven out, with many attendant killings -- have not been indicted, in large part because the United States, which aided the operation, has refused to provide the necessary evidence.

The Tribunal has now indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four other Yugoslav officials. There is no doubt that Milosevic is guilty of gross violations of humanitarian law. (I don&#39;t know enough about the inner workings of the Yugoslav government to comment on the culpability of the other four, but their positions suggest that they are guilty as well.) But two questions still remain. First, is this still "victors&#39; justice"? And, second, what is the significance of the timing of the indictments?

The Tribunal was set up by the Security Council, and the judges were chosen by the General Assembly from a list prepared by the Security Council. So far, only one judge of the 14 on the Tribunal has passed any judgment, the one who approved the prosecutor&#39;s indictment. The prosecutor is chosen by the Security Council on the nomination of the Secretary-General. That the Security Council has any role here -- rather than the General Assembly alone -- is undemocratic (because the Council represents and gives the right of veto to the powerful), but it&#39;s fair to say that the Tribunal is not simply a pawn of the United States. Nevertheless, there are two respects in which the Tribunal does not represent objective justice.

* First, by being restricted to violations of humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia, some of the worst atrocities in the world are ignored. Thus, U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq that have taken such a tremendous human toll are immune from criticism, as are massacres in Turkey, East Timor, and elsewhere.
* Second, even focusing on current events in Yugoslavia, Milosevic&#39;s are not the only atrocities that warrant condemnation. NATO is now openly targeting the civilian infrastructure of Serbia, a war crime. In early April, Human Rights Watch warned NATO to take care to minimize civilian casualties, but the only change in NATO policy has been to further remove bombing restrictions. And the United States is using cluster bombs which, as Human Rights Watch has noted, are especially hazardous to civilians and refugees, spreading deadly bomblets that are lethal for years to come (children are particularly drawn to the volatile live remnants). It is rather odd to indict Milosevic and company for four hundred odd killings and to remain silent about the several thousand civilian deaths from NATO bombing -- most not intentional, to be sure, but showing reckless disregard for non-combatant casualties.

What is unprecedented about the Milosevic indictment is that it represents the first time that a sitting leader has been charged with war crimes while those crimes are still going on. In one respect, this is clearly a good thing: Better to try to stop atrocities when they are happening than to remember them at memorial services. But there is reason to be concerned that the indictments will add to rather than alleviate the humanitarian crisis. Tribunal prosecutor Louise Arbour said as she brought the indictments:

Although the accused are entitled to the benefit of the presumption of innocence until they are convicted, the evidence upon which this indictment was confirmed raises serious questions about their suitability to be the guarantors of any deal, let alone a peace agreement.

Such thinking, if accepted by NATO leaders, rules out any diplomatic solution to the war, and would require a ground invasion and the overthrow of Milosevic. The overthrow of war criminals is always welcome, but those who would suffer most from any such invasion would be the Kosovars, both because it would provoke more Serbian atrocities against them and because of the sharply increased "collateral damage" that a NATO ground campaign would entail.

Does that mean that negotiations should be held with lying, brutal war criminals? Yes, Clinton must be involved in negotiations, as must Milosevic. If leaders are excluded from negotiations because they are criminal, there would never be any peace talks. And the alternative to such talks is a fight to the death -- the deaths of many innocent people.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Kosovo&#39;s two main political parties said they would begin negotiations on Tuesday on a coalition government to lead the province into a declaration of independence from Serbia early next year.

The deadline for a deal between Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians expired on Monday without result. European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels edged towards a common position on independence for the province -- something strongly opposed by Serbia and by Russia.

The Democratic Party of Kosovo of prime minister-apparent Hashim Thaci invited the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) to set aside their bitter rivalry since the 1998-99 war and discuss the formation of a "grand coalition".

Thaci&#39;s PDK, which emerged from the ranks of the Kosovo Albanian guerrilla army after the war, won Kosovo&#39;s Nov 17 parliamentary election.

Thaci, 39, waited until after the formal end of failed negotiations on the fate of the Albanian majority province to make his widely predicted overture to the LDK. An LDK official told Reuters the party had agreed to hold talks.

Kosovo leaders announced they would immediately start consultations with their Western backers on a declaration of independence, expected in the first months of 2008.



TURBULENT TRANSITION

Western diplomats hope the LDK and PDK can together lead Kosovo through what promises to be a turbulent transition to statehood, opposed by Serbia and its big-power backer, Russia.

"Kosovo is at the most important crossroads in its history," Thaci wrote to LDK leader and Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu.

"We all agree that for the interests of our citizens we should set aside our differences and unite for one aim: to solve the problems of today and the challenges of tomorrow."

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombed to drive out Serb forces and halt the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year counter-insurgency war.

Thaci&#39;s guerrillas had eclipsed the LDK&#39;s policy of passive resistance to Serb repression, which had brought few results.

The LDK&#39;s fortunes have foundered since the death in 2006 of its leader, then Kosovo president Ibrahim Rugova. Its vote plummetted to 22.6 percent last month from 45.4 percent in 2004. The PDK won 34.3 percent.

Together the two parties would hold 62 seats in the 120-seat parliament. Thaci has indicated he would also welcome the participation of ethnic minorities, including Serbs.
__________________________________________________ ____________________

BELGRADE, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Serb Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica warned the European Union on Tuesday that sending a supervisory mission to the breakaway province of Kosovo could damage relations with Serbia.

"Anyone who wants Serbia as a partner has to know Serbia will accept partnership only as a whole country, not as a country cut in two," Kostunica said in a statement.

Serbia "emphatically rejects in advance an unlawful decision on the arrival of an EU mission" and "expects the EU to respect its stance that a EU mission cannot come to its territory, Kosovo, without a new Security Council resolution," he said.

The EU is preparing to deploy a 1,600-strong police and justice mission to Kosovo. Western officials are concerned the mainly Serb north of the province will reject their presence.

Belgrade initialled a Stabilization and Association Agreement, the first step towards EU membership, in October.

Serb rhetoric hardened in the run-up to a Dec. 10 deadline for a negotiated deal on Kosovo&#39;s fate. Mediators reported no room for compromise between Serbia&#39;s offer of autonomy and the Kosovo Albanian majority&#39;s demand of independence.

Albanian leaders said on Monday they would start talks with the United States and European Union on declaring independence, likely in early 2008. Washington regards Kosovo independence as the only option for stability in the Balkans.

The EU also seems to be edging to a common position that would allow the bloc to take over supervision of the province.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombed to drive out Serb forces and halt the killing of Albanian civilians in a two-year counter-insurgency war.

Serbia insists only the U.N. may determine Kosovo&#39;s future and has relied on Russia, a veto holder in the Security Council, to block U.N. recognition.

Analysts say the Kosovo issue has paralysed the Serb coalition government and is hurting the country&#39;s bid to join the EU, a process already delayed by Belgrade&#39;s failure to arrest war crime suspects from the wars of the 1990s.

Afraid they would be vilified, Kostunica&#39;s moderate partners are adopting hardline positions.

President Boris Tadic, normally seen as a pro-Western liberal, said Serbia would demand an International Court of Justice ruling on any Western recognition of Kosovo, and could launch legal challenges in the U.S. and EU countries.

Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic, the man in charge of Serbia&#39;s EU path, also took a tougher line, saying "the EU is not a state" and should not be part of the Kosovo process."

"Even though 70 percent of Serbs support joining the EU, there is a huge division in the ruling coalition," said Dusan Janjic of the Forum for Ethnic Relations think-tank.

"Next year will be a year of struggle and discussion, whether to go towards the EU, when and how."

[hajduk]

Navigating and Addressing
Prevalent Kosovo Positions

By Michael Albert

Many views persist about the US/NATO bombing in the Balkans. Among this range of views, however, we can usefully focus on six main stances, though individuals of course sometimes fit between or straddle one or more of them.



1. Non-Involvement. What me worry? The conflict is over there; I am here. Don’t bother me with it.

There are two variants of this view, for convenience let&#39;s say Tom and Sara. Tom really doesn&#39;t give a hoot. He is morally and socially out of touch with what&#39;s happening, and utterly unmoved by it. His pose of noninvolvement is sincere; he is, indeed, uninvolved. Sara, says she is uninvolved but is clearly instead aware and threatened. She adopts a non-involved persona to ward off discussion and to avoid being sucked into the issue. She feels, consciously or otherwise, that involvement will be dangerous to her social and personal identity.

Tom, and this fellow is actually pretty rare, I think, is simply a person with a highly truncated range of human concern. Some people might consider him utterly amoral, not worth much as a human specimen. At any rate, it is hard to talk with Tom about anything ethical beyond his immediate circle of family and friends and an activist doing so is likely to get “testy” or worse. Presenting evidence bearing on the events doesn&#39;t move Tom because he just doesn&#39;t care what is going on outside his immediate periphery. What is needed is to wake Tom up to a sense of moral responsibility and human empathy. This is generally best accomplished not by bludgeoning him (think of Tom as a turtle with his head in its shell; bludgeoning isn’t likely to yield a peekaboo effect), but by trying to communicate the scale of pain and suffering and the humanity of those the U.S. is bombing…and our responsibility for it. Analogies may penetrate. Likewise examples of people confronting moral problems and deciding to become involved rather than be aloof may have some impact. Or perhap nothing will help. If so, move on.

Sara is more complex. Her position ignores assessment of the situation in the Balkans or U.S./NATO responsibility. Instead, she is defending herself. Consider as but one example a bunch of public school teachers who studiously avoid talking about the war to one another or to anyone else. The one or two dissidents in the school teacher&#39;s lunchroom who try to pursue the topic are told – "leave us alone," "not over lunch," and so on. Often the excuse offered, if any, is of the form that Tom gives, above--"it is far away and not our concern." But unlike for Tom, for Sara and these teachers this isn’t the whole truth. Instead these people have a wide ranging moral sensibility. They have social concern and human empathy that often operates for people way beyond their immediate presense. Yet they are turning it off. Why? Well, most often it is to avoid having their morality and sociality lead them where they don’t want to go – to a dissident anti-war position which, once adopted, would ethically and socially force them to speak out and to otherwise oppose the war, something they do not want to do fearing the social, job-related and other ramifications of the choice. Their claim to be uninterested is actually a prophylactic strategy to avoid falling down a slippery slope into dissent.

Sara is therefore going to resist entreaties about the war and even get angry at the messenger. As an activist, in a real sense you are the enemy, the agent trying to get her to go where she is desperately trying to avoid going. When you try to bring war concerns to her you are threatening her peaceful existence and she won&#39;t take that kindly. What to do? Well, in my experience this situation has to be addressed head on. I think you have to try to reveal to this person, as gently and supportively and non-judgementally as possible, precisely what they are doing. You have to show that in comparable situations if there was no cost to holding dissenting views, they would do so. You have to show them (they have ethics and social sensibility, they just aren&#39;t using them, remember) that their resistance to discussing the matter is indefensible. Analogies to “good Germans” are not out of place, though you have to make such analogies non-aggressively if you hope to be heard. Analogies to other domains, say workplace struggles and the role of scabs, or to those who that say racism isn’t my business when confronted with race crimes in their city or, "please, I am just trying to eat" when the topic is violence against women in the neighborhood is raised, are all possible wedges to use to engage Sara in discussion. Once she is truly engaged, the organizing task is pretty simple from there on.


2. The assault by the US/NATO is humanitarian and is in U.S-European interests and it should be brought to a successful, victorious conclusion.

This view also has two broad strands – those who are simply hypocritical purveyers of war and destruction and who then rationalize it either to live with themselves or for public consumption or both, like Clinton and Blair – and those who have been convinced of a lot of data and rationalizations, which, if it was all true, would indeed cause a thinking, feeling, moral person to support the bombing.

The first type person, let&#39;s call him Ted, is actually in pretty short supply and there is no point in arguing with him. For Ted, a person of power, privilege, and stature, we have demonstrations and, generally, efforts to raise social costs that he/they find unbearable, so that in reaction to the threat of our growing dissent, he/they change their tune.

The second bombing advocate, Sue, is utterly confused and needs information and clarification. This person -- which is most people one might be organizing usefully, by far -- holds a view that any reasonable person would hold believing what she believes. For this person, then, the issue is communication of facts and connections among them. (A little caveat, a person can be largely Sue-ish, but also somewhat Sara-ish...complicating the requirements if one is to communicate effectively with her.)

3) Military intervention against Milosevic is required on behalf of the Albanian Kosovars and despite their having other immoral and improper motivations the U.S./ NATO is the only vehicle for effective intervention. Bombing the Serbs (but not big cities) is good, as is invasion and occupation.

This view is broadly associated with a “wing” of DSA “led” by Bogdan Denitch as well as other left advocates of intervention. It is possible that the reader feels some affinity with this view, but I don&#39;t -- not even a little tiny bit -- so in describing how to specifically react to it I have to indicate how I would do so...or, as a cheat, I can save time and indicate how Chomsky would do so since I agree with his approach on this matter...

(4) The bombing is criminal and must be stopped because it is not in U.S. interests but risks them for poor reasons.

This is associated with diverse strands of right-wing opposition to the war. There is more than one varient of this, too. Sometimes it is purely partisan politics, running shallow and bearing only on dislike for the Clinton Administation. Sometimes it is an assessment that, indeed, in this instance a mistake is being made by the U.S. That is, from the point of view of power and profit we are risking too much to accomplish too little. Obviously this is not a moral opposition but a pragmatic one based on the same values as the bombing but a different view of prospects. If these dissenters thought bombing would yield the outcomes Clinton and they seek without costs for elites they think he is underestimating, they would be for it. A third strand of right wing opposition is principled...libertarian rightists who are almost always anti-interventionist. Their values and readings are certainly quite different than a left opposition, though their comittment is serious and their dissent does add to the pressure on Clinton to change course.

I don&#39;t think left opponents of the bombing have any reason to spend much time trying to argue with or organze such folks, especially now when one must apply oneself where it will do the most good.

(5) The assault against Yugoslavia is criminal and stems from U.S. imperial designs on the entire Balkan region that have been thwarted by Milosevic who must (in the eyes of the U.S.) therefore be eliminated and whose country must be dismantled. Milosevic and the Serbs, on their side, are waging a just war and deserve positive support.

This view is loosely associated with The International Action Center (IAC) and Ramsey Clark, though weaker versions are simply that the war is horrific and any mention of crimes by those being bombed is out of place. Anti-war critics with stance 6, below, confront those with stance 5, and vice versa, with partial agreement and partial disagreement. The agreement is that the war is horrible and the bombing should stop and no invasion should occur. The disagreements are about the proximate cause and the proper stance to take in opposing the bombing. The difference about cause is far less critical than that about how to oppose the bombing.

Stance 5 folks generally feel that what is going on was, from the outset, a plan to dismember Yugoslavia in order to either (a) punish or remove an obstacle to U.S. desires in the region and more generally, or (b) protect/grab valuable assets on the ground in the region, or &copy; fulfill a grand scheme of Balkins domination. They tend to feel that the proximate events in the region are mere pretext and excuse. The Stance 6 folks agree that these kinds of motivations sometimes operate for the U.S. (and even in this case, opportunistically, after the fact of other factors causing the intervention) but that in this instance the proximate events in the area were critical to bringing on the attacks. However, stance 6 says that Serb policies in Kosovo brought on the attack not because of humanitarian concern by the U.S. or NATO, of course, but because of concern that the evolving crisis would continue to enlarge, engulfing new regions and drawing in governments, finally undermining U.S. authority and threatening other assets in Europe if Washington did not take action. Both sides agree that the U.S./NATO is not intervening to help people, but they disagree about why it is intervening. These are real differences, but don&#39;t bear on opposing or not opposing the bombing, either position comes to the same conclusion on that score.

The difference about how to oppose the bombing is more substantial and important, however. Stance (5) says that the events in the area not only have nothing to do with U.S. motives but also are not relevant to discuss much less denounce on the left. There is no need or reason to decry Serb crimes, they believe, and in fact Stance (5) people rarely acknowledge that the Serbs have been criminal at all, or at least criminal beyond what one would anticipate in such a setting, beyond, say, the paralel acts of the Kosovar Albanians. More, Stance 5 folks say that to talk about Milosevic in negative terms, or about Serb policies in negative terms, is to play into the hands of NATO and to abet the war makers. They criticize such choices.

Stance (6) folks, in contrast, say (a) the true facts are that Serb policies have been horrible and that Milosevic is indeed a purveyor of criminal ethnic policies in the region and against the Kosovar Albanians--though at far less scale than NATO propagandists portray, (b) to deny Milosevic&#39;s criminal acts or even just side-step discussing them casts into doubt one&#39;s honesty and sensitivity to reality, thereby undercutting potential for one&#39;s anti-war efforts, and &copy; people will stay out of and distrust a movement that downplays the crimes of Milosevic&#39;s regime out of not wanting to seem to abet Milosevic, etc.

This is not a small difference...

It turns out that Stance 5 advocates are often guided by marxist leninist and sect leadership -- not exclusively, but often. The IAC, for example, is largely guided by the Workers World Party. Stance 6 advocates are often independent leftists, often quite critical of leninism and especially Sect politics -- again, not exclusively (for example ISO leans toward Stance 6), but often. The connections between these underlying allegiances and the debate over how to address the war no doubt exist, but are hard to identify.

(6) The bombing and any invasion by NATO/U.S. is criminal and immoral and must be ended. The ethnic cleansing by Milosevic and Serb troops is also criminal and immoral and must also be ended. U.S. policy stemmed from worries about U.S. interests being threatened (not concern for the well being of any local human constituencies) and took the form it did for reasons of big power cost/benefit analysis.

This view is associated with a host of organizations and actors too numerous to list but might be best situated in this article and in this venue, for reference sake, as circling around the work of Chomsky, Shalom, and myself and the great bulk of materials highlighted in Z Magazine and on its web site, ZNet. Nearly all the materials here bear upon and add to the view...


Okay, I admit, no taxonomy is perfect. There are other stances, of course... one in particular, worth mentioning in conclusion: people who have been leftist, even anti-imperialist, and who have drifted away over the years from any kind of serious engagement, but who more or less retain the values and commitments they once acted on...but who are now pro-bombing or at least passive with respect to it. This is often a very hard group to talk with even though there is a lot of shared understanding, because folks in this group are often like Stance 2, but also often like Stance 1 (wanting to defend not total disconnection, but relative disconnection, and their past choice of it). I get mail from such people every day. I encounter them at every talk I give. What can I say? Well, in addition to offering information and evidence ala all the above, I say do your best. Don&#39;t feel defensive. Don&#39;t feel guilty. Don&#39;t worry about explaining your hiatus from your commitments. Just make good on your new inclination. The issue isn&#39;t what you did yesterday or last month, or from 1970 or 71 or 75 or 80 or 85 or whenever, to now. The issue is reclaiming your inclination to take a moral and political stand, to act on it to your values in concert with others when you can, where you can, with the energies you can muster. Do that, and yesterday is gone, overnight.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BRUSSELS, Dec 12 (Reuters) - European Union leaders will emerge from Friday&#39;s summit without agreement on the future of Kosovo -- but nobody will be sounding the alarm bell just yet.

For despite the fact that "unity" has become the mantra of those heading European diplomacy on the breakaway Serb province, many believe full accord among the bloc&#39;s 27 states is not achievable or even needed to handle the dicey few months ahead.

Instead, the key will be how Kosovo&#39;s backers play Brussels&#39; decision-making processes to deliver pledges of an EU security force and financial support even as a handful of doubting nations voice concerns over independence.

"Unity with flexibility is the buzzword now," said one diplomat of the approach being taken to proceed with what Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt this week called the EU&#39;s "virtual unity" on Kosovo.

With an independence declaration seen only weeks away, all want to avoid a repeat of the 1990s when hopelessly divided European capitals wrung their hands as the Balkans plunged into wars ended only by U.S.-backed NATO intervention.

An outright split on Kosovo at the summit would be all the more embarrassing given that it comes a day after EU leaders sign a new reform treaty in Lisbon hailed as giving the group stronger leadership and a more robust common foreign policy.

Leaders are set to issue a statement on Friday noting that efforts to reach a compromise between Pristina and Belgrade have been exhausted, but omitting reference to the vexed question of independence recognition, according to a draft seen by Reuters.

While EU foreign policy normally requires unanimity, Kosovo supporters will immediately set to work preparing a 1,600-plus police and justice mission that will be the most visible sign of EU determination to act.



OUTLIERS

They are cautiously confident they can employ a little-used EU mechanism known as "constructive abstention" that allows a nation to duck a decision on any EU foreign or security matter on which it has reservations.

That could help Cyprus, Spain, Slovakia and others -- wary of recognising Kosovo for fear of setting a precedent that could ultimately undermine their own territorial integrity -- to register their doubts while not actually blocking the mission.

"That will be the yardstick on which (EU) unity will be measured," French Secretary of State for Europe Jean-Pierre Jouyet told reporters this week of a mission which would be the most ambitious security operation in the EU&#39;s history.

EU financial aid for Kosovo -- crucial for kick-starting its moribund local economy -- can also be released without full unanimity because much of it is in the remit of the European Commission, the EU&#39;s powerful executive arm, diplomats note.

However there is no way round the recognition issue and EU officials are resigned to some EU capitals taking months to recognise an independent Kosovo -- if ever, in Cyprus&#39; case.

"It was always understood there would be outliers," said Tomas Valasek of the London-based Centre for European Reform think tank, forecasting it would not be a problem unless major countries such as Spain refused to recognise it.



LIMITATIONS

Yet the limitations of partial unity on Kosovo are clear.

Full accord would have bolstered European arguments against Russian and Serb assertions that a unilateral independence move by Kosovo is both illegal and sets a dangerous precedent.

And one day Kosovo will need the backing of all EU nations to begin the long climb towards eventual entry of the bloc.

"But that is not exactly time-critical at this stage," said one EU diplomat of a process likely to take many years.

EU officials acknowledge the strategy could unravel if Kosovo&#39;s ethnic Albanians break a pledge to coordinate with the EU and United States and rush into an early independence move.

"We would like to agree with them on how to go about it," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, whose country takes over the EU presidency from Jan. 1, told Reuters this week.

But acknowledging the complexity of Balkan diplomacy he added: "Of course, I am not in control of the situation."

[hajduk]

Differences Between
Ahtisaari-Chernomyrdin Agreement
With Milosevic and the Rambouillet Text

By Phyllis Bennis

At the moment it remains uncertain whether the NATO-Yugoslav agreement will survive NATO&#39;s efforts to remold it to an earlier, failed, incarnation, and Belgrade&#39;s efforts to delay. But assuming that the agreement negotiated with Slobodan Milosevic and the Yugoslav authorities by Martti Ahtisaari and Viktor Chernomyrdin holds and is in fact implemented, it is possible that some of the objectives set by the U.S., UK, and NATO may be reached - at least for a while. On the official level those goals include ending the on-going violence and instability in Kosovo; minimizing the impact of the refugee crisis on regional stability and NATO&#39;s credibility; and weakening the Yugoslav military and economy (the only goal realized so far).

Broader but unofficial U.S. goals included asserting U.S. indispensability and indeed domination within Europe, achievable largely through militarizing the "solutions" to security problems, and asserting the primacy of NATO as the global enforcer authorized both to grant credentials for and to implement international interventions. The effect would be to replace the singular legitimacy of the UN with a new, broader role for NATO. But with uncertainties remaining about whether the current agreement will actually set in motion any kind of peace and/or refugee-return process, and with UN centrality reasserted (however grudgingly) in its text, it is less certain that those unofficial U.S. goals will be met. In fact, it may turn out that this Yugoslav debacle begins a serious erosion of NATO&#39;s credibility and power, despite the U.S.-UK efforts to the contrary.

The Ahtisaari/Chernomyrdin accord was negotiated with Yugoslavia officially on behalf of the G-8 and the European Union, not NATO. While it includes many of the same provisions as the failed Rambouillet text, it differs in a number of key respects. The significance of those differences lies in the crucial question of whether an agreement, functionally indistinguishable from the current Ahtisaari/Chernomyrdin accord, might have been achievable months earlier, without the devastation of Yugoslavia and the escalation of the anti-Albanian "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo wrought by NATO&#39;s bombing campaign. The point of such an examination lies in exposing the lie of the "humanitarian necessity defense" claimed by Washington and London to justify their illegality in waging NATO&#39;s war.



WHAT&#39;S MOSTLY THE SAME

* Both call for an end to violence & repression in Kosovo, and an end to NATO bombing
*
* Creation of an international protection force, including NATO troops as major part
* Right of return for all refugees & displaced Kosovars
Official recognition of territorial integrity of Yugoslavia

WHAT&#39;S DIFFERENT

Rambouillet Text

NATO force, NATO command and control; no UN oversight beyond the Security Council being "invited to pass a resolution under Chapter VII of the Charter endorsing and adopting the arrangements" made by NATO to establish the NATO force.

NATO personnel to have "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia"

Interim Kosovo autonomy, then public referendum on independence in three years in the form of "a mechanism for a final settlement for Kosovo, on the basis of the will of the people."

Allowed thousands of Serb military personnel (at least 2500) to remain in Kosovo.

Return of refugees responsibility of NATO.

No explicit mention of KLA



Ahtisaari/Chernomyrdin Agreement

International peacekeeping force "under UN auspices" which would act "according to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter." International security presence to have "substantial NATO participation" and "unified command and control." Understood to include Russian, other non-NATO participation, though "unified" command structure not further clarified

The international deployment is only "in Kosovo," not throughout Yugoslavia.

"Establishment of an interim administration for Kosovo...which the UN Security Council will decide" based on "substantial autonomy" for the people of Kosovo "within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia;" no reference to future independence.

"Verifiable withdrawal from Kosovo of all military, police and paramilitary forces." After the withdrawal "an agreed number of Serb personnel will be allowed to return" for purposes of liaison with international peacekeepers, marking mine fields, "maintaining a presence at" Serb heritage sites, and "maintaining a presence" at key border crossings. "Return of personnel...will be limited to a small agreed number--hundreds, not thousands."

International force authorized to "secure safe environment for all residents in Kosovo and enabling safe return of displaced persons and refugees" but "safe and free return of all refugees and displaced under the supervision of UNHCR."

"Demilitarization of the Kosovo Liberation Army" as part of "political process directed at reaching interim political agreement;" does not say "disarming," and assumed to refer to giving up tanks, etc., not full disarmament.



WHO GAVE UP WHAT
AS RESULT OF NATO&#39;S BOMBING CAMPAIGN?

What Milosevic Gave Up
* Can keep only 100s, not 1000s of troops in Kosovo
* Milosevic indicted for war crimes at UN tribunal

What NATO Gave Up
* International force under UN, not NATO auspices
* International force deployed only in Kosovo, not throughout Yugoslavia
* UNHCR, not NATO, supervises return of refugees.
* No referendum on Kosovo independence.
* KLA to be demilitarized

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BRUSSELS, Dec 12 (Reuters) - European Union leaders will emerge from Friday&#39;s summit without agreement on the future of Kosovo -- but nobody will be sounding the alarm bell just yet.

For despite the fact that "unity" has become the mantra of those heading European diplomacy on the breakaway Serb province, many believe full accord among the bloc&#39;s 27 states is not achievable or even needed to handle the dicey few months ahead.

Instead, the key will be how Kosovo&#39;s backers play Brussels&#39; decision-making processes to deliver pledges of an EU security force and financial support even as a handful of doubting nations voice concerns over independence.

"Unity with flexibility is the buzzword now," said one diplomat of the approach being taken to proceed with what Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt this week called the EU&#39;s "virtual unity" on Kosovo.

With an independence declaration seen only weeks away, all want to avoid a repeat of the 1990s when hopelessly divided European capitals wrung their hands as the Balkans plunged into wars ended only by U.S.-backed NATO intervention.

An outright split on Kosovo at the summit would be all the more embarrassing given that it comes a day after EU leaders sign a new reform treaty in Lisbon hailed as giving the group stronger leadership and a more robust common foreign policy.

Leaders are set to issue a statement on Friday noting that efforts to reach a compromise between Pristina and Belgrade have been exhausted, but omitting reference to the vexed question of independence recognition, according to a draft seen by Reuters.

While EU foreign policy normally requires unanimity, Kosovo supporters will immediately set to work preparing a 1,600-plus police and justice mission that will be the most visible sign of EU determination to act.



OUTLIERS

They are cautiously confident they can employ a little-used EU mechanism known as "constructive abstention" that allows a nation to duck a decision on any EU foreign or security matter on which it has reservations.

That could help Cyprus, Spain, Slovakia and others -- wary of recognising Kosovo for fear of setting a precedent that could ultimately undermine their own territorial integrity -- to register their doubts while not actually blocking the mission.

"That will be the yardstick on which (EU) unity will be measured," French Secretary of State for Europe Jean-Pierre Jouyet told reporters this week of a mission which would be the most ambitious security operation in the EU&#39;s history.

EU financial aid for Kosovo -- crucial for kick-starting its moribund local economy -- can also be released without full unanimity because much of it is in the remit of the European Commission, the EU&#39;s powerful executive arm, diplomats note.

However there is no way round the recognition issue and EU officials are resigned to some EU capitals taking months to recognise an independent Kosovo -- if ever, in Cyprus&#39; case.

"It was always understood there would be outliers," said Tomas Valasek of the London-based Centre for European Reform think tank, forecasting it would not be a problem unless major countries such as Spain refused to recognise it.



LIMITATIONS

Yet the limitations of partial unity on Kosovo are clear.

Full accord would have bolstered European arguments against Russian and Serb assertions that a unilateral independence move by Kosovo is both illegal and sets a dangerous precedent.

And one day Kosovo will need the backing of all EU nations to begin the long climb towards eventual entry of the bloc.

"But that is not exactly time-critical at this stage," said one EU diplomat of a process likely to take many years.

EU officials acknowledge the strategy could unravel if Kosovo&#39;s ethnic Albanians break a pledge to coordinate with the EU and United States and rush into an early independence move.

"We would like to agree with them on how to go about it," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, whose country takes over the EU presidency from Jan. 1, told Reuters this week.

But acknowledging the complexity of Balkan diplomacy he added: "Of course, I am not in control of the situation."
__________________________________________________ _____________________


PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec 12 (Reuters) - The U.N. mission in Kosovo accused Serbia on Wednesday of "provocation" by opening a government office in the north of the breakaway province, and said it was closely monitoring developments in the area.

The opening of the office to oversee public services in the Serb half of the ethnically-divided town of Mitrovica on Monday coincided with the formal end to negotiations that failed to resolve the fate of Serbia&#39;s U.N.-run province.

Leaders of Kosovo&#39;s ethnic Albanian majority said they would begin talks with their Western backers on a declaration of independence in early 2008. But NATO allies with 16,000 troops in Kosovo are concerned the Serb north could try to break away.

Backed by Russia, Serbia rejects independence for Kosovo. Moscow has blocked the adoption of an independence plan at the U.N. Security Council, but the blueprint&#39;s Western backers say they will move ahead with it without a new U.N. resolution after Serb-Albanian negotiations ended in deadlock on Monday.

"The opening of this office is raising the level of the Serbian government presence in Kosovo," U.N. mission spokesman Alexander Ivanko told a news conference. "We consider this a provocative act."

Ivanko said the mission was seeking guidance from U.N. headquarters in New York and would brief diplomats from the Contact Group steering Balkan policy -- the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Russia - during the week.

"We are very much focused on what is happening in the north," he added.

The north, home to just under half of Kosovo&#39;s remaining 120,000 Serbs, has resisted U.N. efforts to integrate it with the rest of the province. The U.N. mission exerts little real control over the region, which adjoins the rest of Serbia and is controlled politically and financially by Belgrade.

Kosovo&#39;s outgoing government on Wednesday directed ministries to prepare for "possible challenges, be they political, economic or security" after a declaration.

The move was a clear response to a Serbian "action plan", which analysts say could include an economic embargo and the closure of borders to stifle the new state. There are also fears Serb members of the Kosovo police force could quit.

Serbia lost formal control over Kosovo in 1999, when NATO launched bomb strikes to drive out Serb forces from the province and halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanian civilians during a two-year counter-insurgency war.

But Belgrade continues to provide healthcare services, schooling and administrative functions for Serbs, who largely reject the Albanian-dominated institutions in Pristina.

Serbia&#39;s Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, cut the ribbon to the office on Monday, and said it would serve to "intensify" Belgrade&#39;s parallel network of services for Serbs.

The European Union is preparing to deploy a 1,600-strong police and justice mission. Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Tuesday the mission would be "unlawful."

[hajduk]

Iraq and Kosovo: Two Regional Wars
and a Global Pentagon Budget
By Phyllis Bennis

Bill Clinton has switched TV channels from the largely hidden, but still lethal, crisis in Iraq to the far more visually compelling disaster in Kosovo.

The U.S.-British bombing of Iraq, halted for more than two weeks in the run-up to NATO&#39;s bombing of Serbia, resumed at the beginning of April. Among the targets destroyed on April 1st was the communications station controlling the flow of Iraqi oil to the Mina al-Bakr terminal south of Basra, Iraq’s main Persian Gulf port. The still-sanctioned oil is shipped out from the port as part of the Oil for Food program; senior oil ministry officials said repairs had been made and oil was flowing as of April 3rd.

With the domestic and global media focused on the humanitarian and political crises in Kosovo, little American attention was paid to the resumption of bombing in the U.S.-British imposed “no fly zones” in Iraq. U.S. officials issued no explanation for their attack on the oil communications center, an economic installation whose targetting is therefore prohibited under international law. And little press interest has emerged in the latest documentation of the sanctions-driven human toll in Iraq. In fact, the most recent UN report acknowledges that little has changed. “Under current conditions the humanitarian outlook will remain bleak and become more serious with time," the humanitarian impact panel reported to the Security Council on March 30. "Infant mortality rates in Iraq today are among the highest in the world. Low infant birth weight affects at least 23 percent of all births, chronic malnutrition affects every fourth child under 5 years of age; only 41 percent of the population have regular access to clean water; 83 percent of all schools need substantial repairs. ... The gravity of the humanitarian situation of the Iraqi people is indisputable and cannot be overstated.”

The continuing human catastrophe must, at this moment of proving the U.S. ability to wage two regional wars simultaneously, inevitably link Iraq with Kosovo (although so far, at least, the civilian deaths in Kosovo fall dramatically behind the sanctions-driven toll in Iraq). But the political and strategic parallels emerge as perhaps even more direct analogues.

The crucial parallel begins with Washington&#39;s undermining and marginalizing of the United Nations. In the case of Iraq, especially in the last year, the U.S. has replaced UN primacy with an unabashed unilateralism in Iraq policy. For Kosovo, Washington&#39;s international agency of choice to provide an international imprimatur is NATO -- a military alliance without a shred of authority to make the decisions the UN Charter claims as its own. In both Iraq and Kosovo the UN&#39;s role was degraded and ridiculed by U.S. diplomats; when Council members insisted that Resolution 1159 of February 1998, calling for "severest consequences" in the event of future Iraqi violations of UNSCOM access agreements, did not provide automatic U.S. authority for military strikes, then-Ambassador Bill Richardson simply shrugged and said the U.S. believes it does have the authority. More recently, when France proposed a Council debate on how to respond to Kosovo, the U.S. simply refused, placing the matter in NATO&#39;s hands.

The two wars together give the Pentagon long-sought evidence that it can indeed fight two regional wars at the same time -- at least wars in which the opposition is weak to non-existent. Logistics officers are showing off their ability to, for instance, shift EA-6B planes, used to destroy anti-aircraft batteries, out of Turkey from where they attacked Iraqi "no-fly zones," to the Balkans. The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, heading towards the Gulf, was diverted to the Adriatic. And Iraq and Kosovo jointly provide a pretense to continue a bloated arms budget. Just as one example, the claimed "shortage" of million-dollars-each cruise missiles, as a result of the hundreds used up in Iraq during and since December&#39;s Desert Fox operation and in Kosovo just in the first days of the air war, means increased Pentagon leverage on Congress for new funding for more missiles, and for over &#036;50 million more to convert 92 nuclear cruise missiles into conventional models. (It should be noted that the Pentagon&#39;s &#036;270 billion budget contains virtually no budget lines to actually fight a war. One wonders whether Congress might decide to simply swap its recent &#036;50 million refugee assistance grant for the &#036;50 million needed to convert the once-nuclear missiles into conventional [and thus economically as well as politically usable] missiles.)

Other political parallels abound. In both Iraq and Kosovo bombing campaigns consolidate, rather than diminish, political support for appalling leaders. Even reluctant citizens, once made victims of U.S.-British-NATO bombing campaigns, tend to respond with a circle-the-wagons reaction that only heightens xenophobia and nationalism. In both cases U.S.-orchestrated demonization of brutal (and certainly deservedly demonized) leaders is deliberately widened to demonize entire populations, thus weakening potential anti-bombing sentiment in the U.S. while heightening popular solidarity with Saddam Hussein or Slobodon Milosevic inside Iraq or Serbia.

In both cases direct U.S. actions made bad conditions significantly worse. In both Iraq and Serbia, massive violations of civil and political rights by each country&#39;s dictator were answered with a U.S. response that actually strengthened the existing denial of political rights, while stripping the victimized people of their economic and social rights, the little that remained of their human rights. In Iraq, economic sanctions have subjected an entire population to disease, loss of education, insufficient food, unclean water and possible death -- while doing nothing to restore their political rights. Similarly, the NATO bombing that was supposed to force Milosevic to grant political rights to the Albanian Kosovars actually led to a massive escalation in the Serbian government&#39;s brutal expulsions, a tough crack-down on Serbia&#39;s anti-war opposition, and exacerbation of a humanitarian crisis of gargantuan proportions.

The governments of Iraq and Serbia were both formerly tied, one through military partnership, the other through a grudging diplomatic alliance, to the U.S. But both governments eventually proved unwilling to play by U.S. rules. U.S. policy towards both brutal dictatorships then focuses on economic sanctions and bombing - not diplomacy. In Iraq, the world&#39;s most comprehensive sanctions continue to slaughter civilians and prevent any hope of the rehabilitation of Iraqi society. In Serbia, like in Iraq, sanctions have helped create a powerful anti-Western, "us against them" dynamic that fuels a spiralling political extremism. And in both Iraq and Serbia the U.S. claims it had "no alternative" but to bomb -- bombing to force Saddam Hussein to allow UNSCOM promised access, bombing to force Slobodon Milosevic to sign the Rambouillet agreement. In both cases the U.S. failed.

In both cases the U.S. deliberately undermined the potential of flawed, but at least partially effective, international instruments. In Iraq, UNSCOM had succeeded, despite Baghdad&#39;s obstructionism, at finding and eliminating the vast majority of Iraq&#39;s weapons of mass destruction. But the discovery that Washington had placed spies within UNSCOM, and had used its technology to provide intelligence that may well have assisted U.S. military assaults against Iraq, led to UNSCOM&#39;s functional demise. Similarly, the withdrawal of the 1400 OSCE monitors (however limited their efficacy because their mandate allowed only an unarmed observer presence rather than a serious protection force) on the eve of the NATO bombing at the moment their presence might have made the greatest difference, allowed the violent escalation of attacks on the Albanian Kosovars to take place without a watchful international presence.

In neither Iraq nor Kosovo was a real effort made to use international war crimes charges as a means of deterrence. U.S. diplomats have long insisted that Milosevic was a "necessary partner" in Balkan diplomacy, and protected him from indictment by the war crimes tribunal sitting in The Hague. As for Saddam Hussein, while some U.S. officials have recently made oblique references to war crimes, it has been obvious for years that Washington had no stomach for a serious investigation. Such an effort would inevitably implicate the U.S. government and U.S. weapons dealers who had armed and backed Saddam Hussein as part of official U.S. policy throughout the 1980s, when Iraq&#39;s worst war crimes were carried out: the Anfal campaign that destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages, and the use of poison gas against Kurdish civilians and Iranian troops in 1988.

In both Iraq and Serbia, when Washington turned on its former allies, no political alternatives were sought, no negotiation was allowed. And certainly, in both cases, negotiation is still vitally needed; diplomacy must be returned to center stage. With the Security Council deadlocked, the General Assembly has the right, under the Uniting for Peace precedent, to consider issues of peace and security that ordinarily lie in the Council&#39;s domain. While bringing NATO to heel, let alone the Milosevic-led Serb military, would by no means be guaranteed by such a UN resolution, a specific Assembly demand for an end to the bombing would go far towards delegitimizing NATO&#39;s role, challenging the U.S., and reasserting the centrality of the UN in dealing with the latest instance of ethnic cleansing. The Assembly could thus craft a policy with at least a better chance to, in the Hippocratic sense, "first, do no harm.".

And certainly it is not too late for the Assembly to authorize a combined UN-OSCE protection force, an armed force prepared to provide real safe havens for Albanian Kosovars -- to make real the unrealized promise of Srebrenica. Certainly it is not too late for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to claim the initiative as the official coordinator of the refugee assistance campaign -- in which NATO may be pressed into service providing cargo or human transport planes or logistical assistance, but in which the United Nations maintains the overall authority.

Finally, the General Assembly can go beyond calling for a resumption of serious diplomacy, to name its representatives to carry out such missions in the name of the international community. Such an effort might best be carried out by Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan -- African statesmen who together empower the international legitimacy of the United Nations with the internationally recognized credibility of the South African president.

It is long past time for serious resources -- financial, political, intellectual -- to be put into efforts towards making real a UN capacity for preventive diplomacy. Until such time, however, pick-up diplomacy will be called on every time. Under those circumstances, in both Kosovo and Iraq, who knows what such a Mandela-Annan diplomatic &#39;dream team&#39; might be able to accomplish, that economic sanctions and NATO bombing could not?

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said on Thursday he expected Kosovo&#39;s status to be resolved after a Serbian presidential election in late January, joining others in the West to favor that timeframe.

Belgrade announced on Wednesday it would hold an election on January 20 with a likely second round on February 3. Western diplomats have been urging ethnic Albanian leaders of the Serb province to hold back from any independence declaration till after the vote.

"The most important thing is to stand together and probably also to wait for the Serb presidential elections," Reinfeldt told reporters as he arrived for a meeting of conservative European leaders on the eve of an EU summit.

EU officials fear hardline Serb nationalists will get a poll boost if Kosovo secedes before the vote. Hardliners argue Serbia should turn its back on the EU and NATO and forge new ties with Russia, which has joined it in opposing Kosovo independence.

Kosovo&#39;s overwhelming Albanian majority wants independence but Belgrade has insisted the breakaway province, under U.N. administration since a 1999 NATO air war to drive out Serbian forces, may only have broad autonomy within Serbia.

Participants at a meeting of liberal EU lawmakers on Tuesday said EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told the meeting he had received assurances from Kosovo Prime Minister-designate Hashim Thaci that he would not make a declaration before April and would coordinate the move with Western countries.

In remarks published on Thursday, Rehn said he expected Kosovo&#39;s status to be resolved in winter or early spring.

The Finnish newspaper Uutispaiva Demari acknowledged it had misquoted Rehn as saying Kosovo&#39;s final status had been "postponed until early spring".

A spokeswoman for Rehn said he had said in the interview conducted in Finnish on Tuesday: "The Kosovo status settlement will be finalized in the course of the winter (talvi) or spring-winter (kevattalvi)." The term "kevattalvi" usually refers to March.

EU foreign ministers are due to hold a key meeting in Slovenia on March 28-29 about integrating the Western Balkans into Europe.

The Serbian election will determine whether pro-European liberal reformer Boris Tadic is re-elected or power shifts to the hardline nationalist Radical party, whose leader is on trial at the Hague U.N. war crimes tribunal.

Kosovo&#39;s backers say independence is the only option.

"It is the only solution that provides peace and stability in the region. EU leaders are getting together and this is of fundamental importance for the region," Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha told reporters before the same meeting.

"Serbia should understand it cannot progress and persist as a colonial power in the region. Kosovo is a European matter."

EU diplomats said the 27-nation bloc&#39;s foreign ministers agreed informally this week that if the date of the Serbian election was officially confirmed, they would avoid early action that could fuel a nationalist backlash.

Kosovo will top the foreign policy agenda of the Brussels summit. EU leaders are set to agree that years of international efforts to reach a compromise between Belgrade and Pristina on its future ended were exhausted by a December 10 mediation deadline.

Diplomats said the EU was moving towards an agreement early next year to deploy over 1,600 police and justice officials to supervise the rule of law in Kosovo but several EU states still had misgivings about recognizing independence without a U.N. Security Council resolution.

[hajduk]

Lend Me Your Ear

An essay for those who are already strongly and even passionately against the bombing and struggling with how to discuss it fruitfully with its advocates...

By Michael Albert

People supporting bombing argue that it is better than nothing and is somehow dealing with horrible ethnic crimes in the Balkans. They either claim that that was the bombing&#39;s purpose and the purpose is being met -- or they admit that the motive was something else but add that even so the bombing is doing good as a by-product so that they are for it despite its bad motives.

People holding these views often do so with great tenacity. The evidence and analysis offered in the Q/A and Chomsky article in the May Z and on our Kosovo web pages ( http://www.zmag.org ) are more than sufficient to counter such views logically, and so I heartily recommend such materials to you and won&#39;t repeat their content here. But to get this evidence heard by folks sometimes one has to penetrate defenses by other means than just offering data and logic, and I suspect that how one does that is in large part personal. Nonetheless, here I will offer to whoever might be interested some of the techniques I have seen meet with some success.

Bombing advocates say:

"After all, Milosevic is horrible and there was genocide going on and someone had to do something and NATO did something, so that&#39;s good...right."

You might reply by using the information available in Z and at the ZNet site to explain in detail about the actual level of the crimes transpiring before the bombing (2,000 dead and 300,000 refugees which is about the same as held in Colombia for that year, though the Colombia total to date of course, is much greater, more like a million refugees), and to clarify the actual motives and results of the bombing. You might emphasize how and why we know that concern for humanitarian values isn&#39;t operative as a factor in U.S. policy-making (because if it was such a powerful motivator it would of course also cause us to immediately stop abetting equal and larger human horrors in Colombia, Timor, and of course Turkey where there are over 2 million Kurdish refugees, over 3000 villages destroyed, vastly beyond Kosovo, and tens of thousands killed, all with decisive U.S. military and diplomatic support and cheerleading, increasing as the atrocities increased, and, crucially, within NATO), and what the bombing&#39;s effects are, including, for example:

strengthening Milosevic and wiping out the work of those valiantly fighting him in the democratic opposition

weakening the nonviolent voices of the Kosovars

exacerbating ethnic hatreds even beyond their prior condition to perhaps intractable levels

killing and exiling more Kosovars and unleashing all restraints on the Serbs doing likewise

smashing Yugoslavia back decades and maybe a century in development with grotesque long-term human costs due to ecological and infrastructural devastation, and doing likewise specifically in Kosovo and perhaps worse

weakening the UN, while tearing international law to shreds

informing the world that yes, the U.S. is ready willing and able to bomb anytime anywhere it suits us

elevating NATO to a war machine, and providing rationales for further defense spending, arms trading, etc.

and "disrupting the countries of the region (Macedonia, for example, which had a fragile independence, may be torn apart by ethnic violence).

And you might also note, not wanting your list to be only negative, that the only good result that will come out of this situation is if well intentioned people can bring about widespread resistance, consciousness raising, curbs on future horrible undertakings, and maybe even movements that begin addressing and redressing underlying causes.

This may make a little headway for a bit...but then the bombing advocate most often will slide back and say:

"But even if the U.S. has been bad and bad and bad through all these cases that you offer (that is, the evidence you offered about Vietnam, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Guatemala, Timor, Colombia, Turkey and whatever other cases you happen to mention, based on, for example, William Blum&#39;s compilation in this issue of Z), isn&#39;t that ancient history and shouldn&#39;t we support and celebrate that at least this time around the U.S. is doing good."

And now you have to try to restrain the primal scream tunneling through your mind and perhaps answer that, well, no, it isn&#39;t ancient history, it is continuing into the present, it is our entire history, then and now, and yes, you would be the first to shout hooray and to celebrate if the U.S. or NATO, or any other power in history, for that matter, ever undertook to do good and seriously went about doing it somewhere, sometime, but that that is not occurring. Instead, from the options (a) do nothing, (b) make things better from the point of view of life and limb, and © make things worse from the point of view of life and limb, the U.S. is actually doing the last, and doing it systematically and aggressively, in accord with the traditional pattern, illustrated elsewhere as well as in the Balkans, right at this moment, and not solely in "ancient history."

And the person may give a little ground for a minute and even let a ray of possibility through and say:

"Well, okay, then why is the U.S. bombing if not to save the Kosovars (by acting to make their suffering vastly worse)?"

Here, if you will excuse a diversion from the main purpose of this little essay, I think some leftists go off track. Leftists know into their toes that U.S. foreign policy is imperial so they look at this case and they start to see it in the most dramatic and familiar imperial terms at their disposal. They begin talking about grand designs over Eastern Europe or about oil pathways or about Yugoslavia as some kind of obstacle to U.S. economic agendas or maybe even as a good example trying to extricate itself from U.S. economic hegemony which cannot be permitted to do so...and it seems to me that all of this is shoehorning these events into an often viable but this time inapplicable framework rather than finding an appropriate framework that explains these particular events-which is not to say that motives like these others never play a role in U.S. policies (they do, often) or that even in this case these ancillary motives don&#39;t play some role (they probably do, opportunistically, given that we are battering away already).

Anyhow, instead of those more explicit and straightforward but, I believe, inaccurate types of explanation of why the bombing is happening, the Serb/Kosovo conflict became a crisis for the U.S. and NATO not out of concern for the Kosovars (or pursuit of resources or desire to punish a disobedient nation), but because there was a growing danger that the area&#39;s conflict would spread and affect important relations and assets in surrounding Europe and a growing sentiment that, well, what is the world&#39;s cop going to do about it with the U.S.&#39;s credibility as enforcer becoming ever more threatened if it sat by idly. At that point, one can imagine the Security Council and Clinton and what-all meeting together and unanimously agreeing on the need to respond both to contain the local conflict and to fulfill their role to police what are for them untoward world events. So they chat it up and consider their options, nary a voice raised mentioning human costs and suffering, of course (except as rationale for popular consumption), and they notice that the only tactic for interceding that they have which is consonant with the U.S.&#39;s broader aims and orientation is bombing. To make this claim compelling, of course, you then of course have to use historical examples like those Chomsky repeatedly supplies to demonstrate that diplomacy, UN involvement, and international law, are as much as possible rejected as means of intervention by the U.S. because they do not advance and can even restrict U.S. interests, while bombing is clutched as a favored option to be employed, even wildly, because so doing always advances U.S. agendas.

Okay, after all this, with much evidence amassed in considerable quantities, some people do waver and even change their views. But, frustrating as it may be, many other bombing advocates just revert to:

"Well, I don&#39;t know, I hate war, yes, but surely bombing is better than doing nothing."

And if you don&#39;t lose all communicative self-control at this point, as you may find yourself doing, you might reply (knowing that you already have on the table all required data about U.S. policy generally, and about the bombing and circumstances in this instance, etc.): Suppose that you see someone step out of a shoe store and look across the street fifty yards down to see a big guy mugging someone smaller. There are people around the mugging, too, but they have no means to deal with it. And, watching, you notice that this fellow exiting the shoe store wants to intercede, and you see him pause a second and realize that he can&#39;t get there in time. He needs to act from a distance and quickly. He looks in his duffle bag and you can see that he finds only one thing he is willing to use, a wide-angle shotgun. Aha, he can do SOMETHING. So he picks up the shotgun, aims, and fires, killing the mugger, maiming the muggee, and crippling some bystanders as well.

Do you then defend what you have seen saying, "surely it was better to act than to do nothing"?

When I use this analogy, I tend to pause a beat, and then relentlessly - sometimes likely too relentlessly for effective communication -- point out that this isn&#39;t yet a good analogy because in fact the U.S. didn&#39;t have only the shotgun in its duffle bag, but also had diplomatic and other options that could have been pursued but ruled those out as contrary to its geopolitical interests despite their potential to end the violence without violent means... (And now I am often interrupted, "what other means, there were no other means..." and I then reply, well, in addition to those that we don&#39;t know about there was, for example, the UN peacekeeping force option that was on the table on March 23, the day before the bombing, when an (unreported in the West) Serbian National Assembly resolution rejecting the U.S. ultimatum and condemning the U.S.-ordered withdrawal of the international peacekeeping monitors, also suggested an "international presence" to oversee the implementation of autonomy to be negotiated among all ethnic groups, the same offer now presented by the Russians and now too visible to suppress, so it is now called a "new opportunity," and deemed to be one of the good effects of the bombing that has led Milosevic to become more accommodating - by reiterating what Serbia proposed the day before the bombing. But then, I do on, and note that additionally, having rejected other plausible and even promising options the U.S. didn&#39;t pick up and shoot the shotgun out of concern for the mugee (who it hit along with the mugger and bystanders and which would have been bad enough), but because a block down from the mugging the guy with the gun--or the U.S., by analogy--owns a store with a big picture window, and he was worried that the mugger/muggee battle was going to move down that block and break that window--so he deduced that to prevent THAT he must intervene and keep the conflict contained, and he knows that he doesn&#39;t want to use anything but his gun, and so, even at the expense of hitting everyone in the vicinity, involved or not, he fires.

That&#39;s a closer analogy, nauseating as it may be--though to make it more real, I add, we would have to also notice that the reason the guy only wants to use his gun and not other means of containing the conflict is because any other course of action (using international law, the UN, or diplomacy) would undermine his role as enforcer of the rules of the neighborhood, while using the gun preserves and extends that role and protects his window simultaneously.

And, if that doesn&#39;t jog anything, then you might say okay, then think about this: imagine watching the Mafia intercede to correct serious race tensions in a high school because some of the participants are dealers so the Mafia fears that the racial conflict might spill over to disrupt their business as usual in the neighborhood indicating, as well, that it is okay to violate Mafia instructions, And so the mafia intervenes and puts a lid on the racial fighting, but of course it does this by treating the kids in the school as potential addicts, dealers, or targets, and by violently pacifying or employing them, requiring protection money from all. Do you look at this and defend the mafia saying, well, yes, but even if the mafia is generally not out for the well being of our kids, maybe in this case it was, or maybe in this case even though motivated by its own crass criminal interests it is having a positive effect as an accidental by-product? And meanwhile anyone with open eyes realizes that the kids are being enlisted to deal drugs, are being strung out as addicts, or are being shot. And when challenged by a person seeing that, do you say "but the racial situation is horrible and we have to do SOMETHING, don&#39;t we?"

Finally, I just want to add for those who may get frustrated in scenarios like the above, that we all have to realize that when we start trying to change minds it doesn&#39;t always happen. And so with all the above and everything else you manage to add, sometimes the person just stands pat. And the really intractable ones might even say, after all of it, still again:

"But for whatever reason, it may do good, and the achievement will be the measurable success of the operation. And hey, of course it gets worse for awhile, that&#39;s the price of justice, the storm before the dawn."

The "storm" in Iraq was the Gulf War. The "dawn" was the aftermath of vicious sanctions and continued periodic attacks. The storm killed ballpark 100,000. The dawn has killed ballpark 1 million. The storm kills when metal shards from dropped ordinance penetrate bodies and cut off life functions leaving a mutilated corpse. The dawn kills more subtly, by disease and starvation due to the destruction of the country&#39;s ecology and infrastructure of medical and agricultural and water and sewage and industrial services (a kind of sustained biological warfare). In Yugoslavia what the U.S. and NATO are doing is setting the table for the same dynamics as we have seen in Iraq. So yes, you might reply, the success of this military operation will be measurable - exactly so - if we don&#39;t develop sufficient opposition to stop the bombing we will see the "measurable success" in a moonscaped terrain, a devastated UN, a ravaged international law system, the annihilation of the anti-Milosevic movements in Yugoslavia, the enhancing of the U.S. military threat worldwide, vastly more graves at the moment and lasting production of still more corpses, many more, due to the devastation of Yugoslavian ecology and infrastructure... all of which are fine from elite perspectives since the only drawback for them comes if (a) the conflict grows without limit to affect serious assets and (b) resistance and dissidence causes a rise in consciousness that actually curtails the bombing and undermines U.S. global agendas-which achievement is largely up to people like us.

Addendum

Wouldn&#39;t it be nice, so to speak, if the only debates were between people against the war and people for it or undecided? Alas, that is not the case. On the anti-war side there are disputes too. Some of these have to do primarily with the war itself and how we understand and oppose it. Others extend into broader matters of how to organize more generally, what kinds of structures and decision-making we ought to employ, what issues we should highlight, and so on. Sticking to the main thrust of this article, however, let me just add a word on the key divide about the war, if you will, emerging among those who oppose it.

One school of antiwar thought urges that the assault against Yugoslavia is criminal and stems from U.S. imperial designs on the entire Balkan region that have been thwarted by Milosevic who must (in the eyes of the U.S.) therefore be eliminated and whose country must be dismantled. Milosevic and the Serbs, on their side, are waging a just war and deserve positive support. This view is loosely associated with The International Action Center (IAC) and Ramsey Clark, though weaker versions are simply that the war is horrific and any mention of crimes by those being bombed is out of place.

Another view says the bombing and any invasion by NATO/U.S. is criminal and immoral and must be ended. The ethnic cleansing by Milosevic and Serb troops is also criminal and immoral and must also be ended. U.S. policy stemmed from worries about U.S. interests being threatened (not concern for the well being of any local human constituencies) and took the form it did for reasons of big power cost/benefit analysis (to promote NATO, degrade the UN, undercut international law, and make good the threat of U.S. bullying by force). This view is associated with many diverse organizations and individuals, but for purposes of this Z article might best be identified with the articles by Chomsky and by Shalom and myself last issue.

Anti-war critics with these two stances, let&#39;s call it Stance 1 and Stance 2, confront one another with partial agreement and partial disagreement. The agreement is that the war is horrible and the bombing should stop and no invasion should occur. The focus of actions bearing on the region ought to be the human well being of those living there, not the interests of elites in the U.S. or NATO nations. The disagreements are about the proximate cause and the proper stance to take in opposing the bombing. The difference about what the cause is, is far less critical than the diference about how to best oppose the bombing.

Stance 1 folks generally feel that what is going on was, from the outset, a plan to dismember Yugoslavia in order to either (a) punish or remove an obstacle to U.S. desires in the region, or (b) protect/grab valuable assets on the ground in the region, or © fulfill a grand scheme of Balkan domination. They tend to feel that the proximate events in the region are mere pretext and excuse. Stance 2 folks, in contrast, generally agree that these kinds of motivations sometimes drive U.S, policy as primary cause, but in this case operate only opportunistically and only after proximate events in the area brought on the attacks. However, Stance 2 folks go on to highlight that Serb policies in Kosovo brought on the attack not because of humanitarian concern by the U.S. or NATO for the Kosovar Albanians, of course, but because of concern that the evolving conflict would continue to enlarge, engulfing new regions and drawing in additional governments, finally undermining U.S. authority and threatening other assets in Europe if Washington did not take action. Both sides therefore agree that the U.S./NATO is not intervening to help people, but the two stances disagree about why the U.S./NATO is intervening. These differences though real and significant do not bear on opposing or not opposing the bombing. Both stances come to the same conclusion on that score.

The difference about how to oppose the bombing is more substantial and important, however. Stance 1 folks generally say that the events in the area not only have nothing to do with U.S. motives but also are not relevant to discuss much less to denounce on the left. There is no need or reason to decry Serb crimes, they believe, and in fact Stance 1 folks rarely acknowledge that the Serbs have been criminal at all, or at least criminal beyond what one would anticipate in such a setting, or beyond, say, the parallel acts of the Kosovar Albanians. More, Stance 1 folks tend to say that to talk about Milosevic in negative terms, or about Serb policies in negative terms, is to play into the hands of NATO who is demonizing Milosevic and now the entire Serb population to acclimate audiences to bombing them to oblivion. They criticize criticism of Milosevic as abetting the warmakers.

Stance 2 antiwar folks, in contrast, say (a) the true facts are that Serb policies have been horrible and that Milosevic is indeed a purveyor of criminal ethnic policies in the region and against the Kosovar Albanians--though at far less scale than NATO propagandists portray, (b) to deny Milosevic&#39;s criminal acts or even just side-step discussing them casts into doubt one&#39;s honesty and sensitivity to reality, thereby undercutting potential for one&#39;s anti-war efforts, and © people will stay out of and distrust a movement that downplays the crimes of Milosevic&#39;s regime because of not wanting to abet Milosevic, hide injustice, etc. Yes the U.S./NATO are demonizing Milosevic and the Serbs as a community, but to counter that one can&#39;t just reflexively come to the conclusion that the opposite is true.

This is not a small difference. It affects what type of writing and speaking one does, what type of demands and focuses one favors, and what type of demonstrations with what tone and styles and constituencies one organizes. Stance 1 folks claim that by criticizing Milosevic and ethnic cleansing at a demo one is driving away certain folks who are anti-war...militant Serb nationalists, among others. This is likely true. But Stance 2 folks reply that by not criticizing Milosevic and welcoming such folks, giving demonstrations a pro-Serb and even pro-Milosevic appearance and tone, one is driving away other folks, those who oppose war but don&#39;t want to side with ethnic cleansing. This is a tactical matter, so to speak, though one in which I have to admit the Stance 2 position seems overwhelmingly more tactically wise. Above tactics, however, there is the matter of principle and truth. The simple matter that, in fact, ethnic cleansing is vile, is occurring, and deserves to be opposed.

It would be remiss to close without also noting that it turns out that advocates of the Stance 1 analysis and lay-off Milosevic approach are often guided by Marxist Leninist and sect leadership -- not always, certainly, but often. The IAC, for example, is largely guided by the Workers World Party. Advocates of the Stance 2 analysis who critique and oppose Milosevic while primarily fighting the war are often independent leftists, often quite critical of Leninism and especially of sect politics - though again, not always (for example ISO leans toward Stance 2). The connections between these underlying allegiances and the debate over how to address the war or even basic causes no doubt exist--perhaps, for example, in allegiance to the idea of setting aside all but principle contradictions versus trying to deal simultaneously with all important dimensions of any conflict or issue--but are hard to identify.

And okay, I admit, sometimes a primal scream is okay, but do it in private, and then get back to work.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders agreed on Friday to send administrators and police to Kosovo ahead of its expected secession from Serbia, which branded the mission an attempt to create a "puppet state" on its soil.

In a bid to soothe Balkan tensions over Kosovo&#39;s push for independence, they offered Serbia a fast-track route to EU entry once it met conditions for signing a first-step accord on ties.

But Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said the offer was an insult and said recognition of Kosovo&#39;s independence would be "the most dangerous precedent since World War Two.

"It is especially insulting to offer a crippled Serbia the reward of fast-track to the EU in exchange for its consent to violence," Kostunica said in a statement released in Belgrade.

EU leaders declared after a one-day summit that negotiations on Kosovo&#39;s future were exhausted, the status quo was untenable and there was a need to move towards a Kosovo settlement. They stopped short of endorsing independence.

"We took a political decision to send an ESDP mission to Kosovo. This is the clearest signal the EU could possibly give that Europe intends to lead on Kosovo and the future of the region," Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, the summit chairman, told a news conference.

ESDP is the European Security and Defence Policy. The 1,800-strong mission involves police, justice officials and civilian administrators.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the decision would be implemented after EU foreign ministers next meet on January 28, the clearest indication of when the force could start to deploy.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters there was a general understanding that Kosovo&#39;s independence was inevitable.

"ON A PLANE"?

But diplomats said Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia and Romania all object to recognising Kosovo&#39;s sovereignty without a U.N. Security Council resolution.

"I want to make clear we are not supporting the declaration of Kosovo&#39;s independence. Any agreement on Kosovo must be done with the blessing of the Serbs," Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos told reporters, acknowledging it still made sense to begin preparations for the EU police mission.

A day after signing a treaty to end a long institutional stalemate, EU leaders switched focus to challenges posed by the Balkans -- a test of the EU&#39;s hopes of strengthening its foreign policy clout -- and by globalisation and immigration.

On Serbia&#39;s bid to join the 27-nation bloc, the final summit communique said: "(The European Council) reiterated its confidence that progress on the road towards the EU, including candidate status, can be accelerated."

The signing of an SAA with Belgrade has been held up by its failure to transfer Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic to a U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague on genocide charges.

Outgoing chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte urged EU leaders in Belgium&#39;s Le Soir not to be lenient on Belgrade and maintain firm pressure on it to deliver indictees.

"I am stupefied by the attitude of France, Germany and Italy who want to soften their position. As decisions must be taken by unanimity, I am counting on Belgium and the Netherlands to remain tough," she told the newspaper.

Sarkozy replied angrily that France was a firm backer of the U.N. tribunal but Serbia should not be isolated in Europe.

"Let us not confuse the search for war criminals or suspects and the possibility of a country such as Serbia joining the EU one day," he said. "If that is all Mrs Del Ponte is stupified about than frankly she is doing okay."

Signing the agreement requires unanimity in the EU and Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters: "I want Mladic on a plane to the Hague before I will sign the SAA."

Separately, EU leaders named former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez to head a new "reflection group" to discuss the long-term future of the EU on issues ranging from enlargement to climate change and regional stability, diplomats said.

Latvian ex-President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and the chairman of mobile phone company Nokia Jorma Ollila were named as two vice-chairs of the panel due to report in June 2010, they said.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Serbia has promised NATO it would not use force against Kosovo if the breakaway province carried out a vow to declare independence early next year, a senior alliance commander said on Thursday.

Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, NATO&#39;s Naples-based southern commander, told reporters he received the pledge during a visit to Belgrade last week.

"I was assured by the (Serbian) government there would be no military action against Kosovo," said Fitzgerald.

NATO has patrolled Kosovo since it bombed Serbia for nearly 3 months in 1999 to force the withdrawal of Serb forces accused of atrocities in a war against separatist Albanian guerrillas in the province.

"Right now we have enough forces on the ground to protect the people of Kosovo," said Fitzgerald, a U.S. Navy officer.

But he said there were "potential flashpoints in the north" of the province, where minority Serbs are concentrated. The NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR, currently some 16,000 troops, would adjust its strength as necessary, he said.

Analysts expect the Serb north will respond to a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo&#39;s 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority by breaking away from the province to remain part of Serbia.

Serb-Albanian negotiations to resolve the future of the U.N. -run territory ended on Monday with no compromise, and Serbia has said it would challenge Kosovo&#39;s assertion of independence by all legal and diplomatic means.

Most European Union members and the United States say they will back independence. Serbia&#39;s main ally Russia will oppose such a move, making it impossible to obtain a United Nations resolution that grants statehood to the two million people.

Serbian Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovac has issued several public assurances there will be no resort to military force over Kosovo. The Serb Army remains in close daily liaison with KFOR commanders inside Kosovo to prevent any misunderstandings.

But some Serb hardliners have said Kosovo should not be allowed to secede without a fight or that Serbia would be legally within its rights to use military force.

[RedAnarchist]

Hajduk, if you have to post the articles, just post a summary, a link and your opinion of the article, please. Thanks.

[hajduk]

it seems that Kosovo will goes in some sort of slideing independency,Serbs alrerady seeling the mensiones to Albans and when i ask how that it goes,one comrader who live in Pristina says that they have special caffe where they arrange sellings,Albanian man bring the money in euros,Serbian man count it and they shake hands eatch other saying "O whay it should be like this" Serbian man pay round of drinks to whole people in caffe and everybody goes on own side

actualy in Pristina there is lot respect for president Clinton and America becouse they supported them in struggle for independency (you can see that in this articles i put it) but in the other hand Kosovari feel fear from Serbia becouse they expected from Serbian government that they will shut of the gas and electricity but Kosovari says that will not be a big problem becouse they have lot of credits from neighbour coyntries but it will be,if that heppened,also the proof whay they need independency

my oppinion is that the point is, can Kosovari bee the state like states in Europe?on one hand if they continue to doing the crime busines that will be not big problem,but if they go on legal way that will be the problem becouse of busines industry which cant be the strong opponent on global market,so in this manner like i say in previev posts the main busines in Kosovo will be the crime busines becouse that is the only reason whay Kosovari needs independency,becouse Russian mafia setled down in Monte Negro,and across the sea you have very close Italian mafia,so in the future Kosovo and Albania willl be actualy one state and that will one biggest crime terminal on Balkan

so in this articles i put it you can see that one fact repeat old time,what NATO whant from this and you can see that many of those authors who wrote about Kosovo giving to us all the time political reasons,economy mentioned only in global politic context,but nobody didnt figured out what real story is,that actualy this game belonged to mafia busines interests,so it will be wery interesting to continue to see what will happened with this specialy becouse Russia and America are involved,on one side you have Russian mafia who dont have influence on Putin but if they give to him good peace of cake Putin will let Kosovo to get independency,Americans already have good peace of cake from Albanian mafia which also like Serbs use the loby firms to make independency in Kosovo



more news at 11


BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders agreed on Friday to send administrators and police to Kosovo ahead of an expected declaration of independence from Serbia.

In a bid to soothe Balkan tensions over Kosovo&#39;s push for independence, they also offered Serbia a fast-track route to joining the bloc once it met conditions for signing a first-level agreement on closer ties.

But Belgrade bristled at suggestions that the move was designed to compensate it for the looming loss of Kosovo, the majority Albanian province. Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said any such trade-off would be "an indecent proposal".

EU leaders declared after a one-day summit that negotiations on Kosovo&#39;s future were exhausted, the status quo was untenable and there was a need to move towards a Kosovo settlement. They stopped short of endorsing independence.

"We took a political decision to send an ESDP mission to Kosovo. This is the clearest signal the EU could possibly give that Europe intends to lead on Kosovo and the future of the region," Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, the summit chairman, told a news conference.

ESDP is the European Security and Defence Policy. The 1,800-strong mission involves police, justice officials and civilian administrators.

But when asked whether and when the EU would recognize Kosovo&#39;s independence, Socrates said talks on that issue were taking place at the United Nations.

"The EU is not forgetting its responsibilities in this area. We are talking in terms of action and not inaction," he said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters the EU had "a difficulty with Kosovo, which everybody can see will be independent".

Diplomats said Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia and Romania all object to recognizing Kosovo&#39;s sovereignty without a U.N. Security Council resolution.

"ON A PLANE"?

A day after signing a treaty to end a long institutional stalemate, EU leaders switched focus to challenges posed by the Balkans -- a test of the EU&#39;s hopes of strengthening its foreign policy clout -- and by globalization and immigration.

On Serbia&#39;s bid to join the 27-nation bloc, the final summit communique said: "(The European Council) reiterated its confidence that progress on the road towards the EU, including candidate status, can be accelerated."

Pro-EU moderates in Belgrade want EU candidate status by the end of next year, a timeframe EU Enlargement Commission Olli Rehn said last month was ambitious but feasible.

Normally, it takes up to two years for Brussels to grant candidate status to an aspirant after signing a Stabilisation and Accession Agreement (SAA), the first rung on the EU ladder.

The signing of an SAA with Belgrade has been held up by its failure to transfer Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic to a U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague on genocide charges.

Outgoing chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte urged EU leaders in Belgium&#39;s Le Soir not to be lenient on Belgrade and to maintain firm pressure on it to deliver indictees.

"I am stupefied by the attitude of France, Germany and Italy who want to soften their position. As decisions must be taken by unanimity, I am counting on Belgium and the Netherlands to remain tough," she told the newspaper.

Signing the agreement requires unanimity in the EU and Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters: "I want Mladic on a plane to the Hague before I will sign the SAA."

Separately, EU leaders named former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez to head a new "reflection group" to discuss the long-term future of the EU on issues ranging from enlargement to climate change and regional stability, diplomats said.

Ex-Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and the chairman of mobile phone company Nokia Jorma Ollila were named as two vice-chairs of the panel due to report in June 2010, they said.

In addition to foreign policy issues, the leaders addressed public concern over the strain on European job markets from immigration and cheap imports, issues on which the EU hopes to focus now that the new Lisbon Treaty has been inked.

Replacing the more ambitious constitution abandoned after French and Dutch voters rejected it in 2005, the Lisbon Treaty preserves most of the key institutional reforms but drops contentious symbols of statehood such as a flag and anthem.

EU leaders hope the treaty will streamline the bloc&#39;s structures to cope with enlargement after it opened its doors to 12 mostly ex-communist states in 2004 and 2007. Critics say it will curb national sovereignty and put more power in Brussels.

[hajduk]

THE RESTIVE ALLIES: GERMAN OPPOSITION GROWING
from Diana Johnstone

The florid and reckless war rhetoric of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Foreign Secretary Robin Cook is the stuff British tabloids are made of. Likening the latest recalcitrant foreign leader to Hitler is the sort of thing readers on the London tube expect to find in between sex scandals and cleavage photos. It does not go down so well on the continent, however, where frank enthusiasm for laser-bombing alien populations has yet to become an accepted form of mass entertainment. Cook&#39;s "overblown language" is almost more than one can stand to hear, Willy Wimmer, a Christian Democratic member of the German Bundestag said recently. In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, he expressed worry at NATO&#39;s apparent unwillingness to seek a negotiated settlement with Belgrade. The "very extreme positions of foreign secretary Cook" revealed a clear attempt to drag NATO into "a major war in the Balkans", he said. Wimmer interpreted the desperate efforts of several European NATO governments countries to promote negotiations as stemming from their gradual recognition that they could find themselves in serious trouble in the future if everything is decided by "the right of the strongest, that is the US".

The US and Britain appear determined to force an unconditional surrrender on Belgrade, Wimmer observed. Once the war is over, he suggested, all the questions concerning the legal basis for NATO&#39;s war, questions currently being shoved under the table, could come before the courts. This raised the sharp suspicion that one of the motives for pursuing war to the bitter end is to see to it that "international tribunals judge only one side" -- the losing side of course. Last week, the BBC invited people to debate the question as to whether or not "Serbia can reform itself". Several speakers, such as university lecturer Mark Wheeler, answered in the negative, declaring that Serbia&#39;s collective guilt required foreign occupation and a "denazification" process such as took place in Germany after World War II. This of course implies unconditional surrender. Wimmer expressed some alarm at comparisons of Yugoslavia with Eichmann and Hitler alarming, wondering where Europe was heading. According to the Berliner Zeitung, Wimmer did not rule out the prospect of Washington and London carrying on their Balkan war alone, without the rest of NATO, as they are doing in Iraq. As vice president of the parliamentary assembly of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Wimmer has followed events leading to the NATO bombing with a very critical eye. In particular, he was aware that European observers did not agree that Serbian repression of "Kosovo Liberation Army" rebels warranted a NATO attack in the first place. In his open criticism of the war, he is not typical of the conservative side of the German political spectrum. Most of the opposition to the war comes from the left and the trade union movement. Europe&#39;s largest union, IG Metall, has taken a strong stand against the NATO bombing.

The fact that the NATO war was initially advocated by a left of center government headed by Social Democratic chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer on "humanitarian" grounds succeeded, in Germany as in other NATO countries with center-left governments, in initially silencing potential opposition. Still, consternation has spread through the rank and file of both parties. The Greens in particular have been losing members as a result. Since Fischer has justified the bombing on grounds that Germany has a special responsibility to combat any repetition of "Auschwitz", the anti-war minority around the Young Green Alternative movement is organizing a campaign to point out that Kosovo is not "Auschwitz".

Meanwhile, Gregor Gysi, leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism, heir to the former East German communist party, voices opposition within the Bundestag, while outside the parliament left-wing intellectuals are busy building a new anti-war movement based on solid legal, historical and political arguments. Opposition to NATO&#39;s war is particularly widespread in Eastern Germany, but is growing in the West as well in view of the miserable results of "humanitarian" bombing. The German press, although traditionally anti-Serb in its editorials, is perhaps the most thorough of all in its factual reporting, and thereby often neutral and fair. There is also a relatively low circulation leftist press, including daily newspapers, all highly critical of NATO in general and Germany&#39;s participation in war against Yugoslavia in particular. Anti-war demonstrations and meetings are being held frequently throughout the country.

All this helps explain why Chancellor Schroeder this week quite categorically ruled out German participation in a ground war to conquer Kosovo. But there are certainly other reasons. The U.S.-led war is devastating the economies of southeastern Europe, an area largely within the German economic sphere of interest. It has blocked the Danube River, a main trade thoroughfare leading from Germany to the Black Sea. It is ruining relations with Russia and even raising the chances of an eventual military conflict with Russia -- an experience which the vast majority of Germans have no desire to repeat. It is leading NATO into an unforeseeable series of wars, ostensibly for easily trumped up "humanitarian" reasons, that can be expected to serve geostrategic interests defined in Washington.

Throughout Europe, but especially in Germany, Italy, and France, on both the left and the right, the conviction has been growing that the Kosovo war is essentially an Anglo-American "war against Europe". Britain, which refused to adopt the common European currency, is pursuing its traditional policy of keeping the continent divided as it urges the United States on in a war for which Europe risks paying a heavy price, not only economically but politically and morally as well.

__________________________________________________ _____________________

here you can see that Germany will support Kosovo independency but what kind negative effects will bee for German becouse Serbs say that they will change politics with those countries who will not support Kostunica,interesting isnt it?

[hajduk]

more news at 11

so by now talking continue and reason why it was pronounce for 2008 is becouse our dear imperialists and capitalists whant to spend hollidays in peace :D

BELGRADE, Dec 18 (Reuters) - When Serbia&#39;s leaders appeal to the United Nations on Wednesday to block independence for its breakaway Kosovo province, it will be a plea based on history, emotion and the bitterness of 15 years of defeats.

It will also be a reminder to the West that although nationalist Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic is dead, the hardline defiance and victim complex he exploited in his people is still part of the national psyche.

"Most Serbs have never visited Kosovo and don&#39;t want to go to Kosovo, but they see it as part of their founding legend," said James Lyon, senior Balkans adviser of the International Crisis Group think-tank.

Serbs are brought up on poems of the medieval kingdom, defeated by the Ottomans in the epic Kosovo battle of 1389. The national myths are tied to the symbolism of a land that is home to the Serbian Orthodox church and hundreds of monasteries.

"Even for Serbs who are not religious, Kosovo is a defining point," Lyon said. "Once you bring up Kosovo, rationality goes out the window. Serbs are so sold on this legend and myth, they don&#39;t know what the reality is."

The U.N. Security Council meets on Wednesday to discuss Kosovo&#39;s future after negotiations failed to secure agreement. The Kosovo Albanians have said they plan to declare independence within months, despite Serbia&#39;s fierce opposition.

Multi-ethnic as far back as the Middle Ages and contested by warring neighbours, Kosovo had a mostly Albanian population by the early 1900s. In Josip Broz Tito&#39;s socialist Yugoslavia after World War Two, it had a high degree of autonomy and relative social and ethnic peace.

Milosevic&#39;s rise to power -- heralded by a bellicose speech he delivered in Kosovo in 1989 -- rolled back many of the rights of the 90-percent Albanian majority.

When a guerrilla war against Serb forces began in 1998, the crackdown was brutal. About 10,000 civilians were killed, mostly Albanians, and 1 million were expelled for months.



WESTERN INTERVENTION

NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 until Milosevic withdrew troops. The U.N. took over Kosovo, keeping a lid on Albanian independence dreams.

Croatia and Bosnia fought free of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia to internationally recognised independence but Serbia kept a fig leaf of sovereignty over Kosovo through U.N. resolution 1244.

Serbs were never told they had been defeated, said Srdjan Bogosavljevic, analyst at Strategic Marketing polling agency.

"Generals were given medals and Milosevic presented it as a big victory," he said. "All those in power since have stuck to that line, never spelling out that Serbia lost the war. This denial will last as long as the political elite insists on it."

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is at the vanguard of the new battle for Kosovo. Once hailed by the West as a moderate, he now epitomises the hardline challenge to the West.

"For us, Kosovo independence does not exist and cannot be," he told Russian television last week. If the West recognises Kosovo it would be to create "a puppet state", but Serbia was relying on Russia to block U.N. recognition forever, he said.

Tim Judah, an author and commentator on the Balkans, said Serbs would feel they would be losing yet another war, although many mistrusted their politicians and knew Kosovo was lost.

"There is a feeling that we are at the end, that the destruction of Yugoslavia started in Kosovo and will end in Kosovo," Judah said. "But Kosovo has another resonance, it&#39;s more important historically and spiritually."



MAXIMUM AUTONOMY

Serbia has offered the Albanians "maximum autonomy", all the trappings of statehood without the borders, army and U.N. seat.

A plan to give Kosovo independence under European Union supervision was blocked by Russia but a majority of EU member states plan to implement it anyway.

Some 70 percent of Serbs want Serbia to join the wealthy EU, government polls say. But 75 percent would reject membership if it were conditioned on Serbia recognising an independent Kosovo.

Kosovo is expected to declare independence in the first few months of 2008. Analysts expect protests, hardline rhetoric and maybe a resurgence of nationalism or a symbolic tilt to Russia.

"The &#39;Greater Serbia&#39; idea feeds on crisis," said Andjelko Milardovic of the Zagreb-based Centre for Political Studies. "It would take a transformation of Serbian society, and improvement of social and economic conditions, for it to lose its appeal."

The EU has offered Serbia a fast track to membership to help overcome the loss of Kosovo, once it arrests the last four Serbs wanted by the Hague war crimes tribunal.

No matter what the West does, Serbia&#39;s destiny is in the hands of rival leaders Kostunica and President Boris Tadic. Tadic, seen as a pro-Western moderate, faces ultra-nationalist Tomislav Nikolic in a presidential election next month.

"There is an ideological conflict going on right now," Judah said. "How that conflict is resolved in the next weeks and months will determine Serbia&#39;s future in the next 10 years."

[hajduk]

are they gonna surround Kosovo with walls?

THE BERLIN SCENARIO?
By David Peterson

In the early morning hours of June 12, an armored column of some 200 paratroopers flying the Russian flag arrived in the center of Pristina, the provincial capital of Kosovo. Just twenty-four hours earlier these troops had been serving as members of the modest Russian peacekeeping contingent in UNPROFOR, the U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The mad dash from their encampment in the northern town of Ugljevik, across the Yugoslav border to Belgrade, then south to Pristina, "stunned both NATO and American officials," AP reported, the Russian troops moving through the capital "to the crackle of celebratory gunfire, honking horns and cheering Serb crowds." U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who hours before had broken off talks with the Russians over the nature of Russia&#39;s contribution to the multinational peacekeeping force soon to be deployed in Kosovo--talks that the Russians had described as little more than an effort to "spin out" the controversy until such time as NATO could deploy its troops, leaving the Russians out in the cold--returned immediately to Moscow, where he began another series of high-level talks even before the sun came up the next morning. The word out of Washington was that "it was an unfortunate mistake and the Russian troops will be withdrawn immediately" (White House spokesman Joe Lockhart). But nobody was buying it. Least of all the Russian General Staff.

Shortly after their arrival in Pristina, the Russian troops moved to physically occupy the Slatina airfield. Located a few kilometers southwest of the capital, the airfield is a prized military asset. Indeed, NATO had chosen Slatina to be its operational headquarters for the Kosovo mission--plans now indefinitely put on hold. This was because Slatina&#39;s runways are sufficiently fortified to accommodate the take-offs and landings of even the heaviest military aircraft. Plus, the airfield itself seems to have come through NATO&#39;s eleven-week bombing campaign with hardly a scratch on it. "We were the first ones to reach Pristina," the Kommersant daily newspaper quoted a high-ranking officer at the military&#39;s Central Headquarters as saying, "as happened once in Berlin." Once there, the Russians set up barricades and checkpoints on the roads leading to the airfield, and placed armed guards at them. Then, they dug in.

These days the Russian media are rife with the "Berlin" comparison. The metaphor has two obvious meanings. One: In 1945, the Red Army beat its Western allies to Berlin, capturing a huge swath of Central Europe that later became part of the Soviet bloc. Hence, the "Berlin" scenario today means the Russian paratroopers beating NATO to Pristina, where they staked their claim to the Slatina airfield. Two: At Potsdam, in July, 1945, the conquering powers divided Berlin into four occupation zones: American, British, French--and Soviet. But in real terms, the Berlin scenario meant two occupation zones only: East and West, with the fabled Berlin Wall eventually built in between. Today, NATO&#39;s fear is that if it fails to resist the Russians&#39; desire to command and control their own military zone in Kosovo, it could lead to the de facto partition of Kosovo somewhere down the road into one territory for ethnic Serbs (where the Russians are) and one territory for ethnic Albanians (where the five NATO powers are). In fact, Washington, Brussels, and London seem to fear this possibility so much they will do just about anything to stave it off. "We have made it quite clear that there will not be a Russian sector," U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright repeated almost daily in June. "[W]e&#39;re not going to tolerate a sort of East German solution," the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook enjoined.

When NATO&#39;s British troops finally arrived in Pristina some 15 hours eleven after the Russians had, they were denied entry to the Slatina airfield by a contingent made up of both Russian and Serbian troops. (Under the timetable for the Serb withdrawal from Kosovo that both NATO and the Serbs signed on June 9, all armed Federal Republic of Yugoslavia forces had until June 15 to withdraw from territory that included the area around Pristina.) A standoff between the NATO and Russian forces ensued that lasted one week, when the Russian Defense and Foreign ministers flew to Helsinki to work out a "formula for cooperation" in Kosovo with members of the Clinton Administration, Madeleine Albright and Secretary of Defense William Cohen included. Sometimes tense, sometimes comical (it turns out that the Russians had brought only five-days-worth of supplies with them, and by June 15, were forced to ask NATO to provide them with fresh water), Russian sentiment was best expressed by Leonid Ivashov, the man who until then had conducted Russia&#39;s negotiations with the U.S. Department of Defense over Russia&#39;s role in the peacekeeping operation. "We are not going to beg Americans concerning a zone of responsibility in Kosovo," he said several days before the Helsinki meeting. "We will merely pronounce our sector and have it agreed upon with Yugoslavians."

Although the Russian President instructed his negotiators at Helsinki that he "categorically disagrees" with Washington on the question of whether Russia should be allowed to man its own military sector, the conflict over the occupation of Kosovo was finally settled along much different lines. Authority over the Slatina airfield will be shared by Russia and NATO alike. The structure of command that any future deployment of Russian troops--not expected to exceed 3,600 at most, if that many--would have in relation to the KFOR is a kind of mock separation of command whereby the Russians will be allowed to do their own thing within the context of NATO&#39;s overwhelmingly larger force of 50,000. And on the question of what role Russian troops would play on the ground in Kosovo, the Russians backed away from their categorical demand that they be given their own occupation zone comparable to that of the five NATO powers. Instead, they settled for what were described as "zones of responsibility" within the French, German, and American sectors. As long as they stayed out of NATO&#39;s hair, that is, the Russians could go on make-believing that they were playing a crucial role in the occupation of Kosovo. And that they and their NATO counterparts were acting under the "aegis of the United Nations," to repeat a phrase that the Russian President had become so enamored with.

Neither Washington, Brussels, nor London--NATO&#39;s real leadership, that is--looked too favorably on Russia&#39;s Kosovo maneuver, which clearly had the blessings of the Russian President and his General Staff in Moscow. NATO&#39;s Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark called the event "bizarre" and reiterated the bottomline that NATO would only accept a "NATO-led force that is responsive to a unified chain of command and takes political direction from the North Atlantic Council." At one point, the flustered commander of Britain&#39;s 5th Airborne Brigade, Brigadier Gen. Adrian Freer, snapped at his Russian counterpart at the airfield, "What the hell are you doing here? Get on to your commanders and get out of here now."

Nor were the Western media overly pleased with Russia&#39;s military expectations and the standoff at the airfield. "Clinton and his top advisers must act quickly to convince Russia to start coordinating its peacekeepers with the alliance&#39;s forces," the Chicago Tribune asserted in an editorial titled "Taming a rogue Russian bear"--the implication being that Russia is a "rogue" for having acted to take the airfield without permission from NATO. The "rogue" wouldn&#39;t be at a loss for detractors. "Russia can&#39;t have its own zone," the Washington Post thundered, "and a NATO general must have sole command of the overall force."

Of course the Russians didn&#39;t see it quite that way. As Vladimir P. Lukin, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian Parliament, explained his country&#39;s decision to send its troops into Kosovo: "Instead of a previously agreed operation, NATO carried out a completely different one. Instead of a U.N. operation, a NATO operation was conducted. The rapid deployment of forces was nothing but an attempt to bring the situation in line with the resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council." In short, "Something had to be done. And it was."

On its face, the Russian position might seem strange; Lukin&#39;s comments hardly jibe with the standard view out of Washington and Brussels that the Serbs had finally agreed to allow a NATO occupation force to move into Kosovo, and that the U.N. Security Council had given NATO its blessings. For example, on June 10, the very day that NATO suspended its bombing campaign, President Clinton held a press conference in which he stated: "From the beginning, we had three clear objectives: the withdrawal of Serb forces, the deployment of an international security force with NATO at it core, the return of the Kosovars to their home to live in security and self-government. Serbia now has accepted these conditions……" Reporting on the debate in the U.N. Security Council over the wording of what would become Resolution 1244, the New York Times&#39;s Judith Miller wrote that the draft resolution "stipulates that the NATO forces would go into Kosovo…."

The next day, after the Council passed the resolution, Miller was at it again. "[T]he resolution bestows United Nations legitimacy on the peace plan and the NATO-led military operations in Kosovo." AP reported that upon hearing the news of the cease-fire, "thousands of people streamed into the streets [in Belgrade], celebrating what their government sought to proclaim as a victory, despite the devastation of their country and acceptance of terms Milosevic had vowed never to accept."

But the Russian position really shouldn&#39;t seem so strange--after all, unlike Washington&#39;s interpretation of the agreements, it was the Russian interpretation that was supported by the actual terms of each of the agreements of early June. For neither the cease-fire document that the Serb Parliament voted to ratify on June 3 (now Annex II to the subsequent Security Council Resolution), nor the so-called "Kosovo Military-Technical Agreement" that was signed by NATO and the Serbs on June 9, nor U.N. Security Council Res. 1244 (June 10) contain so much as a single phrase giving NATO what NATO and the Western media have repeatedly insisted they did--command and control authority over the peacekeeping force. (See the SIDEBAR: WHAT THE DOCUMENTS REALLY SAY ABOUT THE OCCUPATION OF KOSOVO.)

In fact, each of these documents state something quite different: that any international security force to be deployed in Kosovo operate "under United Nations auspices" (UNSC Res. 1244, Article 5; and Annex II, Article 3). Instead, one has to go all the way back to the Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo ("Rambouillet," Feb. 23) to find terms that come close to what NATO claims the three agreements of early June state. There, in the infamous "Appendix B: Status of Multi-National Military Implementation Force," the conditions of which turned NATO into an occupying power for the whole of Yugoslavia, and are widely believed to have caused the Serbs to reject the entire agreement, we read the following: 1. For the purpose of this Appendix, the following expressions shall have the meanings hereunder assigned to them: a. "NATO" means the North Atlantic Treaty Organization…………, its subsidiary bodies, its military Headquarters, the NATO-led KFOR, and any elements/units forming any part of KFOR, whether or not they are from a NATO member country and whether or not they are under NATO or national command and control…... The phrase "NATO-led KFOR" (par. 1.a, above) represents the one and only instance in which an official document proposing a solution to the Yugoslav conflict specifies that any peacekeeping force for Kosovo will be NATO-led. But the Serbs rejected the terms of the Rambouillet settlement-a momentous decision that provided NATO with the pretext it wanted to launch its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, leading to the full occupation of Kosovo that we see today. On the contrary. What the Serbs accepted were the terms of what became known as Annex II to Security Council Res. 1244 (June 10) and the Kosovo Military-Technical Agreement (June 9). And neither of these documents contain terms that state what immediately became Washington&#39;s and Brussels&#39; interpretation of them: that they give NATO the authority to create a "NATO-led force that is responsive to a unified chain of command and takes political direction from the North Atlantic Council" (Gen. Wesley Clark, June 12).

As a matter of fact (as opposed to pure doctrine), the three documents of early June state something quite different: that the "international civil and security presences" that are to be deployed in Kosovo shall operate "under United Nations auspices," and that they will act only "as may be decided under Chapter VII of the [U.N.] Charter" (Article 3, Annex II, Res. 1244, June 10)--a Chapter VII deployment clearly intended to mean under the command and control of the Security Council&#39;s Military Staff Committee (Articles 45-47 of the U.N. Charter). Not--repeat: not--under the command and control of NATO.

Like it or not, both the Russians and Serbs had a legitimate beef with Washington&#39;s and Brussels&#39; interpretation of the cease-fire and peacekeeping agreements. At least as far as their actual terms are concerned. But as the Lone Ranger used to say: Actions speak louder than words. And as the events of early and mid-June taught us all-too-well, it was NATO, not the Russians or the Serbs, that looked upon the terms of the agreements as nothing more than mere words permitting NATO to undertake whatever operation it wanted.

[hajduk]

still screwing arround with kosovari becouse of hollydays and with water wooow, on more news at 11

PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Kosovo has asked NATO to secure a large reservoir in the north out of concern Serbs living there might cut vital water supplies if the Albanian majority declares independence from Serbia within weeks.

Kosovo Albanian leaders are preparing to declare independence in the first months of 2008, almost nine years after NATO drove out Serb forces and the United Nations and a NATO peace force (KFOR) took control.

"We have asked the KFOR commander to secure the Gazivoda Lake. KFOR accepted the request," a senior Kosovo security source told Reuters.

Kosovo Albanians fear the Serb-dominated north could disrupt water and electricity supplies as part of a raft of measures being prepared by the Serbian government in response to the territory&#39;s Western-backed secession.

Cutting supplies from the Gazivoda Lake in the north, where 50,000 Serbs live, could potentially leave 200,000 Albanians without drinking water and add to already crippling power cuts, Kosovo officials say. The lake provides water for the cooling towers of Kosovo&#39;s decrepit power plant.

A KFOR spokesman said the troops were ready to protect "all strategic places in Kosovo" and were "monitoring" Gazivoda.

Serbia, which lost control over Kosovo after a wave of ethnic cleansing by Serb forces fighting separatist rebels, says it has an &#39;Action Plan&#39; to stifle the new state, which analysts say might include border closures and an economic embargo.

Kosovo Interior Minister Blerim Kuci said the ethnic Albanian leadership had discussed the issue with KFOR&#39;s French commander Lieutenant General Xavier de Marnhac.

Abdullah Nishori, director of a water system to which Gazivoda belongs, said a cut in supplies would have a huge effect.

"Between 13 and 15 percent of the Kosovo population would be left without drinking water, and Kosovo would be left in the dark," he told Reuters.



BREAKAWAY

"KFOR is patrolling more around the lake and this is a sign it has taken seriously the message that there could be problems up there," said Nishori. A key electricity sub-station is also located in the north.

The issue is seen as a test of Western resolve to stand up to Serbs in northern Kosovo who promise to reject a declaration of independence by 2 million Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population.

Western countries in the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday said they would take the lead in steering the province to independence from Serbia over Russian objections, arguing that the potential for a negotiated solution had been exhausted through almost two years of failed Serb-Albanian talks.

NATO allies with 16,000 troops in Kosovo fear a Serb backlash in the north, which adjoins Serbia proper, and a possible bid to break away which could trigger regional unrest.

Analysts say Serbian sabotage of the reservoir would almost certainly provoke Albanian attacks on isolated Serb enclaves across the rest of Kosovo, where over half the remaining 120,000 Serbs still live.

A senior KFOR official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the force was wary of being drawn too far away from its primary task of preventing any escalation of violence.

"We do not underestimate the threat," he told Reuters. "But Serbia has to be careful of the consequences for its own community."
__________________________________________________ _____________________

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 19 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council tried to bridge deep divisions Wednesday over the future of Serbia&#39;s breakaway province Kosovo, but EU diplomats said they expected no last-minute compromise.

With Western backing, Kosovo&#39;s 90 percent Albanian majority is preparing to declare independence within weeks, setting up a showdown with Serbia and its big power backer Russia.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica warned that a unilateral declaration of independence backed by Western countries would undermine the U.N. Charter and mark the start of a new era "in which might is above right."

Kostunica was due to address a closed morning session of the Security Council at which Fatmir Sejdiu, president of the semi-autonomous province, was also invited to speak, though not as a representative of a member state.

It was the first debate on Kosovo since a "troika" of mediators -- the EU, Russia and the United States -- said this month that four months of talks had failed to reach a deal with no compromise on either side on the key issue of sovereignty.

The meeting was expected to end with no action taken -- an outcome the EU and the United States have said amounts to closing the door on U.N. efforts to resolve Kosovo&#39;s status.

EU leaders said after a summit last week that negotiations on Kosovo&#39;s future were exhausted, the status quo was untenable and there was a need to move toward a Kosovo settlement. They stopped short of immediately endorsing independence.

Kosovo, to many Serbs the cradle of their religion and identity, has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians.

&#39;FROZEN CONFLICT&#39;

One EU diplomat said moves toward independence based on a plan drawn up by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari were likely to happen within months, not days.

"What we&#39;re working for is a coordinated series of actions involving the EU and NATO and the Kosovar authorities, which would unfold in the next month or two," the diplomat said on Wednesday, adding that the timing would take account of a likely presidential election in Serbia in January.

Kostunica urged the Security Council to pass a resolution calling for further negotiations -- a position backed by Russia, a veto-holding permanent member of the council, which has blocked Security Council action on Kosovo in the past.

"The Security Council is the last place in the world where one could expect to hear that compromise is not possible," Kostunica said, according to a text of his speech seen by Reuters.

"Serbia will declare all unilateral acts of Albanian separatists null and void, and for Serbia the province of Kosovo will forever remain its integral and inalienable part."

The EU diplomat said more talks were pointless and it would be dangerous to create "another frozen conflict in Europe."

The looming showdown over Kosovo could complicate Serbia&#39;s progress toward EU membership -- a goal which 69 percent of Serbs want to achieve, according to a recent survey.

At the same time, 75 percent say Serbia should not accept the loss of Kosovo to win EU acceptance.

The EU has committed to deploy 1,800 police officers, judges and administrators to oversee the fledgling state, but the mission faces rejection in the north, dominated by just less than half of Kosovo&#39;s remaining 120,000 Serbs.


HAPPY HOLLYDAYS FUCKING IMPERIALISTS AND CAPITALISTS

[hajduk]

STATEMENT ON THE WAR IN YUGOSLAVIA
BY SOME ARCHAEOLOGY STUDENTS IN SHEFFIELD AND THEIR FRIENDS

Introduction

We the undersigned are agreed on the demands, recommendations and observations enumerated in the section below. Before spelling these out, we offer some general remarks, which should be borne in mind when reading the statement that follows:

* We thoroughly condemn the actions and policies of the government of the Yugoslav Republic (Yugoslavia) which have encouraged and assisted the inter-ethnic violence in the province of Kosovo and elsewhere in Yugoslavia.
* The cessation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO’s) bombardment of the Yugoslavia is a necessary condition for creating peace and advancing self-determination in all parts of Yugoslavia, and it must be the first step in toward attaining such.
* We recognise that there are more than the ‘two sides’ to the story of the present war that have been presented to us by politicians, NATO officials and the media. We are secure in the knowledge that we can reasonably declare that we support neither NATO nor ‘Milosevic’, and that with realistic prospects, we can help those who have resisted all the warring parties in Yugoslavia, and who in many cases have suffered at their hands.
* We find NATO’s pretext for the bombing of Yugoslavia hypocritical at best. Not only has NATO not deigned to undertake military intervention such countries as Rwanda, where ‘ethnic cleansing’ has demonstrably been at least as systematic and at least as great as that reported in Kosovo, but NATO governments also continue to provide weapons, military funds, and strategic information to such regimes as those in Indonesia, Turkey and Colombia – among dozens of others – which are conducting terroristic and genocidal campaigns against ethnic minorities within their borders. Closer to the current action, we note that when Serbia’s neighbour, Croatia, drove 200,000 Serbs from the area of Krajina in 1995, and killed hundreds of others, NATO countries did not condemn the act – they lent it military air support. We would also like to make a particular example of NATO’s material complicity in the Turkish government’s oppression and mass murder of Kurds within the borders of Turkey, as well as in Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974, since Turkey is a NATO member and thus, we are to believe, is unquestionably on the side of the just and the good in the current conflict.

Statement: demands, recommendations, observations

1. We demand the immediate cessation of NATO’s pointless, haphazard and deadly bombardment of all parts of Yugoslavia, including Kosovo. The bombing has achieved none of its publicly declared political, strategic and ‘humanitarian’ aims:

* it has not stopped Kosovars, the great majority ethnic Albanians, from being forced from their homes either to find refuge elsewhere in Kosovo or in surrounding countries – in either case, under the most adverse of conditions;
* it has not kept the Yugoslav army, police or Serbian paramilitary forces from waging an armed campaign against Kosovar Albanian insurgents or from killing, terrorising, robbing and exiling the Kosovar Albanian population; and
* it has not brought the Yugoslav government back to the negotiating table to discuss the future of peace and autonomy in Kosovo.

In fact, the bombing has made things worse for the vast majority of people in all parts of Yugoslavia and in the whole region:

* it has incited Yugoslav and Serbian forces to intensify their onslaught against Kosovar Albanians;
* it has killed hundreds of non-combatants in non-military zones;
* it has resulted in the number of refugees both inside and outside Kosovo increasing exponentially; and
* it has caused incalculable economic and ecological damage: devastating infrastructure, factories and offices, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and destroying ways of life; contaminating the land and air with radioactive dust every time the ‘depleted-uranium’ warhead of a Tomahawk missile explodes; filling the atmosphere of the region with clouds of toxic gas from fires in petroleum refineries and chemicals plants; and polluting with oil slicks large stretches of the Danube River, Europe’s longest waterway.

The current situation is one which NATO General Wesley Clark called ‘entirely predictable’ in the days before the bombing started. Moreover, NATO leaders cannot continue to insist that they are aiming only at military targets when they have deliberately bombed RTS, Serbia’s national television company, knowing that civilians were working there. Nis, Dakovica, Pancevo, Surdulica, the Chinese Embassy – all ‘collateral damage’. We cannot continue to let the world’s most powerful military alliance continually get away with saying ‘We’re sorry. We didn’t mean it’, when time and time again it makes the ostensible ‘mistake’ of killing innocent people in Yugoslavia. Even if one initially accepts its professed ‘humanitarian’ aims, one eventually has to decide that its behaviour is either criminally reckless or pathologically idiotic, and put an end to it.

I. We demand that negotiations on peace and self-determination in Kosovo and Yugoslavia resume as soon as the bombing has stopped. Unlike the talks held in Rambouillet a month before the bombing began, however, further negotiations must be conducted in good faith and not be thinly disguised ultimatums, backed up by military force, imposed by the stronger parties upon the weaker. Furthermore, the consequences of the bombardment of Yugoslavia have made any future agreement an immediate political, social and economic issue for all the countries in the Balkans. Therefore, we recommend that not only the combatant parties but also, at least, the governments of the surrounding countries be included in the negotiations. We suggest that the General Assembly of the United Nations could pass resolutions recommending the negotiations be held under the auspices of its 54-member Economic and Social Council, which, at the level of intergovernmental organisations, is relatively balanced politically and geographically.

II. We demand that the constituent states of NATO open their borders to all refugees immediately and unconditionally and offer them political asylum; countries which can afford to spend US &#036;35 million a day on the bombardment of Yugoslavia can afford to offer permanent asylum to refugees from the war. In particular, we are gravely concerned by the conditions imposed on the few refugees who have been permitted into the United Kingdom, including the way in which many have separated from their families and the means by which they have been ‘ghettoised’ by containing them in hospitals, schools and other institutions, where contact is limited almost only to social workers. Moreover, we oppose the legislation currently being discussed in Parliament which would further restrict the rights of immigrants and seekers of political asylum in Britain – this happening at the very time that the British government says that it wishes to help the Kosovar refugees in their plight. As far as alleviating human suffering is concerned, we note that it is not just Albanians in Kosovo who have been killed, dispossessed and forced from their homes by the war, but also Serbs, Turks, Hungarians, Roma and other peoples throughout Yugoslavia, whether by military and paramilitary forces acting under the aegis of the Yugoslav government or by NATO’s missiles and bombs. Therefore, we make an appeal for ‘war relief’, as distinct from the limited ‘Kosovo appeal’ being made by certain charitable organisations, asking that efforts be made to supply all the victims of the war with material needs and medical aid. While we recognise that there are a number of non-governmental organisations suited to do this, we suggest that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Committee of the Red Cross/Crescent are currently the institutions best situated for distributing such aid coming from private sources, as well as being the most accountable for such an endeavour.

III. We declare our solidarity with the existing and persevering democratic opposition within Yugoslavia, and we seek to open a dialogue with its members so as to forge lasting bonds across national borders. We call upon all people who are genuinely opposed to political repression, state-sponsored terrorism and inter-ethnic violence to do likewise, using whatever means they have at their disposal. If we do not establish such a network of resistance, we will find ourselves rudely awakened – over and over, physically or politically – to bombs falling on one country after another. When we speak of ‘the democratic opposition’, we have in mind trade unionists, women’s groups, environmentalists, journalists, students unions, human rights organisations and certain political parties which during the wars of the last ten years in Yugoslavia have resisted the nationalist policies of the Yugoslav government, as well as the military adventures of different national and factional powers in the region, and have striven to maintain a multi-ethnic community despite wartime conditions and the collusion of various parties in dividing Yugoslavia into ‘ethnic’ states. We recall that in 1991 and 1997 hundreds of thousands of these same people rose up throughout Yugoslavia in protest against the government and were met with violent repression. These are the people whom NATO would have us forget. By realising our solidarity in protests and political organising here – where we live – we will help keep this memory alive.

IV. We call for a long-term process of reconciliation and reconstruction in Yugoslavia, beyond the cease-fire and interim agreement, which must involve the people who have suffered during the war and will be directly affected by the outcome of any negotiations – including, crucially, the democratic opposition referred to above. Therefore, we will resist any settlement imposed by NATO or any other future occupying force, no matter if it is dressed up as ‘peace’ or ‘stability’. In particular, we will not accept any attempt to partition Yugoslavia along ‘ethnic’ lines. We understand that there can be no ‘quick-fix’ to the aftermath of the war. The physical and psychological trauma caused by the actions of the Yugoslav government and NATO will take years, if not generations, to heal. Therefore, programmes should be encouraged which seek to bridge ethnic divisions and which promote inter-ethnic tolerance and understanding. However, we stress that the necessary social change in Yugoslavia must come from below, and this is a principle to which we adhere in our own organising against this war and more broadly in our efforts to build a more just and humane world. Given our principles, we are deeply disturbed by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s recommendation in a recent speech in Chicago of a ‘new Marshall Plan’ for the Balkans, and we are appalled by President Bill Clinton’s statement to a conference of government employees on the day before the bombardment started that the United States’ ‘need’ for a ‘strong economic relationship’ with Europe ‘that includes our ability to sell around the world’ is ‘what this Kosovo thing is all about’.

V. While we admit that for years to come we will not have a clear picture of what is happening in Yugoslavia at the moment, in particular in Kosovo, we nonetheless deplore the propaganda which governments, military personnel, the press and broadcast media have attempted to spoon-feed us. We think it is as insulting to intelligence as it is injurious to peace and justice. That ‘the first casualty of war is truth’ is an old adage. In the case of the current bombardment, it seems as though the truth is being killed gradually by prolonged and grisly torture. NATO officials’ daily press briefings have been a steady stream of prevarication, double-talk, shifting positions, suspect evidence and outright lies. These strategems and fabrications are too numerous to list here. More sinister is the way in which politicians in NATO member governments have mixed verifiable cases of horrible murder, torture and rape with lurid speculation and exaggerated comparisons to Hitler’s ‘final solution’. Such deliberate mixing of fact and fiction in order to make political capital – while constituting first-rate propaganda – is insulting to the memory of those who have been killed and demeans the actual suffering of the victims of ethnic violence. Moreover, the same spokespersons who would have us believe that they know precisely the nature, scale and location of atrocities being committed right now by Serbian armed forces in Kosovo, would also have us believe that their ‘intelligence’ is neither up-to-date nor exact enough to distinguish the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade from a military depot when selecting targets for bombs. One would think this would strain credulity to the breaking point. Yet the mass media have swallowed nearly all of it undigested so as to pump out headlines. Newspapers which have advertised themselves on the high quality of their investigative reporting and critical commentary have treated us instead to full-page photographic spreads of Kosovar Albanians fleeing on tractors and trucks, accompanied by imaginative essays on their fate sprinkled with a few verifiable facts. Radio and television announcers have credulously repeated the official pronouncements of the politicians, soldiers and bureaucrats of NATO governments, while dutifully – and apparently without any sense of irony – warning us that any statements by the Yugoslav government and media ‘cannot be confirmed’. Some commentators and reporters who have tried to present an accurate picture of what is happening in Yugoslavia have been sacked or slandered: Mark Steel, whom The Guardian expressly hired as a leftwing sceptic of New Labour during the 1996 election campaign, was dismissed for his trenchant criticism of NATO’s bombardment; and John Simpson, the BBC’s World Affairs Editor, was accused by cabinet ministers of effectively being an agent of the Yugoslav government while he was reporting from Belgrade. As if its contempt for freedom of expression were not obvious from the foregoing, NATO’s bombing of the Serbian national television company, on grounds that it was a source of insidious propaganda, is an assertion that what they say is ‘right’ by definition and not subject to debate.

VI. Finally, we note that the thousands of millions of US dollars spent on the war in Yugoslavia will not be repaid by Clinton, Blair or any of the other NATO leaders, nor by Milosevic and his cronies, but rather, directly or indirectly, by tax payers and the poor in all the countries involved, including the very people who have been under fire from Yugoslav bullets and NATO bombs. Since this is a war we do not support, we will refuse to pay for it, whether that means resisting attempts to impose a ‘war tax’ or fighting against further cuts in education and social services.

[hajduk]

Russia still doesnt get paycheck from Alban mafia on more news at 11

MOSCOW, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Russia&#39;s foreign minister said in a television interview on Friday it was "not impossible" that the European Union could take over the U.N.&#39;s role in the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, provided Belgrade agreed.

But in a newspaper interview published earlier in the day, Sergei Lavrov made clear Russia would use every instrument it had at the United Nations to block Western attempts to proclaim Kosovo&#39;s independence over Serbia&#39;s objections.

The European Union, which believes that diplomatic means to bridge differences between Kosovo leaders and Belgrade have been exhausted, is preparing to take over policing and judicial duties in Kosovo from the United Nations.

"If the European Union wants to replace the United Nations in Kosovo, this is not an impossible option," Lavrov told Vesti-24 television.

"Firstly, an appropriate decision by the U.N. Security Council should be adopted. The second condition is that Belgrade agrees. Consent from the country where a peacekeeping operation is being conducted is a necessary condition."

Serbia has said an EU mission without the blessing of the Security Council would be unlawful.

Some Serbian hardliners also oppose such a mission in principle, because it would mean Kosovo is moving towards "supervised independence", as envisaged by a Western-backed plan that Moscow blocked at the U.N. earlier this year.

Russia was against NATO&#39;s military operation against Serbia in 1999, launched to force Belgrade to withdraw forces from Kosovo after atrocities against the province&#39;s majority ethnic Albanians.

VETO

Moscow has taken part in the U.N. KFOR peacekeeping force in Kosovo. But it has consistently blocked Western attempts in the U.N. Security Council to grant independence to Kosovo.

Russia says it will back any solution approved by both Pristina and Belgrade, but warned that letting Kosovo declare independence unilaterally could set a dangerous precedent. It has accused the West of undermining a dialogue between the two by encouraging Kosovo&#39;s demands for full independence.

In an interview with Vremya Novostei daily, Lavrov said Western plans to replace KFOR with an EU police force without Belgrade&#39;s agreement could lead to the demise of the United Nations, created to guarantee international stability.

"In fact, this is the first attempt to say that the West is no longer interested in the United Nations, that they will now solve complicated international problems outside the United Nations," he said.

Lavrov said Russia would block any Western attempts to win a U.N. blessing for Kosovo&#39;s self-proclaimed independence.

"If a decision approving a unilateral declaration of Kosovo&#39;s independence is put forward (in the U.N.), there will certainly be a veto," he told Vremya Novostei.

He made clear Russia would take legal steps in the United Nations if the West recognised Kosovo&#39;s independence.

"The U.N. Secretary-General, the U.N. mission in Kosovo will then be obliged to create conditions for reaching a political settlement," he said in the newspaper interview.

"They will simply be obliged to proclaim illegal any decision on unilateral independence by Kosovo Albanians."
__________________________________________________ _____________________

MOSCOW, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Russia will use its clout at the U.N. to block Western plans to cement Kosovo as an independent state, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a newspaper interview published on Friday.

Kosovo&#39;s majority Albanian population is expected to declare untilateral independence from Serbia within weeks, and the European Union, United States and other states are likely to recognise this.

But Lavrov warned Russia would work through the U.N. to block the steps Western powers are planning after the unilateral declaration of independence.

These include dispatching a European Union police force to ensure security in Kosovo and, possibly, seeking U.N. endorsement of Kosovo as a sovereign state.

"If a decision approving a unilateral declaration of Kosovo&#39;s independence is put forward (in the U.N.), there will certainly be a veto," Lavrov told Vremya Novostei daily. Russia, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has a right of veto.

The Council failed on Wednesday to bridge deep divisions between Kosovo Albanians, who seek full independence, and Belgrade, which rules it out.

Lavrov said if the EU took over the U.N.&#39;s lead role on Kosovo, it could be the first step in the demise of the world&#39;s biggest international forum, created as a guarantor of global stability.

"In fact, this is the first attempt to say that the West is no longer interested in the United Nations, that they will now solve complicated international problems outside the United Nations," Lavrov said.

"If NATO and the European Union say they will decide themselves how to divide Serbia, how to tear off Kosovo, how to prevent Kosovo Serbs from expressing their opinions, they will simply position themselves outside international law," Lavrov said.

"The U.N. Secretary-General, the U.N. mission in Kosovo will then be obliged to create conditions for reaching a political settlement," he added.

"They will simply be obliged to proclaim illegal any decision on unilateral independence by Kosovo Albanians."

Russia says recognising Kosovo&#39;s independence bypassing Serbia&#39;s objections could create a dangerous precedent for other regions, where separatist sentiment is high.

Moscow itself backs two breakaway provinces of ex-Soviet Georgia -- Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- and Moldova&#39;s separatist province of Transdniestria. But it has so far rejected their pleas to recognise their formal independence.

[hajduk]

females stand up for Kosovo


A Letter about some of the Complexities of Opposition

BEING ABLE TO SAY NEITHER / NOR

By Cynthia Cockburn

A group of us in London co-ordinate occasional actions as &#39;Women in Black&#39; (footnote). Although I am actively involved I do not speak &#39;for&#39; Women in Black London. What follows is no more than a few personal thoughts. Just as Women in Black has no formal membership or spokes-people, neither can it really be said to have a line. But from all the occasions women have demonstrated together under this name on the streets of many different countries it is possible to work out what we are standing against and standing for.

First, Women in Black is against the whole continuum of violence, from male violence against women, to militarism and war. It is for justice and peace. It is clearly for multi-ethnic democracy. It is for non-violent, negotiated, means of resolving differences. And there is an implicit analysis that a certain kind of masculinity fuels and is fuelled by militarism and war, and that this is harmful not only for women but also for men.

At the time of writing, as the ethnic aggression intensifies in Kosovo/Kosova and as NATO bombing shows no signs of ending, a situation has arisen in which there is very little space indeed for this kind of politics by women. Even less than usual. The little space that is sometimes there has closed right down, not just in Yugoslavia, but in the UK too. What is happening is polarization, a kind of &#39;either/or&#39; politics.

Take, for example, the big demonstration on Sunday April 11 called by the Committee for Peace in the Balkans, largely framed by the Socialist Worker Party, at which the speakers included many well-known names from the British Left. Some of us took the Women in Black banner along. Many of the Women in Black network in London want to oppose NATO bombing. Our opposition (I feel safe in saying) is not to protect Serb nationalist extremism but precisely because we would see the bombardment as strengthening not weakening it. For that reason we have been holding vigils in London. But, on April 11, even as the march assembled on the Embankment, I was feeling uneasy. Because there was this ocean of pre-planned Socialist Worker placards that simply said &#39;stop the NATO bombing&#39;. Any messages opposing the ethnic aggression of the Milosevic regime were overwhelmed by this uniform and singular demand. Then we reached Downing Street, where the march was joined by a strong contingent of Serb nationalists and their supporters. We were surrounded by the Serb national flag, the characteristic three finger salutes, and many people wearing the new &#39;target&#39; symbols that have been adopted in Belgrade since the bombing.

At the bottom of Trafalgar Square things got very confrontational. To the left, held back behind barriers, was a militant Kosovan counter-demonstration supporting the bombing. And shouting back from &#39;our&#39; side of the road were angry Serb nationalists, some of them carrying a scaffold with an effigy of Clinton. At that point I took down and folded up the Women in Black banner. It seemed the wrong place to have it. Some of us women decided that we wanted to go and meet people on the Kosovan demonstration. We wanted to find out whether they were all Kosova Liberation Army, to see what other groups might be represented there behind the macho front, and talk with them. We wanted at least to let them know that there were some people on the main march who, although you wouldn&#39;t know it, not only opposed bombing, but also opposed Milosevic and what his regime was doing in Kosovo.

The police tried to stop us crossing to the other side of the road. And one of them said &#39;You can&#39;t change your mind now, you chose this demonstration, you&#39;ve got to stick with it. Don&#39;t you know which side you&#39;re on?&#39; That seemed to epitomise the situation.

We went over there anyway. What was worse, though, was that the same kind of message we were getting from the police was also coming across from the speeches in the Square. It was clearly a difficult situation for the speakers to deal with, addressing an audience in which the thing mainly visible was Serb flags. One woman speaker on &#39;our&#39; platform did criticize Milosevic. She got boo-ed by the crowd. Perhaps this warned off the other speakers. I did not hear the word Milosevic mentioned again. The impression given was that there was one &#39;enemy&#39; and that was NATO. People spoke of &#39;the humanitarian disaster in Kosovo&#39; but, since Milosevic was not named, the implication could have been that it was the result of the bombing. Nobody that I heard speak acknowledged the presence of the Kosova demonstration across the road, or expressed any discomfort in being separated in this way from the victims of &#39;ethnic cleansing&#39;.

Instead, the speakers dwelt on the bombing, referring to the Second World War blitz of London and to our wartime alliance with valorous Serbs. It seemed to me (although I know views are divided on this) that the organizers allowed the rally to be hi-jacked by Serb nationalism. You had the feeling they were thinking: &#39;One thing at a time. You can&#39;t oppose bombing AND oppose Milosevic in the same breath.&#39; But all the time I was thinking: there must be people here in Trafalgar Square from the democratic opposition to Milosevic. There are sure to be some men here in the crowd who have deserted from the Yugoslav National Army. They, like us, must feel silenced by this atmosphere. What are they feeling?

Nor was the problem only one of polarization. There was a parallel problem of homogenization. In bombing &#39;the Serbs&#39;, NATO are effectively being racist about Yugoslavia. It is as if they think the &#39;pure Serb nation&#39; is a reality in Yugoslavia in the way Milosevic would like it to be. Governments&#39; failure to see beyond ethnicism is one thing, but the organizers of this demonstration, called to oppose governments, seemed to fall into the same trap of talking as though the people beneath the bombs are &#39;Serbs&#39;.

In reality, the Yugoslavia that Milosevic governs is not much more than 60% Serb. There are twenty other nationalities living there, Hungarians, Romanies, Croats, Sandjak Muslims, Montenegrans. There are people of mixed marriages and mixed parentage. Probably many of these were present in Trafalgar Square on April 11 too. What were they feeling about being addressed as if all of them were holding Serb flags?

By now I was full of doubt and confusion. We had folded up the Women in Black banner. But should we be here at all? I remembered a message I had a few days before from a (so-called Serb) woman friend living in Canada. She had written, &#39;The stage is set right now as if anti-NATO is for ethnic cleansing, Milosevic and radical nationalism. And that is very dangerous&#39;. Because of this, she said, &#39;many people have problems with protesting&#39;. I was beginning to see what she meant.

So if there was not any space for our politics here with the Left in Trafalgar Square, then where? And with whom? And I began to think about the women we work most closely with in Yugoslavia: the Women in Black group in Belgrade. They have demonstrated against the Milosevic regime, in rain and shine, in Republic Square once a week since 1991. Now what rains on them is bombs. And I went home after the demo and read through the many e-mail messages we had had from them in the preceding weeks. I did it to recover a sense of direction and belonging. I remembered that during the equally dark days of the Bosnian war, when we had had difficulty unifying women in London (who were not only British but also from every Yugoslav ethnic group), the one thing we had always been able to agree on was supporting the women peace activists in Belgrade. And what follows is what I read. I cannot use the women&#39;s real names, but I shall give a date for each of their messages.

First, I read how they have persisted, against increasing odds, in keeping in daily contact with our women colleagues in Pristina, Albanian Kosovans, and have tried to keep supporting them.

March 28: &#39;My moral and emotional imperative (no matter how pathetic it sounds) is to spend hours and hours trying to get a phone line to Prishtina.&#39; They passed on to us news of how ordinary Serbs and Albanians there are still trying to befriend each other.

April 1: &#39;In some buildings, in a few cases, neighbours speak, Serbian and Albanian. They have agreed: "If the police come we will speak up for you", say the Serbs who stay. And "If the KLA comes, we will speak up for you", say the Albanians.&#39;

On March 27 I heard from a (so-called Serb) friend who has now fled the country. She was not thinking of her own situation so much as that of Kosovans. &#39;What disturbs and terrifies me most is the news that the most prominent Albanian intellectuals are being taken away and nobody knows what is happening to them... Is that how the NATO air strikes are supposed to protect the lives of innocent Albanian (and Serbian) civilians in Kosovo?&#39;

April 9, more news from the women in Belgrade. &#39;I talked to &#39;X&#39; two days ago (a women&#39;s human rights worker in Prishtina). She is in Skopje with her family, sixteen of them and they have gone through inferno for six days and six nights and now she is a little recovered and called me and told me some part of her story. And I told her that I am so thankful that she called because we were worrying every day. And she said "I knew you and &#39;Y&#39; will worry. It was my duty to call you to tell you we are all alive and healthy". And I had tears on my face, because those words meant so much among the horrible hatred against Albanians that is going on in the last fifteen days, and much more than before. Thanks for support.&#39;

The women of Women in Black Belgrade are opposed to the bombing, but they have it in perspective. April 1: &#39;All those bombs don&#39;t bother me so much because I see the problem of it in smaller terms than the Kosovo problem.&#39; They see the bombs as bad not because they are an aggression against Serbs but because they weaken the opposition to Milosevic.

April 1: &#39;The bombings are installing Milosevic as king for life, not just president. Kosovo will, with a large amount of victims, get an international protectorate or state. But Serbia will be in shit for the next thirty years. That&#39;s what pisses me off and what I can&#39;t deal with. Talking to other activists these days I realized that some of them are frustrated that their whole work, life project, whole peace orientation is falling apart.&#39; The atmosphere in Belgrade is getting more and more sexist and misogynist. The women write that there are many placards on the streets saying things like &#39;Fuck you Chelsea&#39; (of Clinton&#39;s daughter), and endless references to Monika Lewinsky, calling &#39;Come back Monica&#39;, so that Clinton might &#39;screw her instead of Serbs&#39;. And so on. The little space there was for active and autonomous women is narrowing down, along with tolerance of any other kind of counter-culture.

March 28: &#39;This conspiracy of militarism - global and local - dangerously reduces our space, and soon there won&#39;t be this space. How to denounce global militarism if we don&#39;t denounce the local? How to denounce bombing if we don&#39;t denounce the massacres, the repression? With the horror the people of Kosovo are living through with this NATO intervention, they are paying a price even greater than before. NATO in the sky, Milosevic on the ground&#39;. The writer added, &#39;At the moment our human ghetto functions well, with mutual support. Your support strengthens us, it means a real lot. I embrace you with the deepest friendship and tenderness.&#39; As the bombing ended its second week, things were clearly getting tougher for women and other peace activists in Belgrade.

On April 9: &#39;Our problem here is that we cannot say a word anymore, all human rights are suspended. Only anti-NATO appeals can be published. So Women in Black Belgrade have decided not to make any appeal, at least for the time being, because we cannot as well state that we are against Milosevic... So I live with a mask on my face, if I talk to other people. Everything changed here, and fear is everywhere&#39;

But here in London we do not have to wear that mask. We can speak out both against the bombing AND against the Milosevic regime without any kind of risk or fear.

On the demo on Sunday April 11 that was not happening. One statement had been allowed to silence the other. And I really think we have to keep both clearly there together. Even if it seems contradictory. There is a saying that &#39;the first casualty of war is truth&#39;. I am feeling that another casualty in this war, right now, is the willingness to live with ambiguity and contradiction, to say &#39;not this (not ethnic cleansing), but not that (bombing) either&#39;. Another casualty is the ability to say &#39;I don&#39;t have an answer&#39;. Preparing for Women in Black vigils in London we are having a lot of difficulty just now knowing what positive demands we can put on our banners and placards. But maybe we have to admit that we can&#39;t have very concrete answers at this moment, because the mistakes were begun years ago. There are political principles we can suggest, of course. The trouble is these things do not translate easily into short, snappy slogans. I have felt the temptation to sloganize too. We have sat up all night wondering how on earth to write, all on a couple of pieces of cardboard, &#39;work through the United Nations, support genuine international peacekeeping and strenthen independent monitoring&#39;.

But the thing I most feel I want to do is just keep listening to the women who are there, the ones who are taking the risks, and whose political judgment we have by now got eight years of knowing we can trust. And the things they do clearly model for us is: keep talking, keep the channels open, cherish mixity, believe we can live together, refuse military solutions. And choose a way of doing things that ridicules and counteracts all the sexist, masculist posturing that goes with militarism on every side.

FOOTNOTE: Women in Black was started in Israel in 1988 by women protesting against Israel&#39;s Occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. It was they who established the characteristic form of action, of mainly silent vigils, by women standing alone as women, wearing black, in public places, at regularly repeated times. There are Women in Black groups now in many different countries, and an e-mail network is developing in Spanish and English (the address in Spain is [email protected] and, in the UK, [email protected]).

In recent years Women in Black London have demonstrated against bombing and sanctions in relation to Iraq and the Gulf War, against US/British bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan, and against ethnic aggression in the former Yugoslavia. To be included in the WIB London mailing list please send your street and e-mail addresses and phone number to WIB c/o The Maypole Fund, PO Box 14072 London N16 5WB.

[hajduk]

At the request of the NATO alliance to deploy its troops to carry out the political accord on the self-rule in Kosovo and Metohia, which has not been reached, agreed and reconciled yet with all national communities living in Kosmet and on their threats to bomb our country and people if refuted.
__________________________________________________ ______________________

DECISIONS

1. The Serbian Parliament does not accept presence of foreign military troops in Kosovo and Metohia 2. The Serbian Parliament is ready to review the size and character of the international presence in Kosmet for carrying out the reached accord, immediately upon signing the political accord on the self-rule agreed and accepted by the representatives of all national communities living in Kosovo and Metohia.

At the session held on March 23, 1999, the Serbian Parliament discussed the report of the state delegation on the talks held in Rambouillet and Paris and adopted the following:

C O N C L U S I O N S

I
1. The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia most strongly condemns threats of aggression to our country and our people, as well as a NATO troop build-up on our borders. Preparations of war and threats of aggression against our country are destroying the political process for the resolution of problems in Kosovo and Metohija and hampering the reaching of a political agreement, representing a direct support and assistance to separatists and terrorists.

2. NATO threats constitute a direct violation of the U.N. Charter and the jeopardizing of our country&#39;s sovereignty and territorial integrity. NATO is trampling on the basic principles of international relations, on the very foundations of the international order and represent a threat to international peace and security. Therefore, we request that the U.N. Security Council prevent the violation of the U.N. Charter, to immediately place on its agenda a request by the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and to condemn NATO action. We request the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the U.N. not to turn a blind eye to the threat of aggression and hide themselves behind silence, because this will make them accessories to destruction of generally-accepted principles in international relations and also to attack against a sovereign country, a United Nations co-founder. We also condemn a withdrawal of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission. There is not a single reason for this but to put the withdrawal into the service of blackmails and threats to our country.


3. We are warning NATO and all countries whose territory might be used to attempt an aggression against our country that we shall defend our territory, our people and our freedom by all means available.


4. We urge the parliaments and governments of all U.N. and OSCE member-countries, as well as of the Contact Group member-countries, to support a resumption of the political process and condemn threats of force and the advocating of an aggression against our country.

II

1. The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia accepts Serbian government delegation&#39;s report on talks held at Rambouillet and in Paris and notes that the delegation, with its principled and constructive efforts, has done its utmost toward the reaching of a political agreement on the peaceful settlement of problems in Kosovo and Metohija.

2. The state delegation acted in line with the platform worded by the National Assembly in its conclusions of February 4, 1999, toward the reaching of a political agreement on a wide-ranging autonomy for Kosovo and Metohija, with the securing of a full equality of all citizens and ethnic communities and with respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

III

1. We have accepted the talks in France, starting out from a firm commitment of the people and of all political factors in the country to do our best and to contribute to a peaceful political settlement of problems in Kosovo and Metohija in good faith that the international community and the Contact Group, which had organized the talks, want the same.

2. Instead of direct talks and genuine efforts toward the reaching of a political agreement on an essential wide-ranging autonomy and instead of peace and political settlement, dictate, forgeries, threats, blackmails and NATO troops have been offered in France.

3. The National Assembly stresses with regret that the international mediators, as well as the co-chairmen of the talks at Rambouillet and in Paris, have failed to find a way to persuade the separatist movement&#39;s delegation to sit at the same table with the Serbian state delegation and, therefore, there were no talks between the two delegations.


IV

1. The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia takes note that no political agreement between the two delegations was reached either at the Rambouillet or the Paris talks.

2. The Serbian state delegation cannot be blamed for the failure of the talks in Rambouillet and Paris, as it had constantly been insisting on direct talks and consultations. The fault lies solely with the delegation of the separatist and terrorist movement and with all who had allowed them to behave in such a manner and sign a text which they had not wanted to discuss with the Serbian state delegation at all, but which they proclaimed as a complete agreement.

3. Agreement was not reached because the separatist-terrorist delegation of ethnic Albanians avoided direct talks as it did not give up its separatist goals: to use autonomy as a means for establishing a "state within a state"; to secure occupation of Serbia through the implementation of the political agreement; to create an ethnically pure Kosovo-Metohija under the pretext of protecting human rights and democracy; and to secure the secession of Kosovo-Metohija from Serbia with the help of their patrons and through an international protectorate and referendum.

4. Agreement was not reached also because the Contact Group insisted on proposals nullifying the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, thus violating its own fundamental principles defined on January 29, 1999, bringing confusion to the talks through undefined procedure for the work and decision-taking, thus creating the conditions for fraud and falsifying documents that were not discussed at any time or adopted by the Contact Group as a whole. By encouraging pressures and threats of aggression on our country, it provided an incentive to separatists and terrorists, thus contributing to the creation of an atmosphere unfavorable for reaching a political agreement on resolving problems in Kosovo-Metohija in a peaceful manner.

5. The paper signed by the separatist-terrorist delegation of ethnic Albanians does not constitute any kind of "agreement&#39;, but a demand for a "republic of Kosovo", initialed by their sponsors. The fraudulent document that was presented as an "agreement" is not a document of the Contact Group, as even some of its members have dissociated themselves from it. It constitutes an unprecedented criminal act in international legal relations and creates a pretext for fresh threats and pressures on our country. This document was imposed by force in Paris by the US, which thus openly sided with one party diplomatically, politically and militarily, placing the NATO in an alliance with separatists and terrorists.


V

1. The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia assesses that the Agreement proposed and signed by the state delegation constitutes a key contribution to the political process of resolving problems in Kosovo-Metohija by peaceful means. The signatures of the members of our delegation, representatives of all ethnic communities living in Kosovo-Metohija - Serbs, Montenegrins, Muslims, Turks, Romanies, Goranies, Egyptians and ethnic Albanian parties in favor of living together as equals with the other communities - confirm the essential value and importance of that document.

2. This agreement is fully in line with the Contact Group principles, provides for wide autonomy of Kosovo-Metohija within Serbia and the FR of Yugoslavia, guarantees sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia and the FR of Yugoslavia, full equality of citizens and all ethnic communities, the constitution of democratic institutions for decision-taking on a footing of equality and without outvoting, and rules out independence of Kosovo-Metohija or a status of a third republic. This agreement reiterates the commitment to peaceful coexistence and a safe future for all in a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Kosovo-Metohija.

3. The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia presents the Agreement on self rule in Kosovo-Metohija to the parliaments of all UN member-states to witness the form and the scope of autonomy that the Republic of Serbia guarantees to ethnic Albanians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Muslims, Romanies, Goranies, Turks, and Egyptians who live in Kosmet and urges them to express their views on democratic provisions that guarantee the equality of ethnic communities in the province.

4. The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia once again clearly reiterates that the Republic of Serbia and the FR of Yugoslavia remain committed to a political settlement of problems in Kosovo-Metohija. We reiterate our readiness to have the state delegation immediately resume talks directly with representatives of ethnic Albanian political parties and all other ethnic communities. Serbia is open to a feasible political agreement.

5. The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia empowers the state delegation to sign a political agreement on self rule in Kosovo-Metohija on which agreement will be reached by representatives of all ethnic communities living in Kosovo-Metohija.

6. The National Assembly instructs the government of the Republic of Serbia to immediately put into operation this agreement and propose solutions for implementing it as soon as possible, in order to guarantee the strengthening of the new structure of authorities in Kosmet, secure inter-ethnic confidence-building, prepare a census, and lay the conditions for direct, general and secret elections and for an overall normalization of the situation in the province.

VI

1. We thank the parliaments, governments, numerous political parties, scientific, cultural and educational organizations and institutions, numerous eminent intellectuals, scientists, artists and other public figures and individuals worldwide who have expressed support to our people and state in this historically decisive moment in the defense of freedom, independence and dignity, and who have raised their voices in the defense of the principle of equality of peoples and states in international relations and condemned the threats of aggression to a sovereign country. All this has contributed to making the truth on the real reasons for the problems in Kosovo-Metohija known to the world.

2. Serbia is united, determined and steadfast in the defense of its freedom, independence and territory. The plebiscitary commitment of our people, expressed at numerous rallies and gatherings in the country and the Diaspora has confirmed this. The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia sees the unity of the people as a support to the state institutions to persevere in this policy and as the determination of the people to defend freedom, independence, honor and dignity of our state, and a commitment that the competent state institutions take all the necessary measures and activities in this regard.

3. The National Assembly expresses Serbia&#39;s determination to reach a speedy, peaceful and just agreement, so that the power of right and justice may prevail over force and injustice. At the same time, the National Assembly expresses its unanimity and readiness to defend Serbia and the FR of Yugoslavia from any aggressor, whatever his name or motives for this crime.

[Sky]

No, because a separate Kosovo would only be a victory for imperialism. The imperialists have turned the peoples of Yugoslavia against each other in order to tear apart that strong, non-aligned state and to subsequently partition it. A micro-state like Kosovo with its sparse resources cannot reasonably be expected to lead an independent, non-aligned, self-sufficient policy. Legally, there is no precedent which allows Kosovo to separate from Serbia. International precedent in Nigeria, Sudan, etc shows that the Central Government has the right to maintain the territorial integrity of its country with the use of force if necessary.

[hajduk]

Seeing Yugoslavia Through a Dark Glass

by Diana Johnstone

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/g...ly/johnston.htm (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/grattan_healy/johnston.htm)

[hajduk]

the saga continue on more news at 11

BELGRADE, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Serbia is telling Serbs in Kosovo to ignore an Albanian declaration of independence early next year, raising the prospect of an ethnic partition of the breakaway province that the West has long ruled out.

Serbs dominate a thin slice of northern Kosovo, frustrating efforts by leaders of Kosovo&#39;s 90-percent Albanian majority and their U.N. overseers to extend control over the entire territory of Serbia&#39;s southern province.

Kosovo&#39;s 2 million Albanians are expected to declare independence in the first months of 2008, almost nine years since NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a Serb counter-insurgency war.

The Albanians have Western backing after almost two years of failed Serb-Albanian negotiations. But the flag-raising is unlikely to extend beyond the Ibar river that slices through the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, forming a natural boundary between Serbs in the north and Albanians in the south.

Beyond formally rejecting Kosovo&#39;s secession, Serbia promises to "intensify" a network of parallel structures that service the 120,000 remaining Serbs. It has opened a government office in north Mitrovica, to U.N. accusations of "provocation".

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, promoting a resolution implicitly rejecting EU and NATO membership if the two recognise Kosovo, told parliament this week Serbs in Kosovo "should ignore any unilateral declaration as an illegal act."

Cabinet minister Mladjan Dinkic was more explicit on Friday. Western recognition of Kosovo "would certainly open the question of Serbs living in Kosovo and it would lead to the necessary integration (into Serbia) of the territories where Serbs live," he said.



"UNITING WITH ALBANIA"

Dinkic, Serbia&#39;s economy minister and a pro-Western reformer, told the Belgrade daily Blic that Kosovo&#39;s secession would also reopen the question of the Serb Republic half of neighbouring Bosnia "and its integration with Serbia."

Serbia has hinted broadly at the possible breakup of postwar Bosnia, in a tactic meant to scare the West off Kosovo.

But Albanians in Kosovo are also not beyond using the taboo prospect of "Greater" ethnic states to drive their argument for independence and warn Serbia to keep its hands off the north.

"Albanians live in four countries other than Albania," outgoing Kosovo prime minister Agim Ceku was quoted as saying this week, in reference to Kosovo and Serbia&#39;s southern Presevo Valley, western Macedonia and Montenegro.

"If Kosovo is partitioned along ethnic lines, those would want to discuss uniting with Albania," he said.

Talk of a Greater Albania, officially rejected by Albania and played down by most ethnic Albanian leaders, is unlikely to go down well in Western capitals. It would appear to justify their fear of partition as an almost certain trigger for Balkan land swaps and forced population movements.

But the failure of the Western states with the lion&#39;s share of responsibility for running Kosovo to extend their control over the renegade Serb north means they will be faced with the territory&#39;s de facto partition whether they like it or not.

Half of Kosovo&#39;s Serb community lives in scattered enclaves south of the Ibar, but the rest are in the north with their backs to Serbia proper. It has been off-limits to Albanian leaders since NATO peacekeepers deploying in 1999 set down a dividing line at the Ibar to separate the fighting factions.

Serbia has cemented that divide ever since.
__________________________________________________ _____________________

BELGRADE, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Serbia said on Wednesday it would shun any offer of membership of the European Union or NATO if they recognised the breakaway province of Kosovo as an independent state.

Raising the stakes in the bid to block independence, the national assembly voted 220 to 14 in favour of a resolution saying Serbia would not sign any treaty that did not acknowledge its territorial integrity and sovereignty over Kosovo.

It was backed by President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, leaders of the two main parties in Serbia&#39;s centre-right ruling coalition, and supported by ultranationalist Radicals and Socialists on the opposition benches.

Focusing on the Stabilisation and Association Agreement that Serbia may sign with the EU next month, the resolution said "any treaty Serbia signs, including the SAA, must be in keeping with preservation of (its) sovereignty and territorial integrity".

Serbia would shelve a decision on NATO membership, it said, and it would oppose a EU supervisory mission preparing to take over from the United Nations in Kosovo unless it won Security Council approval -- which Russia has already blocked on behalf of its Serb ally.

Rhetoric in the debate was patriotic and defiant. But several speakers complained the resolution&#39;s wording was vague, perhaps deliberately so to permit harder or softer interpretation at a later date, depending on events.

"Serbia will never accept the independence of Kosovo," Tadic told parliament. The diplomatic campaign against it would resume at a U.N. Security Council session on Jan. 9.

If NATO peacekeepers failed to protect Kosovo&#39;s minority Serbs, "the Serbian Army is ready", he added in a tough note possibly meant to help his current campaign for re-election.

Kostunica, usually the more combative of the two, said the resolution would "send a message to Serbs in Kosovo ... that they should ignore any unilateral declaration of independence".

Most Serbs live in the north of Kosovo, in effect already partitioned from land dominated by the 90-percent Albanian majority, who are preparing to declare independence in the first months of 2008 with U.S. and EU backing.

Analysts say a Serb partition would be hard to prevent, assuming any side really wanted to prevent it.



CYNICAL TONE

A senior government source said Wednesday&#39;s resolution was a political necessity to preserve Serbia&#39;s fragile coalition during the January presidential campaign. He said the EU had been reassured that it did not signify a change of course.

Pro-Western Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said he hoped Serbia would sign the SAA by the end of January, regardless of the resolution, but also without ceding sovereignty over Kosovo.

Hardliners were cynical about the coalition&#39;s sincerity.

Kostunica&#39;s speech "sounded like a lullaby, like anaesthesia before the amputation", said Tomislav Nikolic of the Radicals.

"We&#39;re going to vote for this resolution, but you owe us an explanation. Does it mean you&#39;ll approve signing the agreement with the EU even if it doesn&#39;t say Kosovo belongs in Serbia?"

The Socialist Party of the late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, held chiefly responsible for disastrous wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, also sounded a sarcastic note.

Socialist leader Ivica Dacic said his party would fully support the resolution, but added: "Why did you overthrow us?"

Serbia lost control of Kosovo in 1999 after 11 weeks of bombing by NATO forced Milosevic to withdraw his troops, ending a ruthless counter-insurgency campaign in which 10,000 civilians were killed and 800,000 driven out of the country.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations and patrolled by a major NATO-led peacekeeping force ever since. Serbia now offers Kosovo&#39;s 2 million Albanians broad autonomy, "a separate life" with no role in Serbia, but short of full self-determination. Kosovo insists on total independence.

[hajduk]

let see what happening about this issue these days

PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Kosovo's prime-minister designate Hashim Thaci sealed agreement on Monday on a governing coalition expected to lead the Albanian-majority province to independence from Serbia early this year.
Democratic Party (PDK) leader and former guerrilla fighter Thaci signed a deal with the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) after weeks of wrangling over cabinet posts.
Parliament is expected to vote on the "grand coalition" on Wednesday, almost two months after Thaci's PDK beat the once-dominant LDK of Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu in a November parliamentary election.
Thaci, whose ethnic Albanian guerrilla army fought Serb forces in 1998-99 to end a decade of repression under late Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic, has promised to lead Kosovo into a declaration of independence within months.
The 90 percent Albanian majority is counting on the West to overrule opposition from Serbia and Russia and recognize Kosovo, administered by the United Nations since 1999, as the last state to be carved from the former Yugoslavia.
"This is a state-building partnership between two parties committed to cooperate in building an independent, sovereign and democratic state for all its citizens," Thaci told reporters.
Western diplomats hope a stable PDK-LDK alliance will steer Kosovo through what promises to be a turbulent transition to statehood, after Russia blocked a Western-backed plan for its secession at the U.N. Security Council.
Together the two hold 62 seats in the 120-seat assembly.
The Democratic Party emerged from the Kosovo Liberation Army, whose guerrilla war in the late 1990s eclipsed years of passive resistance under late LDK leader Ibrahim Rugova.
Serbia's crackdown drew NATO into its first "humanitarian war" to halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians. Serb forces pulled out after 11 weeks of bombing.
Central to Serb history and identity, Kosovo has been run by the United Nations and patrolled by NATO since. The West fears prolonging its limbo would trigger unrest, but almost two years of Serb-Albanian negotiations ended last month in failure.
With Russia certain to veto Kosovo's secession at the U.N. Security Council, the United States and major EU powers say they will move ahead with a plan for EU-supervised independence without a new U.N. resolution.
Most of the 27 EU members are expected to recognize Kosovo, and the bloc plans to take control of policing and justice.
The West is urging Kosovo Albanians to wait until after a presidential election in Serbia on January 20 to declare independence, to avoid boosting the ultranationalist vote.




p.s.

you see if radicals win on these elections in Serbia,the leader of ultra nacionalist serbian party Tomislav Nikolic say that if he win on elections, war criminals(Mladic,Karadjic) will not be arrested and that also will be war on Kosovo and you should know that Nikolic means seriously when he saying this

[hajduk]

ON KOSOVARS, APACHES,
AND "ETHNIC CLEANSING"
By Zoltan Grossman

Back in 1991, I was a witness during the Wisconsin Ojibwe spearfishing conflict, monitoring harassment and violence by anti-Indian groups. One night, after listening to too many chants of "Indians Go Home" and "White Man's Land," I decided to warm up for a minute in a car. The car radio had on graphic news reports on the war in the disintegrating Yugoslavia. It struck me that the nationalists calling for a Greater Serbia, a Greater Croatia, and a Greater Albania were using the same rhetoric as the anti-treaty protesters on that cold boat landing. Rather than blaming their own leaders for their economic problems, they were manipulated to blame the ethnic group living next door, and to clear them out of "their" territory.
Eight years later, we can see the United States at war in Yugoslavia, supposedly to stop "ethnic cleansing"-- the genocidal forced removal of a population. In this process, Americans want to see white hats and black hats (like in a John Wayne Western), but in reality we can only see "gray hats," with the forced removal of civilians of all ethnic groups. Two wrongs are not making a right. The bombing and the forced expulsions are mutually reinforcing forms of violence that simply feed off of each other. In 1991, likewise, the aerial bombing of northern Wisconsin towns would not have helped the Ojibwe, but merely strengthened the ethnic violence against them.
NATO claims the bombing is a "humanitarian intervention" to prevent the sort of ethnic cleansing that has escalated since the air strikes began. This selective humanitarianism spotlights human rights abuses by U.S. enemies like Yugoslavia and Iraq, but downplays the same abuses being perpetrated by U.S. allies such as Turkey, Indonesia, Colombia, and Croatia. Not only has Washington turned a blind eye to their ethnic cleansing, but has actually helped to facilitate it--including in former Yugoslavia only four years ago.
A 1995 offensive by the Croatian Army--with the help of U.S. air strikes and military trainers--ethnically "cleansed" hundreds of thousands of Serbs from the Krajina region, where they had lived for centuries. The Serbs in Croatia had revolted against a government that prevented their self-rule, much like the Kosovar Albanians later did against Serbia. Many of the expelled Krajina Serbs were resettled in Kosovo, exacerbating the ethnic tensions that have now erupted into war.
In neighboring Bosnia later that year, the brutal Serbian and Croatian "cleansing" of Muslim communities set the stage for the Dayton Accords. The U.S. rubber- stamped the de facto ethnic partition of the country between Serbia and Croatia, dooming any hope for a multiethnic future that includes all three Bosnian ethnic groups. The idea that NATO opposes Balkan "ethnic cleansing" flies in the face of recent U.S. approval of "pure" ethnic boundaries that were drawn by forced removals.
The NATO double-standard also overlooks the history of harsh and methodical "ethnic cleansing" to build the land base of the United States itself. This history not only includes the Trail of Tears from the Southeast, but the forced removals of Navajo (Dine) and Apache from Arizona, many Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe from Wisconsin, and most Mdewakanton Dakota from Minnesota. It also includes modern forced removals, including of the Big Mountain Dine. If we cannot understand our own history, how can we dictate to other countries how to solve their historic ethnic conflicts?
Given this history, perhaps the greatest irony is the U.S. Army's recent deployment of helicopter gunships nicknamed "Apaches." When the U.S. Army defeated the Apache Nation in Arizona, the troops rounded up the survivors, locked them in cattle cars, and shipped them to a Florida military fort. Most of the refugees died of malaria or other tropical diseases. California State Representative Tom Hayden observes, "...The much-touted Apache gunships with American crews are preparing to escalate the conflict. The real Apaches...were victims of a brutal, even genocidal, ethnic cleansing by the U.S. armed forces in the last century. That our government can self-righteously go to war to save Kosovo with helicopters named after the victims of our own ethnic cleansing measures the state of denial we are in."
Another victim of ethnic cleansing were the Sauk and Meskwaki of Illinois. They became refugees who fled into Wisconsin, only to be massacred on the banks of the Mississippi River. They were led by Makatai Meshekiakiak (Black Hawk), whose English name now identifies another Army attack helicopter.
No doubt the U.S. Army will justify the name of its attack helicopters in the same way that schools justify their racist school mascots--as historic symbols intended to "honor warriors." If that is the case, then certainly other national minority groups can be similarly honored by the armies that expelled them from their homelands.
Perhaps, a century from now, when the U.S. government is forcibly removing Native Americans from another reservation, the Serbian Army will intervene to "rescue" the refugees, using helicopter gunships nicknamed "Kosovars."

[hajduk]

we go more on news at 11

PRISTINA, Serbia, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanian former guerrilla Hashim Thaci was elected prime minister of Kosovo on Wednesday and vowed the breakaway province would declare independence from Serbia within weeks.

Fuelling speculation that Kosovo might strike out alone in February or March, Thaci told reporters: "I assure you that within a few weeks we will declare independence."

"Kosovo's independence is a done deal. We just need to declare it," he said, after parliament voted to endorse a "grand coalition" of Kosovo's two dominant parties.

Kosovo's 2 million Albanians -- the 90-percent majority -- are counting on the major Western powers to overrule opposition from Serbia and Russia and recognise the territory as the last state to be carved from the former Yugoslavia.

The 27-member European Union is striving for unity on statehood, and plans to deploy a police and justice mission to take over from the United Nations, which has run Kosovo since NATO drove out Serb forces in 1999.

The West wants Kosovo to wait until after a presidential election in Serbia on Jan. 20, pitting pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic against an ultranationalist in a closely-fought race likely to run to a second round on Feb. 3.

Thaci, who led a 1998-99 guerrilla insurgency to end a decade of Serb repression under late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, told the packed assembly that Kosovo was at "an historic crossroads".



UNREST

"We are preparing to make Kosovo an independent and sovereign state early this year," he said. "We will turn our dream, and our right, into a reality."

Thaci said Kosovo would coordinate its next steps with the EU and the United States, which backs independence. He spoke briefly in Serbian, in a gesture designed to sooth the fears of Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs, who reject independence.

The 120-seat parliament voted 85-22 to approve the coalition, which holds 62 seats. It also returned LDK leader Fatmir Sejdiu as Kosovo's president, a largely ceremonial post.

Thaci's Democratic Party emerged from the guerrilla army that battled Serb forces, eclipsing the LDK's policy of passive resistance under its late leader Ibrahim Rugova.

Western diplomats hope a broad coalition of the two parties will steer Kosovo through what promises to be a turbulent transition to statehood after Russia blocked its secession at the U.N. Security Council.

"The next steps require continued close cooperation with the international community, they require a very high degree of responsibility," the chief U.N. administrator in Kosovo, Joachim Ruecker of Germany, told parliament.

Serb forces pulled out of Kosovo in 1999 after 11 weeks of NATO bombing to halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year Serb counter-insurgency war.

The United Nations and a NATO peace force took over.

Almost two years of Serb-Albanian negotiations to decide Kosovo's fate ended last month in failure. Serbia is telling the Serb minority to reject a unilateral secession, raising fears of a breakaway bid by the Serb north of the province.
__________________________________________________ _______________

Jan 9 (Reuters) - Kosovo's parliament endorsed a coalition government on Wednesday headed by ex-guerrilla Hashim Thaci on a promise to lead the Albanian majority province to independence from Serbia early this year.

The major Western powers back independence for the territory, which has been run by the United Nations since NATO drove out Serb forces in 1999. Serbia and Russia are opposed.

Here are some possible scenarios for what could happen next.

KOSOVO SETS DATE FOR INDEPENDENCE DECLARATION

Kosovo Albanian politicians have said they will set a date for a unilateral declaration of independence after consulting Washington and Brussels. The timing will probably depend on the coordination of U.N. and European Union diplomats on the handover from one mission to the other, but will almost certainly come after a presidential election in Serbia on Jan. 20 and Feb. 3. The West wants to wait until after the election is over to avert a protest vote that would put a hardline nationalist in power -- but it is also considering offering Serbia a sweetener in the form of an EU pre-membership pact at the end of January.



SERBIA, RUSSIA ASK FOR MORE TALKS

Serbia and its ally Russia insist more negotiations are needed, and any final outcome should go through the U.N. Security Council. The United States and most EU members are convinced there is no room for compromise between Serbia's offer of autonomy and the Kosovo Albanians' demand for independence. The EU takes over policing and justice in the province from the U.N. mission in the first months of 2008, as foreseen by a U.N-sponsored plan that Russia blocked earlier this year. Serbia might press its point with counter-measures, including trade blockades or border closures.

MINORITY SERBS FLEE

A survey among Kosovo's minority Serbs showed that some 70 percent believe violence will escalate in the province once the Albanian majority declares independence. Some 46 percent said they would then leave an independent Kosovo "at any cost", while a further 23 percent said they would leave once they secured "a minimum" of living conditions elsewhere.

SERBIA SEEKS PARTITION OF KOSOVO

Although the Serb government states publicly that it does not want a partition of Kosovo, it has for years been setting up parallel institutions in the northern, mostly Serb part that borders Serbia proper. It has been picking up the bills for healthcare, education and public administration, and encouraging minority Serbs to look to Belgrade as their capital in all respects, to the extent that a de-facto partition is almost unavoidable. Serbia has also broadly hinted at the possibility that Serbs in Bosnia could, in their turn, secede.

PROSPECTS OF VIOLENCE

The restive Albanian minorities in neighbouring Macedonia and in Serbia's southern Presevo Valley are looking closely at Kosovo, with some hardline local leaders already speaking of land swaps especially if Kosovo is partitioned. Although many guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army gave up their weapons after the end of the 1998-99 war, tens of thousands of weapons are believed to be still hidden in the province, many in the hands of criminal gangs. Small nationalist groups -- both Serb and Albanian -- have pledged to take up arms to defend their respective causes, but the 16,000 NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo act as guarantee against major violence.
__________________________________________________ _______________

PRISTINA, Serbia, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Kosovo's parliament gave President Fatmir Sejdiu a second term on Wednesday and will vote later on a coalition government headed by ex-guerrilla Hashim Thaci, who promises to lead the province to independence from Serbia early this year.

If endorsed, Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) and Sejdiu's Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) will share power after the PDK beat the once-dominant LDK into second place in parliamentary elections last November.

Sejdiu was re-elected to the largely ceremonial post of president as part of the coalition deal between the two parties.

Thaci says the Albanian-majority province, administered by the United Nations since 1999, will declare independence with Western backing within weeks or months, after talks with Serbia to decide its fate ended in December in deadlock.

Kosovo's 2 million Albanians are counting on the West to overrule opposition from Serbia and Russia and that the West will recognise Kosovo as the last state to be carved from the former Yugoslavia.

Sejdiu told parliament that Kosovo would "realise the legitimate will of its people."

"Kosovo will soon receive international blessing for its independence," he said.

The Democratic Party of 39-year-old Thaci emerged from the ranks of the guerrilla army that battled Serb forces in 1998-99, eclipsing the LDK's policy of passive resistance to a decade of repression under late Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

Western diplomats hope a broad coalition of the PDK and the LDK will steer Kosovo through what promises to be a turbulent transition to statehood after Russia blocked its secession at the U.N. Security Council.

The two parties together hold 62 seats in the 120-seat assembly. Sixty-eight deputies voted to return 55-year-old Sejdiu for a new five-year term as president. Sejdiu succeeded late Ibrahim Rugova in February 2006.

Serb forces pulled out of Kosovo in 1999 after 11-weeks of NATO bombing to halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year Serb counter-insurgency war.

Central to Serb history and identity, the territory has been run by the United Nations and patrolled by NATO since.

The West fears that continuing its limbo could trigger unrest, but almost two years of Serb-Albanian negotiations have failed to bridge the chasm between the two sides.

The United States and most of the 27 EU members are expected to recognise a unilateral declaration of independence, and the EU plans to take control of policing and justice.

Kosovo Albanians are expected to wait until after a presidential election in Serbia on Jan 20 to declare independence, to avoid boosting the nationalist vote.

[RedAnarchist]

Whats your opinion of the articles you posted, hajduk?

[Tower of Bebel]

Look Hadjuk, I'm not just bumping this thread so you would be reminded of the fact that you should again post loads of articles from every press agency you happen to find. It's just the fact that I cannot send you any PM, as it says your inbox is full.

You have reminded us on several occasions that you want to come back, and some members outside the CC also support your come back, yet we wont do it without any certainty. So I want to ask you the same question as Red_Anarchist did in your Kosovo-thread.
If you have any knowledge of the grounds you're restricted on then you should know that we can only unrestrict you when you give us your personal opinion (no articles, unless they represent your own opinion) on the national question of ex-Yugoslavia. If it hasn't changed since your restriction (which means you would still uphold some -what we have called- disturbing nationalist predjudice towards some peoples of ex-Yugoslavia) then we cannot unrestrict you or even start a thread on you progression in the CC. I would like you to post this in your thread on Kosovo, it will be the best prove of your progression or stagnation to the whole board.

You see, Hadjuk, this is revleft -revolutionary left- which means we do not support any forms of imperialism, fascism, capitalism and so forth. If your ideas are still compatible with what some Kosovarian imperialists would want you to believe (something like: all Serbians are our enemy, whatever their social backgrounds are) then we cannot support your unrestriction.

If you want any theoretical reading on the subject of nationalism and imperialism I could advise you Lenin's Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism f.e. But I'll link an article from the IMT where there is some sort of a summary on marxism and the national question with Kosovo as an example: http://www.marxist.com/marxism-national-question070799-10.htm

Greeting,

Rccn.

[hajduk]

Whats your opinion of the articles you posted, hajduk?with all respect red i think that you been to mutch laise to read what is my oppinion about Kosovo so i will in danger to be acused as troll copying my oppinion about this issue but you should known that i mentioned lot of time about mine oppinion about this issue so what i do know you must understand as some kind sacrifice from me and also alll articles i put it on is are proof of mine oppinion

MY OPPINION
it seems that Kosovo will goes in some sort of slideing independency,Serbs alrerady seeling the mensiones to Albans and when i ask how that it goes,one comrader who live in Pristina says that they have special caffe where they arrange sellings,Albanian man bring the money in euros,Serbian man count it and they shake hands eatch other saying "O whay it should be like this" Serbian man pay round of drinks to whole people in caffe and everybody goes on own side

actualy in Pristina there is lot respect for president Clinton and America becouse they supported them in struggle for independency (you can see that in this articles i put it) but in the other hand Kosovari feel fear from Serbia becouse they expected from Serbian government that they will shut of the gas and electricity but Kosovari says that will not be a big problem becouse they have lot of credits from neighbour coyntries but it will be,if that heppened,also the proof whay they need independency

my oppinion is that the point is, can Kosovari bee the state like states in Europe?on one hand if they continue to doing the crime busines that will be not big problem,but if they go on legal way that will be the problem becouse of busines industry which cant be the strong opponent on global market,so in this manner like i say in previev posts the main busines in Kosovo will be the crime busines becouse that is the only reason whay Kosovari needs independency,becouse Russian mafia setled down in Monte Negro,and across the sea you have very close Italian mafia,so in the future Kosovo and Albania willl be actualy one state and that will one biggest crime terminal on Balkan

so in this articles i put it you can see that one fact repeat old time,what NATO whant from this and you can see that many of those authors who wrote about Kosovo giving to us all the time political reasons,economy mentioned only in global politic context,but nobody didnt figured out what real story is,that actualy this game belonged to mafia busines interests,so it will be wery interesting to continue to see what will happened with this specialy becouse Russia and America are involved,on one side you have Russian mafia who dont have influence on Putin but if they give to him good peace of cake Putin will let Kosovo to get independency,Americans already have good peace of cake from Albanian mafia which also like Serbs use the loby firms to make independency in Kosovo

[hajduk]

A Letter from Gregor Gysi to Slobodan Milosevic

Dear Mr. President,
Mindful of our conversation of April 14, 1999 I am writing you this letter.
Once again I stress my unequivocal rejection of NATO’s illegal and completely unequal war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and express my great dismay at the dead and wounded, especially within the civilian population, and at the ever more cynical destruction of what increasingly turn out to be civilian installations in Yugoslavia, as well as my condemnation of any kind of violation of human rights in Kosovo.
I fear that the war will set back European integration and the relation of a number of European states to the Russian Federation for many years to come. This can only be in the interests of the U.S., as a way of hindering a political and economic competitor in Europe.
Once again I ask you to give your consent to a UN peace force according to the UN charter--without participation of the aggressor NATO nations.
If, in direct negotiations between the political leaderships of Yugoslavia and Kosovo, an accord should be reached with the participation of the United Nations, the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees must follow in a peaceful and secure manner.
However, these refugees--and I will come back to this below--understandably have no trust in the Yugoslav army and police. On the other hand, I understand that those who are now bombing Yugoslavia cannot secure peace. There are, however, other countries which would be more suited to securing that peace.
The deployment of a UN peace force after the retreat of your troops from Kosovo would not mean occupation; it would have a time-limit set, and due to UN sovereignty would be a completely different approach to a solution than that of NATO.
At the beginning of our conversation you rejected this suggestion; at the end, however, you assured me that you would think it over. I regard the results of your conversation with the Russian president’s envoy, Victor Chernomyrdin, and the statements of your Vice-Prime Minister, Vuk Draskovic, as showing that this reconsideration is continuing. I appeal to you once again to open up this path.
NATO would thus be forced to decide what is more important to it, the desire to be the sole factor in the Euro-Atlantic order, or the desire for peace. Such a peace would be difficult enough to put into practice, but it would have a real chance [of inhibiting] the current hegemonic strivings, especially those of the U.S.
In our conversation, as in others I had in Belgrade, we went on to speak of the fate of Kosovo-Albanians. You claimed that before NATO’s bombing of Kosovo there were--and this is incontrovertible--much fewer refugees from Kosovo. As causes for their flight in the period before the bombing, you pointed to KLA attacks and the civilian populations’s fear of falling victim to the battles between your army and police and the KLA. The dramatic rise in the number of refugees since the end of March 1999 is, in your opinion, solely attributable to the NATO bombing. To my counter-arguments you replied that news reporting in Germany is one-sided, that the refugees are coached by clan chiefs, and moreover that the refugees only have a chance of being received in a Western country if they criticize the Yugoslav army and police.
I told you that I wanted to travel to Albania and speak with refugees, and you thought that there I would see your account confirmed. But this in no way turned out to be the case.
At first I followed the advice of a top official in your Foreign Ministry, and I looked at the Germany Foreign Ministry’s status reports and the decisions of German high courts on deportation of Kosovo-Albanians during this year. I have to confirm that in these status reports and in the decisions of the high courts reaching through March 1999, expulsions and "ethnic cleansing" aimed at Kosovo-Albanians is expressly refuted.
In these reports and decisions, the battle between your army and police and the KLA was confirmed as the motivation for flight; that Kosovo-Albanians were persecuted due to their belonging to "an Albanian ethnicity" was expressly negated. On this basis and with reference to the relevant status reports of the Foreign Ministry, deportations to Yugoslavia, especially to Kosovo, were approved by the German High Courts. It is correct to say that the German administration’s current claims that expulsions and "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo have been occurring for a long time, especially since December 1998/January 1999, and during the Rambouillet negotiations, is sharply contradicted by these reports and decisions.
During my trip to Albania, I visited the Spitalle refugee camp and spoke with several refugees from Kosovo. I myself determined the conditions, that is, I made the choice myself and did it randomly. I was alone with their families; I took along my own interpreter; media people were not present, and everything remained anonymous. I neither asked for names nor for personal information. Thus there could have been no understandable reason for one of these refugees not to tell me the truth. I also have no reason to doubt the truth of their statements, especially because those concerned clearly differentiated between their own experience and information they heard, and after they felt more confident, they also spared no criticism of the KLA.
They thus told of attacks and of accusations of collaboration leveled by the KLA whenever a Kosovo-Albanian cooperated with any Yugoslav authority, of the hiding of young men from rigorous recruiting, etc. In no way did they deny their fear of being hit by NATO bombs. However, this for them was not the reason for leaving Kosovo, no more than it is the bombing that makes most Serbs and other Yugoslavs leave Yugoslavia.
In all their stories, the reason given me was the expulsion on the part of the Yugoslav army and police, which, as is known, was instituted on a massive scale after the NATO bombings began. Expulsions seriously violate human rights. As an example, I will report only two stories I was told:
An exile who had to flee a city began his story with a criticism of Germany. He had lived there in the state of Schleswig-Holstein from 1995 to 1998. In 1998 his asylum petition was finally rejected, and he was deported to Kosovo. Immediately after his arrival the heavy fighting between the KLA and your army and police began. Yet he remained. After the beginning of the NATO bombing he was sought out by the Yugoslav police. They accused him of collaboration with the KLA and with OSCE observers. He denied both accusations. The accusation of cooperation with OSCE observers I find specially objectionable, since the latter were in Kosovo with your consent. He and his family were unambiguously ordered immediately to leave the country, because otherwise, as they were told, they would be shot. Thus began their sad journey as exiles. He also reported to me that intellectuals, especially medical doctors in his city, were supposed to have been shot, but in this case he only heard about this; he himself had not witnessed it.
Another exile came from a village. In this village only Kosovo-Albanians were living. Serbs lived in both neighboring villages. There was peaceful co-existence.
According to his account, after the bombing began, Yugoslav soldiers and police personnel came and herded the villagers together. They were given one hour to leave the village and Kosovo for good. No accusations of any kind were uttered. The Serb inhabitants of the neighboring villages had no part in the action. The refugee told me that the inhabitants of his village returned to their houses and simply stayed there. And then each night for a whole week the houses, especially the roofs, were shelled. Nobody ventured out of their house. After a week they were forcibly driven out of their houses and herded together. This time the soldiers’ and policemen’s faces were painted so as to be unrecognizable. When the villagers were told they would be shot if they did not leave the village, they left. On the road they were sent back as they were told that they could take along their tractors, cars, etc., but could never return. They then got their vehicles and other things. Then too their sad journey as exiles began.
These examples should suffice.
From this I get the following inescapable impression: until the beginning of NATO’s war against Yugoslavia there were refugees from the armed clashes between your army and police on the one side, and the KLA on the other, which affected the civilian population. There were excesses and provocations against the civilian population from both sides. One should also remember the accusation--by no means effectively countered--of the massacre in Racak, about which I had at the time written you a strong letter of protest. But at that point there was, as is known, still no "ethnic cleansing" or systematic expulsions in Kosovo. This is shown not only by the significantly lower numbers of refugees, but also by the status reports of the German Federal Republic’s Foreign Ministry and the decisions of German high courts.
The battle against the KLA is certainly constitutional and legal from the point of view of international law. But such armed troops [i.e. the KLA, ed.] do not arise if a population has not for many years been significantly disadvantaged, a state of affairs which began with the removal of Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989. This is true, despite the significant external support for the KLA.
However, here it is decisive that the end of the Rambouillet negotiations and the beginning of the bombing on the part of NATO were clearly used massively and systematically to expel Kosovo-Albanians. This is also shown by the trains that are sent, filled with Kosovo-Albanians, to Macedonia. These massive expulsions significantly violate the human rights of the people concerned. And the account you gave me is clearly false. Precisely the sudden transformation in the behavior of the Yugoslav army and police after the beginning of the bombing rules out the possibility that what is involved are only isolated excesses. Here direction had to come from the center. Indications of massacres are also becoming more frequent. In my view, these occurrences make the NATO bombardments even more insane and pernicious. However, the bombing in no way justifies the actions of the Yugoslav army and police against the Kosovo-Albanians.
As President you have a duty to care for and protect all Yugoslav citizens, including the Kosovo-Albanian population.
I can only appeal to you to prevent without delay any expulsion or worse in Kosovo. At the same time you must give credible signs of the possibility of a peaceful and secure return of refugees and exiles. I call your attention to the beginning of this letter. To the degree that you cooperate with these requests, the rejection of the illegal war of the U.S. and NATO against Yugoslavia will grow in Europe.
I would be grateful for your answer.

Respectfully,

Dr. Gregor Gysi

[RedAnarchist]

with all respect red i think that you been to mutch laise to read what is my oppinion about Kosovo so i will in danger to be acused as troll copying my oppinion about this issue but you should known that i mentioned lot of time about mine oppinion about this issue so what i do know you must understand as some kind sacrifice from me and also alll articles i put it on is are proof of mine oppinion

I don't think people see you as a troll, hajduk, but your constant posting of articles may make them think you are. To be honest, I cannot understand a lot of what you write (don't be offended, please, by this as I mean no offence) so sometimes what you write can be difficult to understand.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia on Wednesday backed its ally Serbia, saying Kosovo will never become a member of the United Nations or other international organizations if the breakaway province unilaterally declares independence.
The two million Albanians in the Serbian province are expected to declare independence sometime after Serbia's presidential elections later this month.
Serbian President Boris Tadic said in a speech to the U.N. Security Council that his country would never recognize a sovereign Kosovo, a view the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, made clear Moscow shared.
"They (Kosovo) would not become members of the United Nations, they would not become members of international political institutions ... if they go down the road of unilateral declarations," Churkin told reporters.
As a permanent veto-wielding member of the 15-nation Security Council, which would have to approve Kosovo's U.N. membership, Moscow would have the power to block any request from Pristina to join the United Nations.
But Churkin would not directly say whether Russia was prepared to block Kosovo's U.N. membership.
Both Churkin and Tadic urged the Security Council to continue working to find a solution to the Kosovo problem that is acceptable to both Belgrade and Pristina. But diplomats say the time for such talks is over.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters the Security Council was blocked and no longer had any role to play on the issue of Kosovo's future status.
Churkin disagreed. "The matter is firmly locked in the Security Council," he said.
Western diplomats say Russia has prevented the council from passing a resolution that would open the door to independence for Kosovo. But Churkin made clear that Moscow did not feel responsible for the impasse and hoped the council would discuss his idea of a "roadmap" that could resolve the Kosovo issue.


'TWO INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES'


The United States and the vast majority of the 27-nation European Union would recognize Kosovo immediately after it announces it has become a sovereign state, Western diplomats say.
"Serbia will never recognize Kosovo's independence and will preserve its territorial integrity and sovereignty by all democratic means, legal arguments and diplomacy," Tadic told the council, adding "Serbia will not resort to violence and war."
Khalilzad welcomed Tadic's assurances and urged Belgrade not to use economic weapons like restricting the region's access to water or electricity.
Kosovo's newly elected prime minister, ethnic Albanian former guerrilla Hashim Thaci, also addressed the council. Afterward he said Pristina would not wait much longer to declare independence. "I am sure that the decision will be taken very soon," he said.
Thaci shook hands with Tadic in the council chamber. A reporter asked him to describe the moment.
"We shook hands as the leaders of two independent countries," Thaci said.
As the role of the United Nations in Kosovo shrinks, the EU plans take over U.N. police and justice functions, with NATO troops continuing to maintain order in an independent Kosovo.
Joachim Ruecker, the chief U.N. administrator in Kosovo, indicated the province could to stand on its own.
"Kosovo's institutions are now ready for the next step," he said. "If all sides have good will, I think we can achieve this."
__________________________________________________ _______________

MITROVICA, Serbia, Jan 16 (Reuters) - The banners, flags and songs in the bleak town square seemed as if meant for a battle, both for the breakaway Kosovo province and the hearts and minds of Serbs voting in a presidential election this weekend.

"I came here to make a pledge," nationalist presidential challenger Tomislav Nikolic told a crowd of 2,000 Serbs from the north of Mitrovica, who gathered to wave their flags and sing their anthem within earshot of their Albanian neighbours.

"I will never turn my back on you, without Kosovo there is no Serbia," he told the crowd, who cheered and chanted his name.

His speech from the makeshift podium was not so much directed at Kosovo's remaining 120,000 Serbs, but intended for the ears of Serbia's 6.5 million voters.

The imminent declaration of independence by the Albanian majority province has turned Kosovo into a major election issue, both a slogan and a rallying cry that touches on history, national pride, and Serbia's future place in the world.

The dusty province is celebrated in century-old epic poems as the heartland of Serbia's medieval kingdom, and the seat of the country's powerful Orthodox Church.

Partly due to that heritage, partly due to wounded pride from the defeats of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, analysts say that the mere mention of Kosovo can make Serbs very susceptible to emotive, populist calls and change the course of the vote.

"Politicians have imposed Kosovo as an issue in this campaign," said analyst Djorde Vukovic of the CESID think-tank.

"Some have done it to divert the attention of voters from other more important issues while others truly believe their mission is to keep Kosovo within Serbia."

Kosovo has been a United Nations protectorate since 1999, when NATO drove out Serb forces accused of atrocities while battling a guerrilla insurgency. Belgrade, backed by Russia, has said it will never accept a breakaway.



"NEVER GIVE UP"

But the European Union is preparing to send a supervisory mission and most of its members, along with the United States, have indicated they will recognise the territory as independent.

All but one of the main candidates in the election have come out against Kosovo's independence, but differ on how hard they are willing to oppose the West after it becomes fact.

Frontrunner Nikolic has made clear he does not favour EU membership if the bloc insists on recognising Kosovo, and would push for a neutral status while cultivating ties with Russia.

Pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic, second to Nikolic in the latest polls but seen as having a slight lead in a decisive Feb. 3 second round, is more conciliatory and has made joining the EU a priority.

But he has also taken care to protect himself from accusations of treason.

"Serbia will never accept the independence of Kosovo," Tadic said this week. "We must never give up or give in."

A CESID poll showed that despite the rhetoric from all sides, Kosovo ranked below issues such as living standards and jobs, as expected for a country with an average monthly wage of some 350 euros ($520) and unemployment of near 30 percent.

For voters closer to Nikolic's nationalist sympathies, the Kosovo issue was fourth on their list of concerns, while for Tadic's voters it was eighth.

But its rank jumped higher every time the West did something that Serbs perceived as insulting or humiliating, analysts said, such as giving overt support to the Kosovo Albanians.

Srdjan Bogosavljevic, analyst with the Strategic Marketing pollster, said candidates were trying to cover all the bases by tying Kosovo's fate, and Serbia's response and future political direction because of it, to the issue of "a better life".

"The significance of Kosovo for ordinary Serbs varies depending on whether there is a campaign going on," he added. "In times of intensive campaigning, Kosovo goes up on the list."
__________________________________________________ ________________

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Serbia will never recognize an independent Kosovo but will not use violence to prevent the country's ethnic Albanians from establishing their own state, Serbia's president said on Wednesday.
"Serbia will never recognize Kosovo's independence and will preserve its territorial integrity and sovereignty by all democratic means, legal arguments and diplomacy," President Boris Tadic of Serbia told the U.N. Security Council.
"Serbia will not resort to violence and war."
Kosovo's newly elected prime minister, ethnic Albanian former guerrilla Hashim Thaci, was also scheduled to address the 15-nation Security Council in a closed session.
Kosovo's nearly 2 million Albanians are expected to declare independence sometime after Serbia's presidential elections later this month. But Belgrade is telling Serbs in Kosovo to ignore such a move, raising the prospect of an ethnic partition of the breakaway province.
Western diplomats said Wednesday's debate would not affect Kosovo's future status, an issue they say has left the council hopelessly deadlocked due to Russia's staunch opposition to the idea of an independent Kosovo.
"The Security Council is blocked," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters. "There is nothing that would indicate that there is a role for the Security Council."
Russia, a permanent veto-wielding Security Council member -- as are China, the United States, France and Britain -- has prevented the council from passing a resolution that would open the door to independence for Kosovo.
Tadic pleaded with the council not to abandon the issue and to continue working to prevent "a unilateral act on the independence of Kosovo". He also called for renewed talks with Pristina to try to agree on a mutually acceptable arrangement.
But Western diplomats dismiss this idea, saying further negotiations would be a waste of time given that past talks between Belgrade and Pristina produced no agreement.
Khalilzad welcomed Tadic's assurances that Serbia would not resort to violence to hold onto Kosovo and urged Belgrade not to use economic weapons like restricting the region's access to water or electricity.
As the role of the United Nations in Kosovo shrinks, the European Union plans take over U.N. police and justice functions, with NATO troops continuing to maintain order as Kosovo declares independence.
__________________________________________________ ________________

PRISTINA, Serbia, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanian former guerrilla Hashim Thaci was elected prime minister of Kosovo on Wednesday and vowed the breakaway province would declare independence from Serbia within weeks.

Fuelling speculation that Kosovo might strike out alone in February or March, Thaci told reporters: "I assure you that within a few weeks we will declare independence."

"Kosovo's independence is a done deal. We just need to declare it," he said, after parliament voted to endorse a "grand coalition" of Kosovo's two dominant parties.

Kosovo's 2 million Albanians -- the 90-percent majority -- are counting on the major Western powers to overrule opposition from Serbia and Russia and recognise the territory as the last state to be carved from the former Yugoslavia.

The 27-member European Union is striving for unity on statehood, and plans to deploy a police and justice mission to take over from the United Nations, which has run Kosovo since NATO drove out Serb forces in 1999.

The West wants Kosovo to wait until after a presidential election in Serbia on Jan. 20, pitting pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic against an ultranationalist in a closely-fought race likely to run to a second round on Feb. 3.

Thaci, who led a 1998-99 guerrilla insurgency to end a decade of Serb repression under late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, told the packed assembly that Kosovo was at "an historic crossroads".



UNREST

"We are preparing to make Kosovo an independent and sovereign state early this year," he said. "We will turn our dream, and our right, into a reality."

Thaci said Kosovo would coordinate its next steps with the EU and the United States, which backs independence. He spoke briefly in Serbian, in a gesture designed to sooth the fears of Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs, who reject independence.

The 120-seat parliament voted 85-22 to approve the coalition, which holds 62 seats. It also returned LDK leader Fatmir Sejdiu as Kosovo's president, a largely ceremonial post.

Thaci's Democratic Party emerged from the guerrilla army that battled Serb forces, eclipsing the LDK's policy of passive resistance under its late leader Ibrahim Rugova.

Western diplomats hope a broad coalition of the two parties will steer Kosovo through what promises to be a turbulent transition to statehood after Russia blocked its secession at the U.N. Security Council.

"The next steps require continued close cooperation with the international community, they require a very high degree of responsibility," the chief U.N. administrator in Kosovo, Joachim Ruecker of Germany, told parliament.

Serb forces pulled out of Kosovo in 1999 after 11 weeks of NATO bombing to halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year Serb counter-insurgency war.

The United Nations and a NATO peace force took over.

Almost two years of Serb-Albanian negotiations to decide Kosovo's fate ended last month in failure. Serbia is telling the Serb minority to reject a unilateral secession, raising fears of a breakaway bid by the Serb north of the province.

[hajduk]

I don't think people see you as a troll, hajduk, but your constant posting of articles may make them think you are. To be honest, I cannot understand a lot of what you write (don't be offended, please, by this as I mean no offence) so sometimes what you write can be difficult to understand.sorrrrrrry for my bad english,please forgive me

[RedAnarchist]

it seems that Kosovo will goes in some sort of slideing independency,Serbs alrerady seeling the mensiones to Albans and when i ask how that it goes,one comrader who live in Pristina says that they have special caffe where they arrange sellings,Albanian man bring the money in euros,Serbian man count it and they shake hands eatch other saying "O whay it should be like this" Serbian man pay round of drinks to whole people in caffe and everybody goes on own side

I don't think either NATO or Russia will allow Kosovo to join Albania, so I don't think there's a threat of that happening. At the end of the day, it can only be up to the Kosovan people to make an informed decision about their region.


actualy in Pristina there is lot respect for president Clinton and America becouse they supported them in struggle for independency (you can see that in this articles i put it) but in the other hand Kosovari feel fear from Serbia becouse they expected from Serbian government that they will shut of the gas and electricity but Kosovari says that will not be a big problem becouse they have lot of credits from neighbour coyntries but it will be,if that heppened,also the proof whay they need independency

I don't understand this part. Are you saying that Serbia is cutting off the gas and electricity it normally supplies to Kosovo because other countries also supply Kosovo with gas and electricity?


my oppinion is that the point is, can Kosovari bee the state like states in Europe?on one hand if they continue to doing the crime busines that will be not big problem,but if they go on legal way that will be the problem becouse of busines industry which cant be the strong opponent on global market,so in this manner like i say in previev posts the main busines in Kosovo will be the crime busines becouse that is the only reason whay Kosovari needs independency,becouse Russian mafia setled down in Monte Negro,and across the sea you have very close Italian mafia,so in the future Kosovo and Albania willl be actualy one state and that will one biggest crime terminal on Balkan

I don't think that organised crime within Kosovo will increase due to independance - NATO and the EU will probably keep a close eye on these mafias.


so in this articles i put it you can see that one fact repeat old time,what NATO whant from this and you can see that many of those authors who wrote about Kosovo giving to us all the time political reasons,economy mentioned only in global politic context,but nobody didnt figured out what real story is,that actualy this game belonged to mafia busines interests,so it will be wery interesting to continue to see what will happened with this specialy becouse Russia and America are involved,on one side you have Russian mafia who dont have influence on Putin but if they give to him good peace of cake Putin will let Kosovo to get independency,Americans already have good peace of cake from Albanian mafia which also like Serbs use the loby firms to make independency in Kosovo

Unfortunately, money and the capitalist system are too powerful in the world, so money will guarantee influence a lot of the time. I don't think that organised crime will be affected by the status of Kosovo.

[RedAnarchist]

sorrrrrrry for my bad english,please forgive me

Its not bad, its just hard to understand.

[hajduk]

I don't think either NATO or Russia will allow Kosovo to join Albania, so I don't think there's a threat of that happening. At the end of the day, it can only be up to the Kosovan people to make an informed decision about their region.



I don't understand this part. Are you saying that Serbia is cutting off the gas and electricity it normally supplies to Kosovo because other countries also supply Kosovo with gas and electricity?



I don't think that organised crime within Kosovo will increase due to independance - NATO and the EU will probably keep a close eye on these mafias.



Unfortunately, money and the capitalist system are too powerful in the world, so money will guarantee influence a lot of the time. I don't think that organised crime will be affected by the status of Kosovo.albanian mob is very similar to sicilian mob becouse of social and nature enviroment ,and in history both are worked together many times and also moust of time both of them have similar goals in crime busines,albanian mob hase a long history but becouse albanians been isolated for years becouse of very low life standards,the publicity didnt mutch know about existing of this crime organisation,but during the years albanian immigrants when they start to go in America to find the ways for spreading "familiy busines" they made strong connections with american politicians and very offen albanian mob use that connections for provideing the profit in crime busines so from time to time they been locate by journalist who start to speak about them so in latest times we can hear in news about lot of crime investigations which included investigation of albanian mob in America, so when Enver Hodža was president the albanian mob was very strong but not strong enough to make political tension in EX-YU to make separation of Kosovo from EX-YU,(and you must know that every family in Albania is somehow connected with albanian mob becouse that organisation during the years become some kind of albanian Cosa Nostra but with albanian mob-rules about family,merriage,busines,nationalism,politic etc. and moust of albanian citizens have positive oppinion about albanian mob becouse during the years albanian mob support struggle against serbs by any means necasary and somehow the albanian mob leaders become freedom fighters same as italian mob leaders who supported fight against france colonisation in Italy)
so that was Enver strong connected with albanian mob during years when he was in albanian government,and by that albanian mob supported Enver Hodža financialy and with authority and also organised his meetings with Staljin etc. didnt help him becouse EX-YU was stronger state then, (you must know that i dont speak about some theory conspiracy but about facts,for example russian mob buy more then 70% of land and mensiones in Monte Negro state so this is also fact which mean a lot in crime busines so if Kosovo get independency and probably it will, the russian,albanian and italian mob will be very close to each other)

so today albanian mob also whant the piece of this cake called independency of Kosovo and as you can see this is not a first time that they whant free pass for smuggling drugs,human trafficking etc. trough balkan to europe becouse with Kosovo they will have free pass,and by that you can see that America and Russia are opposed about this and that political tension albanian mob whant to use for own busines

today Serbia still give the gas and electricity to Kosovo becouse minority serb population still live there,but when serbs go from independent Kosovo and that will be for shore serbs will cut of this energents,but Kosovo government say that they have many friends(America) who will give them this energents

about Kosovo and Albania you should know that borders beetwen this two states will just be on papers,in practice borders will not exist,it will be same as in EU,they will not been borders at all beetwen Kosovo and Albania

[hajduk]

The Bombing of Kosovo - 4/15/99
A Letter from Michael Moore


Dear friends,

As we file our taxes today (procrastinators, all of us), and we sign our names on the bottom line of our 1040 tax forms, perhaps we should ask ourselves if what we are doing is signing a death warrant for people we don't even know. Because each night, for the past three weeks, millions of dollars of bombs and missiles -- that you and I paid for -- are being used to kill people in the former Yugoslavia. That makes you and I culpable in their execution.
Did you personally know any of the people who were killed in the village of Pristina (capitol of Kosovo) last week? Had they ever done anything to harm you? How about the children who were blown to bits in the building in Prizren? Had they ever threatened you in any way to cause you to have to kill them in self-defense? Perhaps you had met the people who were incinerated by us on the train to Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Can you tell me why you would want to take their lives?
I'm sorry to personalize it in this way, but this slaughter is being conducted in your name and mine, and I'll tell you, this is blood I don't want on my hands. We will all have to answer for this some day, and Iwould like to be able to say that I did not sit by silently while this wasbeing done, and that I did whatever I could to stop it as soon as possible.
Right about now, some of you, with all good intentions, are saying, "But, Mike, this Milosevic guy is a madman. He's committing genocide. We should not ignore this as we did the Holocaust in the early days of World War II. He must be stopped by any means necessary."
Yes, he must be stopped. But bombing the people of his country is exactly the wrong way to stop him. In fact, it has only strengthened him. There was a growing dissident movement in Yugoslavia before the war, and every letter I get from these brave souls tells me that the bombing has set back their struggle so incredibly far that they worry they will now be stuck with Milosevic for a long time. They are pleading with us to stop it. The bombing has made him a hero at a time when nearly half of the country was very unhappy with his leadership. We did not consult the anti-Milosevic movement in advance to see if they would like our help in the form of 10,000 bombing sorties. We just went off half-cocked on our own, and started killing the very people we were claiming to save. Anyone who remembers Vietnam knows that sordid logic and insanity. We have strengthened >>>Milosevic and destroyed his opposition. Happy now?
Friends, Milosevic must be stopped, BUT BOMBING DOES NOT WORK. It has never worked. It didn't work in Iraq -- Sadaam is still in charge no matter how many bombs we have dropped. It didn't work in Vietnam. During the Christmas week of 1972, the amount of bombs we dropped on North Vietnam was equal to half the tonnage of bombs dropped on England during World War II.That didn't work, so one month later, we gave in and announced our complete pull-out.
What a sad, pathetic man Bill Clinton is. Though many have criticized him for dodging the draft, I actually admired the fact that he refused to go and kill Vietnamese. Not all of us from the working class had that luxury, and tens of thousands of our brothers died for absolutely no damn reason. For this "anti-war" President to order such a misguided, ruthless -- and, yes, cowardly -- attack from the air is a disappointment of massive proportions.
Bombing didn't work for either side in World War II. Hitler bombed Britain mercilessly for years, but it didn't work. Our bombing did nothing to save the lives of 6 million Jews, 4 million Catholics, Gypsies and other "undesirables," and 20 million Russians. Our bombs couldn't even take out one German machine-gun on top of the cliffs overlooking the beaches of Normandy. World War II was won because my father and uncles and your fathers and grandfathers risked their lives pouring out of amphibious carriers like sitting ducks on a beach, crawling through the dead bodies of their friends and fellow soldiers, and climbing up those cliffs in France and Italy and the South Pacific. Over a quarter of a million of them, including my uncle, died doing this.
And that, my friends, as some are known to say, is the awful truth. If genocide is really taking place, the only way to stop it militarily is to send our children in there and accept the fact that thousands upon thousands of them will be killed. Are you willing to do that? Or better yet, this is the question I always ask myself when confronted with whether or not Ishould ever support a war: Do I believe strongly enough in this cause that I MYSELF would be willing to risk my life to go over there and square it with my conscience to kill Yugoslavians.
I have a feeling I know the answer most of you would give. We know Clinton is lying to us. We know there is no "Holocaust" taking place. What IS happening is that two groups of people are carrying on their centuries-old mission to annihilate each other. The Kosovo Liberation Army announced their intentions to rid Kosovo of all Serbs (the Albanians are the majority in Kosovo, the Serbs, a minority). That's all a nutcase like Milosevic needed to justify his campaign to rid Kosovo of all Albanians. This is true madness and a lot of innocent people are losing their lives in the process.
So here's my solution:

1) Stop the bombing immediately.

2) Get the Russians, whom the Serbs trust, in there to be the peacekeepers and help resolved the situation. No American or NATO forces on Kosovo soil. Russia can do this in spite of the wanker in charge, Mr. Yeltsin. The Serbs will let them in. Let's get them on board instead of alienating the Russians even further. 3) Let the Orthodox Church play a major role in bringing about the peace. The Serbs are mostly Orthodox and a strong move by its Patriarch could do a lot to ending all the bloodshed.
Look, I'm not an expert on any of this. I'm mostly busy getting my show on the air each week. But as I sign my 1040 today, I must admit that I am partly responsible, as an American citizen who pays his t>>pays his taxes, for this war and I must encourage whoever I can to join me in demanding an end to this now.
Last fall, many of us participated in an incredible act of protest by throwing a bunch of right-wingers out of Congress. We believed that they were trying to overturn an election on the basis of someone's private sexual life and his lies about it. We won, and the Republicans are now chopped liver. Good riddance.
Now, it is time for all of us to stop Clinton and his disgusting, hypocritical fellow democrats who support him in this war. It is amazing to watch all these "liberal" congress members line up behind the President. In a way, I'm glad it's happening, if only to show the American people there is little difference between the Democrats and the usually war-loving Republicans. Aren't you getting a kick watching the Pat Buchanans and the Henry Hydes sounding like pacifists! These politicians can change stripes at the drop of a hat (or bomb) because, ultimately, they are the same animal, participants in a one-party system that tries to fool the people by going by two names ("Democrat" and "Republican").
Please call or write your member of Congress, send a letter to the editor, let the Democrats know we have had it with the whole lot of them. This is OUR country, not theirs and the corporate interests they really represent. It's time to start taking it back.
Each cruise missile that is launched could have built a dozen schools or hired another hundred teachers or provided health care to a thousand people. Those millions of dollars could have been spent saving lives and educating children. Every night, Clinton isn't just bombing Yugoslavia, he's bombing you.

Yours,

Michael Moore

[hajduk]

more news at 11

PRISTINA, Serbia, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci meets top European Union and NATO officials this week in the hope of securing a timetable for the province's independence from Serbia within the next two months.

Diplomats say discussions in Brussels will cover the timing and coordination of what is being called the "CDI" -- Coordinated Declaration of Independence -- and which the United States is pushing for February, March at the latest.

"Everything will be clarified after the visit to Brussels," Thaci told Reuters late on Monday. "I believe we will soon announce the date, but everything will be coordinated with Washington and the European Union."

The major Western powers are waiting for the outcome of a Feb 3 run-off for the Serbian presidency before giving the green light to Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian majority to secede, almost nine years after NATO drove out Serb forces and the United Nations took control.

The vote pits pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic against nationalist Tomislav Nikolic -- who came top in Sunday's first round -- and could decide whether Serbia stays on the path to EU membership or drifts towards Russia, the country's key ally in its bid to hold onto Kosovo.

"That's Serbia's choice," Thaci said. "I will confirm in Brussels that Kosovo is ready and united to declare independence and I will demand joint recognition by the U.S. and EU so we can successfully finalise this process together."

Diplomats say Washington is pressing for recognition in February. But some EU members would rather wait until March, still concerned at the inevitable political fallout in Serbia and anxious to give Tadic time if re-elected.

A senior Western diplomat told Reuters, "Easter is the cut-off date." Easter falls on March 23.

Thaci is due to meet EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn and senior NATO officials during talks on Wednesday and Thursday.

The EU is preparing to deploy a 1,800-strong police and supervisory mission, taking on much of the role of the U.N. mission that has run Kosovo since 1999. The deployment could be ratified at a meeting of the 27 EU foreign ministers on Feb 18.

A former guerrilla commander who fought to end a decade of Serb repression under late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Thaci took office this month with a pledge to lead Kosovo to independence "within weeks".

NATO bombed in 1999 to end the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians by Serb forces trying to crush Thaci's guerrilla army. Kosovo's 2 million Albanians reject a return to Serb rule, but Russia has blocked secession at the U.N. Security Council.

After almost two years of inconclusive negotiations, the major Western powers say they will move ahead with a plan for independence supervised by the EU. A majority of EU members are expected to recognise Kosovo, but some remain reluctant.

In Berlin to meet foreign ministers of Germany, Britain and France, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged European allies on Tuesday not to put off "tough decisions" on Kosovo.
__________________________________________________ _______________

BANJSKA, Serbia (Reuters) - The plum brandy flowed freely at polling station No. 9 in Banjska, northern Kosovo, as Serbs voted for a new president.
History suggests Serbs in the breakaway Serbian province will turn out in their tens of thousands to vote for ultranationalist Radical candidate Tomislav Nikolic in Sunday's election, a vote ignored by the 90-percent Albanian majority.
The election could decide Serbia's future ties with the United States and European Union after Kosovo's 2 million Albanians declare independence with Western backing, a move expected weeks after a likely second-round run-off on February 3.
Bosanka Prodanovic refused to reveal who she voted for, but she bristled at any idea of reconciliation with the West:
"I expect our next president to battle harder for Kosovo, and to stop the humiliation of the Serb people by the West," she said at the polling station set up in a Banjska cafe.
From behind the bar, it was clear many of the 260 registered voters -- who cast their ballots under a 2007 calendar of Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic -- were circling No. 1 for Nikolic.
There were few posters for pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic, although polls suggest he could win in the second round.
Opposite the main polling station in ethnically-divided Mitrovica, the owner of 'Cafe-Bar Sale' rigged a stereo speaker on his terrace and blasted the nationalist Radical anthem glorifying the Serb 'Chetnik' fighters of World War Two.
"Say no more," said a photographer.
Serbia has had no formal control over Kosovo since 1999, when NATO bombing drove out Serb forces to halt their killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year war against separatist rebels led by new Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.
Thaci travels to Brussels on January 23, where Albanians expect him to agree on a date for Kosovo's parliament to declare independence, after Serb ally Russia blocked the territory's secession at the United Nations Security Council.


PARALLEL LIVES


Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs, who regularly boycott elections the province's local elections, eye the future with uncertainty, and hope the nationalists will protect them.
"I voted for (Milutin) Mrkonjic," said pensioner and ex-footballer Petar Milosavljevic, referring to the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of Serbia, the party of late Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
"I'm not a member of the party," he said. "But Milosevic saved the Serbs at Kosovo Polje."
That's where it all began, on the fields of Kosovo Polje near the capital Pristina, where in 1989 Milosevic spoke to over 500,000 Serbs to mark the 600th anniversary of their epic loss to the Turks that raised the curtain on 500 years of Ottoman rule. He warned of battles to come to protect the Serb people.
Four wars later Yugoslavia is no more, and Kosovo is a U.N. protectorate occupied by 16,000 NATO peacekeepers.
Up to 200,000 Serbs and other minorities fled Kosovo with the pullout of Serb forces in June 1999, and some of those who stayed might follow them after Albanians strike out alone.
Swift recognition is expected from the United States and major EU members. But Serbia says it will not give up and is encouraging Kosovo Serbs to reject unilateral secession, raising the prospect of an ethnic partition the West has long ruled out.
"Here we lead parallel lives," hardline Serb leader Milan Ivanovic told Reuters. "These elections show we don't want Albanian institutions or their independence. This is the reality."

[wogboy]

hajduk has exceeded their stored private messages quota and can not accept further messages until they clear some space.

Mate clear some space.

[RedAnarchist]

hajduk has exceeded their stored private messages quota and can not accept further messages until they clear some space.

Mate clear some space.

He probably hasn't cleared away all the "January 1970" PMs everyone got after the board conversion.

[wogboy]

I know he's alive, he keeps posting here.

[RedAnarchist]

Not for the last four days, he hasn't. He'll probably post again soon.

[hajduk]

how can i cleared 1970 pms?

[RedAnarchist]

how can i cleared 1970 pms?

Theres a thread somewhere. I'll post a link when I find it.

edit - can't find it, sorry.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

RUBOVC, Serbia (Reuters) - Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, a former guerrilla fighter, made a rare visit to a Serb family on Tuesday to urge Serbs to stay on after the Albanian majority declares independence from Serbia.
"My message to Serbs in Kosovo is: stay in Kosovo," Thaci said over plum brandy and coffee in a rural farm kitchen.
"Kosovo is going to make some big decisions. Status (independence) will be good for all citizens," the 39-year-old premier told his hosts, a Serb farming family in the ethnically mixed village of Rubovc.
Kosovo is expected to declare independence this month with the backing of the major Western powers who see no prospect of returning the territory to Serb rule after its almost nine years under U.N. stewardship.
Russia and Serbia strongly oppose the breakaway.
Many of Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs -- especially those living in isolated enclaves -- fear for the future and continue to take political direction from Belgrade. Some Serbs say they will leave.
"We must turn to the future, not the past," Thaci said in Albanian, his entourage jostling for space with reporters around the dining-room table at the Slavkovic family home.
Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo have led largely separate lives since 1999, when NATO bombs drove out Serb forces to halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year war against the guerrilla army in which Thaci was a commander.
Up to 200,000 Serbs and other ethnic minorities fled with the end of the war, and only a few thousand have returned.
At the weekend Serbia re-elected President Boris Tadic, a moderate who wants Serbs to pursue a future in the European Union rather than turn their backs on Europe in revenge for it recognizing Kosovo.
Slavisa Slavkovic said he felt more secure after the visit but complained his tractor was older than Thaci, and he needed a new one.
Pressed on the prospect of an independent Kosovo, he said: "I don't think about it. The world powers will decide that."
There was a spattering of applause from a handful of local Albanians as Thaci climbed back into his black Mercedes. An elderly Serb, his face brown and wrinkled, stood by his gate watching the journalists.
Asked about the prime minister's visit, he said: "Which prime minister? What does he want here?"

[jmc]

Kosovo is Serbian,independency will end in war.

[hajduk]

more news at 11

SLATINA, Serbia (Reuters) - When the Russians tangled with the West over Kosovo nine years ago, they bit off more than they could chew and eventually backed down.
A far more confident Russia now is poised for a re-match on behalf of its Serb ally, after Kosovo Albanians declare the province independent of Serbia on Sunday.
Russia can't stop independence but has blocked recognition by the United Nations, where it plans a legal challenge. This could help Serbia deprive the new state of the Serb-majority enclave in the hinterland of the northern city of Mitrovica.
It may also redress an affront dating back to June 11, 1999.
"We were surprised that day," recalled Milazim Zogiani in his village overlooking Kosovo's main airport near the capital, Pristina. "We didn't expect the Russians. They came suddenly."
Like all Kosovo Albanians, Zogiani was eagerly awaiting the arrival of 45,000 NATO troops as Serb forces began a withdrawal compelled by 78 days of allied bombing to end ethnic-cleansing ordered by the late Serb autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.
Instead, he saw a Russian column sweep into the airport, completing a bold dash from Bosnia through Serbia to seize the runway with 200 soldiers before NATO could even get there, and be greeted as heroes by Serbs all along their way.
"The main thing was secrecy," said a Russian soldier in the operation, now a senior paratroop officer. "What was a sensation for the world took weeks of thorough preparations for us."
A senior Western diplomat who witnessed events said: "There was a very serious plan to partition Kosovo and they were going to do it by force majeure", after NATO had rejected Moscow's proposal to divide Kosovo into three slices, restricting NATO to the south.


EFFECTIVELY PARTITIONED


A Russian-held airport was not in the Western script. NATO wondered if there had been a coup, if ailing President Boris Yeltsin was aware. The foreign ministry said it knew nothing.
But the defence ministry, despite many denials, was going ahead with a plan to bring in up to 10,000 troops, claim a Mitrovica sector, and deny NATO overall command.
"Kosovo would be effectively partitioned," NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark wrote in his minute-by-minute record of the crisis. NATO's war would have "achieved almost nothing".
British troops arrived but the Russians refused to budge, triggering a blizzard of crisis phone calls as NATO generals and leaders disputed the high-risk responses under consideration.
The standoff was dismissed as an annoying sideshow to the big event of NATO deployment, but confidential accounts published later show it was anything but.
For three days, new allies Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria kept their airspace closed to Russian overflights. British general Mike Jackson refused to block the runway, telling Clark: "Sir, I'm not starting World War III for you."
In the end, President Bill Clinton won Yeltsin's assurance that Russia would abandon the gambit. They left the airport and fielded a modest contingent, as part of NATO's peace force.
Zogiani recalled how later the Russians traded fuel for food. "Their food was bad. They treated us correctly".
Getting to Kosovo first had been paramount for NATO because it "lacked the legal authority to deny the Russians their call for a sector" under U.N. Resolution 1244, Clark admitted.


RUSSIA IS NOT BLUFFING


Nine years later, 1244 is still in force and legal authority is again in dispute. Russia says an EU mission set to replace the UN in Kosovo is illegal. The EU will go ahead, but has failed to win endorsement from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Serbia already controls life in the Mitrovica zone and the West has few ideas on how keep it in Kosovo. Serbs there plan to set up a Serbian National Assembly on Friday, citing 1244 to dismiss independence and declare that they remain in Serbia.
NATO and the U.N. had never established authority in northern Kosovo, said the Western diplomat. "It has always been iffy." The U.N. "has never been able to assert itself to the point where it could eradicate the parallel Serbian government networks running" in the region.
"In that sense the Serbs have never implemented 1244, by doggedly maintaining these parallel institutions in the north, keeping out and defying U.N. authority
"That's why I find it so hypocritical that they now cling to 1244... when they've never implemented the thing themselves."
Since 2007, the Russia of Vladimir Putin has mounted a stiff challenge to the West over Kosovo, where it was once treated as a spent power, and it has no obvious reason to give up now.
Serbia has already shown gratitude by letting Russia buy its oil monopoly. Nationalists say it should also invite Russia to set up military bases, to counter NATO in the Balkans.
Russia, said the Western diplomat, "will try every measure they can" as the ripples of Kosovo's independence spread.
"For these people who believe that Russia is just bluffing, they really ought to go back and look at 1999."

__________________________________________________ _______________

GENEVA (Reuters) - A unilateral declaration of independence by Serbia's Kosovo province would violate international law and damage security in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.
He said the United States and European countries did not understand the potential consequences of independence for Kosovo, whose Albanian leaders are expected to declare independence on Sunday in defiance of Serbia.
"It would undermine the basics of security in Europe, it would undermine the basics of the United Nations charter," Lavrov told reporters in Geneva.
He said Western countries were dealing with the problem in a "haphazard" way.
"Many of them, frankly, do not understand the risks and dangers and threats associated with a unilateral declaration of Kosovo independence," he said. "They do not understand that it would inevitably result in a chain reaction in many parts of the world, including Europe and elsewhere."
Kosovo's independence move has been delayed three times in the past year in deference to Russia's insistence on continuing to search for a compromise and because of its explosive impact on Serbian politics.
Kosovo is Serbia's medieval homeland but is now dominated by the 2 million Albanians who live there. It has been administered by the U.N. with NATO peacekeeping since 1999.
Its independence is expected to be recognized by the United States and a large number of European Union member states. Russia cannot stop independence but has blocked recognition by the United Nations.
EU lawyers say U.N. Security Council resolution 1244, adopted in 1999 after a NATO air war drove Serb forces out of the province, provides a legal basis for Kosovo to declare independence.
Lavrov's comments followed a warning by Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov on Sunday that recognizing Kosovo's independence risked opening a "Pandora's box", implying it would be an ill-thought action with uncertain consequences.
Russia's determination over Kosovo, in support of its traditional Serbian allies, is an example of Moscow's growing assertiveness on the international stage ahead of Russia's presidential election on March 2.
It also reflects Russia's concerns that recognizing Kosovo's independence could set a precedent for other breakaway regions, including several in or near Russia.


http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080212&t=2&i=3126452&w=&r=2008-02-12T135941Z_01_L12627092_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080212&t=2&i=3126449&w=&r=2008-02-12T135941Z_01_L12627092_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080212&t=2&i=3126451&w=&r=2008-02-12T135941Z_01_L12627092_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[hajduk]

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica went on national television on Thursday to brace Serbia for the imminent secession of its historic Kosovo province, which he said Serbs would never accept.
His statement was the most open acknowledgment he has yet made that Serbia cannot now prevent Kosovo's Albanian majority from proclaiming independence on Sunday, with the promise of Western recognition but without United Nations approval.
Serbia's coalition had adopted a document to pre-emptively annul "an event which will become reality in a few days, about illegal violence and an act of declaring independence of Kosovo", Kostunica said.
"This decision confirms full national unity ... in contrast to all those countries which have been ready to put in question the core principles of the entire world and international law," Kostunica said.
"This is happening for the first time ever and this is a gross violation of international law," he added.
Serbia's state news agency Tanjug, in the first concrete report of planned diplomatic reprisals, said Serbia's ambassadors to France, Germany and Britain would leave in protest after they recognize Kosovo on Monday.
"Serbia has the right ... and Serbia will continue, through a series of concrete steps, to ... prove that Kosovo is part of Serbia," Kostunica told a news conference.
Radical Party deputy leader Tomislav Nikolic called on Kostunica and President Boris Tadic to organize a major protest rally against Kosovo's independence in the capital next week.
"If Sunday is a day of declaration of Kosovo's independence, the rally has to be held next week," he said. He expected one million people to turn out.


CALL TO EMBARGO TRADE


Kostunica said Serbia had demanded an emergency U.N. Security Council session on Thursday, and would ask Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to "take all steps and prevent the violation of the U.N. Charter, the Helsinki Act and Resolution 1244".
But Serbia's main ally Russia has already discounted the chances of the Council doing anything to prevent Kosovo's proclamation of independence.
Resolution 1244 was adopted in 1999 when NATO troops deployed into Kosovo after the Western alliance bombed Serbia to compel it to withdraw forces to end the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a counter-insurgency war.
Nikolic said Serbia should invalidate Kosovo passports, embargo all trade, and reduce to a minimum relations with any state which recognizes Kosovo, including European Union states.
Tanjug said the Serbian ambassador to France would quit Paris on Wednesday, 48 hours after submitting a protest note to the French Foreign Ministry.
He will be recalled for consultations as will all Serb ambassadors in countries which recognize Kosovo. But diplomatic relations would not be severed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Serbia's ally, said Moscow also had a plan ready in case the West recognized Kosovo's independence and would act to safeguard Russia's security, but gave no details.
Putin accused Europe on Thursday of double standards in pushing for Kosovo's independence from Serbia but not recognizing other states' separatist bids.

EU MISSION ILLEGAL


Ninety percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are ethnic Albanians, but around 120,000 Serbs remain. An EU mission is intended to ensure promises of an equitable, multi-ethnic state under the rule of law are kept.
Serbia's move to pre-emptively annul Kosovo's independence stops short of explicitly banning the government from advancing Serbia's ties with the European Union. But the EU mission will not exist, as far as Serbia is concerned.
"Serbia declares null and void any decision by the EU on sending a mission to Kosovo. Being illegal, these decisions have no legal consequence and require no liability on the part of the Republic of Serbia towards the European Union or anyone implementing these decisions," the statement says.
It makes clear that Serbia's cooperation with the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, which has a U.N. mandate, will continue. Kosovo has been under international stewardship since 1999.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080214&t=2&i=3162096&w=&r=2008-02-14T163012Z_01_L14765581_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

PRISTINA, Serbia, Feb 14 (Reuters) - The last time Kosovo declared independence in 1990 it went unrecognised and ignored. When it splits from Serbia this weekend, it will have the support of the West, which sees no way back.

The breakaway province is poised to cement a secession that its 2 million Albanians believe became irreversible the moment NATO went to war to save them from Serb forces in 1999.

"These will be days of joy and happiness," Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said on Wednesday, flanked by the commander of NATO troops in Kosovo and the head of the United Nations mission that has run the province since the war.

"This is a decision based on the sacrifice and political will of the citizens," said the former guerrilla commander.

The date for the declaration has not been announced, but political sources say plans are in place for Sunday.

Certain of recognition from the United States and most members of the European Union, Kosovo will become the last state to emerge from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

Backed by Russia, Serbia will reject the move. It will encourage Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs to do the same, worsening a de facto ethnic partition that will weigh on the new state for years to come.

A new flag is being prepared and the Kosovo Philharmonic is primed to perform Beethoven's Ode to Joy to kick off the celebrations. Money has been set aside to import electricity between Feb 15 and 20 to ensure crippling power cuts do not spoil the party.

The 16,000-strong NATO-led peace force has stepped up security around dozens of scattered Serb enclaves.

Serbia has promised retaliation against the new state and its backers -- including possible border closures and the expulsion of ambassadors. But there will be no return of the Serb army and police that pulled out in 1999 under NATO bombs.



SERBIA IN CRISIS

The Alliance air war lasted 78 days, to halt indiscriminate killing and ethnic cleansing by Serb forces under late strongman Slobodan Milosevic during a two-year counter-insurgency war.

An estimated 10,000 civilians died, the majority Albanians. Over 800,000 Albanians fled temporarily to Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia. It was the last straw for Western powers who had failed to halt the massacres of Bosnia in 1992-95.

Russia last year blocked Kosovo's secession at the U.N. Security Council, insisting on the inviolability of Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. But Washington and Brussels say the status quo is unsustainable.

An emergency U.N. Security Council session on Thursday, called by Serbia and Russia, is unlikely to halt the process. The EU, which meets on Monday, has committed itself to take on supervision and policing of Kosovo and will share much of the financial burden of the economically backward country.

Kosovo's secession threatens to wreck Serbia's governing coalition. Nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and pro-Western President Boris Tadic are split over Serbia's EU future in the event the bloc backs Kosovo's secession.

Kostunica has promised to reject the "puppet state" and integration with its EU backers. But Tadic takes a softer line, saying this week: "Serbia's place is in Europe...I will never give up the struggle for the interests of our people, nor the struggle for Kosovo."

Kosovo's first declaration of independence was in 1990, after Milosevic stripped the territory of its autonomy and pursued a Balkan version of apartheid in the impoverished territory.

Passive resistance gave way to guerrilla war in 1998.

"The 1990 declaration was a political statement in the first days of the dissolution of Yugoslavia," said Agron Bajrami, editor of the Kosovo daily Koha Ditore.

"This time it's being done in the knowledge that it has the full backing of the West."

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080214&t=2&i=3162095&w=&r=2008-02-14T163012Z_01_L14765581_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has launched its final procedure to approve a controversial law enforcement mission in Kosovo, three days before the territory is expected to declare independence from Serbia, diplomats said on Thursday.
The decision to send some 2,000 police, judges and civil administrators to the breakaway Serbian province will be deemed adopted at midnight on Saturday (2300 GMT on Friday) unless one of the EU's 27 member states raises an objection, they said.
The EU used the low-profile diplomatic procedure to approve an operations plan -- the last of four preparatory documents required to launch deployment -- to minimize embarrassment for those members who do not intend to recognize Kosovo.
"The silence procedure was launched yesterday evening and expires at midnight on Saturday," one EU diplomat said.
Kosovo's Albanian leaders are expected to declare independence on Sunday, despite fierce opposition from Belgrade and Moscow, which have called an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to try to pre-empt the move.
Diplomats said the EU decision did not need to go to ministers since the bloc's leaders had agreed in principle in December to send the mission, due to replace the U.N. administration in Kosovo in June.
EU foreign ministers hold their monthly meeting in Brussels on Monday and will discuss the issue of recognition, although it will be left to each member state.
Russia has argued the EU would be acting illegally but EU lawyers contend that U.N. Security Council resolution 1244, adopted in 1999 after a NATO air war drove Serb forces out of the province, provides a legal basis.


RECOGNITION


The EU ministers are expected to adopt a statement on Kosovo's future, taking note of the declaration of independence, pledging to work for stability and urging continued dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade, diplomats said.
An EU official said Britain and several other countries wanted the EU declaration to give Kosovo the prospect of eventually joining the bloc.
"The UK is looking for a clear commitment to starting to treat Kosovo as part of the Stabilization and Association Process (for the Western Balkans)," the official said.
About 20 EU governments are likely to recognize Kosovo, some as early as Monday after the EU meeting, but at least six -- Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Spain -- are not expected to recognize the new state initially, diplomats said.
Cyprus is the most adamantly opposed, partly because of what it sees as a precedent that could lead to acceptance of the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
The EU has also approved a civilian high representative for Kosovo, Dutchman Pieter Feith, who will oversee the police and justice mission and the implementation by Kosovo's government of standards protecting the province's Serb minority.
The EU mission will take 120 days to complete deployment and take over from the U.N. mission, once a start date is agreed.
EU diplomats and officials had hoped U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would give at least a vague endorsement of the EU mission, despite Russia's prevention of a Security Council resolution on Kosovo's future.
But the U.N. chief has declined to lend legitimacy to the EU move under strong pressure from Moscow, which says it undermines the authority of the Security Council.

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080214&t=2&i=3162112&w=&r=2008-02-14T163012Z_01_L14765581_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE4 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[hajduk]

more news at 11

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080215&t=2&i=3174614&w=&r=2008-02-15T131432Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia swore in President Boris Tadic on Friday two days before Kosovo proclaims independence, in the country's most traumatic moment since it was bombed by NATO in 1999 to end ethnic cleansing in the province.
"I will never give up fighting for our Kosovo and I will, with all my might, fight for Serbia to join the European Union," said Tadic, who narrowly won re-election earlier this month against a hardline nationalist candidate.
Kosovo, a mountain-ringed province, is steeped in Serb myth but now home to 2 million Albanians, a 90 percent majority.
Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who eclipsed pro-Western Tadic to become undisputed defender of Serbian sovereignty, told Serbs on Thursday that the loss of Kosovo was "about to become a reality" that he could not stop, but would never accept.
Most EU members and the United States will recognize Kosovo. They say Serbia relinquished the moral right to rule its people because of the brutality it used against them under the late Slobodan Milosevic, and because there is no hope of compromise.
The EU and World Bank are preparing a donors' conference to underwrite the development of the new state, probably in June.
But Serbia's EU aspirations are now under a cloud. Kostunica says Serbia cannot pursue EU membership if EU states approve Kosovo's secession, and an early election now looks inevitable.
Serbia and its ally Russia say the legal rights of sovereignty and territorial integrity are more important than an ethnic minority's demands for self-determination.
Serbia has offered autonomy to Kosovo Albanians within Serb borders, but no role as full citizens. The West believes this formula is unsustainable in the long term.
Kosovo has already been under United Nations administration and NATO protection for nearly nine years. Its leader Hashim Thaci says he can count on recognition by 100 countries.


"OURS TO THE END"


Prime ministers of both Kosovo and Serbia called for calm in the countdown to Kosovo's proclamation. Kostunica urged Kosovo's 120,000 Serbs to stay in the province and Kosovo's Hashim Thaci urged Serb refugees to return.
"I invite all those who want to, to return to their homes and their property, including displaced Serbs living outside Kosovo," he told a news conference.
"In Kosovo, there will be security for all citizens. The government is committed to looking forward to the future and overcoming the sad past."
Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic told the United Nations on Thursday Serbia would not use military force, but "all diplomatic, political, and economic measures ... to impede and reverse this direct and unprovoked attack on our sovereignty".
Kosovo, he said, would be "ours to the end".
Hardline nationalism is a powerful force in Serbia. No mainstream politician has taken the risk of conceding that Kosovo may have been effectively lost nine years ago when thousands of Albanian civilians were killed by Serb forces.
Only a few hundred attended a rally in Belgrade on Friday to protest the loss of Kosovo, but nationalists say one million will demonstrate next week. Serbian ambassadors are preparing to withdraw from EU embassies for consultations at home.
Russia says the West is letting a dangerous genie out of the bottle by backing secession without U.N. approval. The move would influence its policy towards Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Moscow said.
The West says Kosovo sets no precedent but is a unique case, caused by the savagery of a regime towards an ethnic minority.
Ethnic Albanians in the borderlands of Macedonia, Montenegro and south Serbia discount concern they too will attempt to secede to create a "Greater Albania" in the Balkans.
But the shockwaves of Yugoslavia's long and bloody collapse could rumble on. In Bosnia, Serbs who won an autonomous half of the country in the peace deal that ended the 1992-95 war say they too will demand to secede if Kosovo gets its way.

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080215&t=2&i=3174589&w=&r=2008-02-15T131432Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union expects to reach agreement this weekend to take a supervisory role in Kosovo even though half a dozen member states will not initially recognize the breakaway Serbian province's independence.
Kosovo's leaders are expected to declare independence on Sunday despite opposition from Serbia and Russia.
"It is already more or less clear. The European Union will send a mission to Kosovo to replace the United Nations stabilization one," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, whose country holds the EU presidency, told a Polish newspaper.
"Kosovo has been under U.N. administration for 10 years. In practice, it's a kind of EU protectorate," he told the daily Dziennik in an interview published on Friday.
The decision to launch the 2,000-strong police and justice mission with an EU civil administrator was to be approved at midnight on Saturday (2300 GMT on Friday) unless any of the 27 EU countries raised a last-minute objection, diplomats said.
EU foreign ministers will discuss their response to Kosovo's decision on Monday.
Diplomats said up to 20 EU countries including the major powers were likely to recognize the new state rapidly but at least six -- Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia, Spain, Bulgaria and Romania -- have indicated they will not do so immediately.
Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou Marcoullis told Reuters: "Our position remains the same: we will not recognize a unilateral declaration of independence. Our position is based on principles of the U.N. charter, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and the role of the U.N. Security Council."


ONE VOICE?


Despite the likely absence of full international recognition, the European Commission and the World Bank are already planning a donors' conference to help build Kosovo's shattered economy and tackle mass unemployment.
A Commission spokeswoman confirmed the conference was in preparation and said it would probably be held in June.
Rupel sought to play down the differences over recognition, saying all member states agreed the future of both Kosovo and Serbia lay in Europe -- code for eventual EU membership.
"It is not the independence declaration that is most important," he said. "Of course, there have been doubts or negative feelings in some countries. But there are not that many after all.
"When the moment comes, I think the EU will speak with one voice." Diplomats said the EU ministers would discuss a declaration on Kosovo at their monthly meeting, while leaving recognition to individual member states.
A presidency source said ministers would recall EU leaders agreed with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in December that the status quo in Kosovo was unsustainable and stressed the need to move towards a settlement, essential for regional stability.
They would call for a democratic multi-ethnic Kosovo committed to the rule of law and to the protection of minorities and of cultural and religious heritage.
The declaration would underline the EU's readiness to play a leading role in strengthening stability in the region and in implementing a Kosovo settlement and pledge economic and political assistance "through a clear European perspective".
A European Commission official said that U.N. Security Council resolution 1244, adopted in 1999 after NATO bombing drove Serb forces out of Kosovo, provided a legal basis for continuing EU aid after independence.
Russia has argued that the EU would be in breach of that resolution if it sent a police mission to Kosovo or if its member states recognized the territory's independence without the Security Council's agreement.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080215&t=2&i=3175512&w=450&r=2008-02-15T140555Z_01_PRI05_RTRIDSP_0_KOSOVO-INDEPENDENCE

TETOVO, Macedonia (Reuters) - Kosovo Albanian independence from Serbia will boost the confidence of Albanians in neighboring Macedonia, but prospects of EU membership will outweigh dreams of a "Greater Albania", political leaders say.
Albanians form a 90 percent majority in Kosovo, which is set to declare independence on Sunday. Macedonia's Albanians are a 25 percent minority.
Ethnic Albanian leaders say the best insurance against Macedonia breaking up in ethnic conflict as it nearly did in 2001 is the country's membership in NATO soon and in the European Union in a few years.
"Why talk about building or removing classical borders when Europe has drawn lessons from its old conflicts and decided to build a joint future for its states?" said Ali Ahmeti, head of Macedonia's main Albanian political party.
"We love this country as much as the Macedonians love it," he told Reuters. "Long-term stability in Macedonia will be achieved by solving the problem of Albanians living in Kosovo. It is a victory for us, too.
In 2001, Ahmeti led a 6-month uprising which came close to igniting full-scale civil war, before NATO and the EU brokered peace talks that resulted in more rights for Albanians.
Fears mounted during that period that Albanians were gearing up for a fight to unite all the lands they live in Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro, with the republic of Albania. The mountainous borders between them are porous, and weapons left over from Albania's paranoid Stalinist dictatorship abound.
But opportunities offered by a common future in the EU and the NATO alliance seem to have overtaken the old dream of a single ethnic Albanian state.
An invitation to Croatia, Macedonia and Albania to join NATO at its April summit would be "a guarantee for peace, stability and security", Ahmeti said. Macedonia has EU candidate status.


OPPORTUNITY


Businessman Ridvan Pajaziti in Macedonia's capital, Skopje, said Kosovo's independence would be a boon for business at home.
"With two Albanian states as neighbors, Albanians in Macedonia would have more rights and economic gains," he said, adding it would also mean freer travel and more professional opportunities.
Landlocked Kosovo lies north of Macedonia, and east of Albania and Montenegro, where Albanians account for 7 percent of the 600,000-strong population. Albania and Montenegro could offer the new republic access to their Adriatic ports.
Ferhat Dinosa, head of Montenegro's main Albanian party, said Kosovo's quest for independence had played an important role in his community's decision to back Montenegro's own split from Serbia two years ago.
"We backed the independence of Montenegro because we were convinced it was the ante-chamber of Kosovo's independence," Dinosa told Reuters. "No serious political Albanian party in the Balkans speaks of such a thing (as Greater Albania)."
In Macedonia's ethnic Serb village of Pobozje, near the border with Kosovo, Serbian farmers were not so sure.
"I don't feel good. The border is too close. If something happens there, it can come here," said Trajan, 64, who would not give his full name.
"Kosovo will be independent, but this will be dangerous because they will take a part of Serbia and then they will want a part of Macedonia and Montenegro. This is going to happen in the next few years and we expect trouble," he added.
Despite their leaders' comments, some Macedonian Albanians still hope for an ethnic homeland. Along the highway linking Skopje to the mainly Albanian city of Tetovo, a graffiti artist has scrawled the words "Republika Ilirida", or Greater Albania.
"We want to see Kosovo become independent as soon as possible because it is going to benefit Albanians everywhere," said Luziana Beqiri, 28, who makes traditional costumes.
"We would love to unite. It would be good to be all together, to have no borders. But we do not really know. We fear that because these are big things and nobody wants war."
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080214&t=2&i=3159146&w=450&r=2008-02-14T135522Z_01_MDJ09_RTRIDSP_0_SERBIA

MOSCOW, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday international recognition of Kosovo would influence its policy towards the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but it did not say if it would recognise them.

Kosovo is expected to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia on Sunday and then be recognised by the United States and most members of the European Union. Russia backs its ally Serbia in opposing the move.

Russian officials have linked Kosovo's status to Georgia's separatist regions, saying any recognition of the Serbian province as an independent state would create a legal precedent that would be followed by others.

"We will, without doubt, have to take into account a declaration and recognition of Kosovo independence in connection with the situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement.

The statement, posted on the ministry's Internet site www.mid.ru, made no mention of whether Russia would grant recognition to the two regions.

Earlier, Interfax news agency quoted the foreign ministry as saying Russia would change its policy on the breakaway regions if Kosovo was recognised. It later amended its report, removing the reference to a change in policy.

The statement on the Internet site said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had talks on Friday with Abkhazia's separatist leader Sergei Bagapsh and Eduard Kokoity, president of South Ossetia's separatist administration.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from ex-Soviet Georgia in fighting in the 1990s. Some observers have said Russia might grant them recognition in response to Western states recognising Kosovo.

Russia already provides financial aid to both regions and the majority of residents hold Russian passports. Moscow has peacekeeping troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russia has stopped short of granting the regions recognition because, analysts say, it fears that could encourage its own separatists.

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday described recognition for Kosovo as "immoral and illegal" and said he had a plan on how to respond if Western states back Kosovo's independence.

He did not disclose any details of the plan but he said Russia would not "ape" the Western recognition of Kosovo, a signal that Russia's response would not involve Moscow recognising Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

[hajduk]

one more day left

MITROVICA, Serbia (Reuters) - Serbs held a day of prayer and protest on Saturday on the eve of the secession of their cherished province Kosovo, whose Albanian majority has struggled for its own state for almost two decades.
"We are all expecting something difficult and horrible," Bishop Artemije, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, told hundreds of Serbs at the St Dimitrije church in the north Kosovo town of Mitrovica.
"Our message to you, all Serbs in Kosovo, is to remain in your homes and around your monasteries, regardless of what God allows or our enemies do," he said.
Kosovo's parliament will declare independence on Sunday, almost nine years since NATO went to war to save the province's 90-percent Albanian majority from a wave of killings and ethnic cleansing by Serb forces trying to crush a rebel insurgency.
The declaration will be made during a parliamentary session in the capital Pristina due to begin at 3.00 p.m. (11 a.m EST), according to the schedule of events leaked to media on Saturday.
In Belgrade, more than 1,000 people gathered with banners, flags and religious icons to protest against the loss of land many consider their religious heartland, steeped in history and the site of dozens of centuries-old Orthodox monasteries.
"We're ready to fight for Kosovo," said protester Ivan Ivanovic. "Kosovo will be returned to us, we'll never accept its independence."
They delivered a petition to the embassy of current European Union president Slovenia, condemning the EU's support for Kosovo's "illegal" secession.
A full-page advertisement in Serbian dailies called for more demonstrations against this "punishment and humiliation".
"Kosovo, the most precious part of Serbia, is being taken away," said the ad by the unknown group "Active Centre".
"We must ... never give up the fight for its preservation."
It is unclear how strongly ordinary Serbs will vent their anger at the final loss of a place that has been mainly Albanian for almost a century.


PROVOCATION


In Kosovo, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci prayed at the graves of the Jashari family in the village of Prekaz, remembering the March 1998 massacre of more than 50 people by Serb forces that swelled Albanian support for guerrilla war.
"We are on the brink of making official the independence of Kosovo," he said on the snow-swept hillside.
Albanian and U.S. flags flew from cars and shops across the U.N.-run territory as its 2 million Albanians prepared to celebrate the culmination of a decades-long drive for their own state.
Despite the backing of Russia, Belgrade can do nothing to stop independence or Kosovo's recognition by the West. Serbia's uneasy coalition government is split over whether to reject ties with the European Union over the bloc's backing for Kosovo.
Brussels has approved the launch of a 2,000-strong police and justice mission for Kosovo that will take over from the current U.N. administration after a 120-day transition.
Commenting on the mission, Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic, an ally of nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, said Serbia would "have to question its ties" with the EU and states that recognize Kosovo's independence.
The commander of NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo, French Lieutenant-General Xavier de Marnhac, said the force, KFOR, "will react and oppose any provocation that may happen during these days, whether from the Albanian or the Serb side".
The United States and most EU members will recognize the new state, the last to be carved from Yugoslavia. They say Serbia relinquished the moral right to rule its people because of the brutality against them under the late Slobodan Milosevic.
Serbia rejects the secession and has told Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs to do the same. Many of them live in the north adjacent to Serbia proper and look set to cement a de facto partition that will weigh on the new state for years.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080216&t=2&i=3183502&w=&r=2008-02-16T160544Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union approved the launch of a 2,000-strong police and justice mission for Kosovo on Saturday, on the eve of the breakaway province's expected declaration of independence from Serbia.
The supervisory mission was formally endorsed at midnight (6 p.m. EST on Friday) after none of the EU's 27 member states objected to an operation plan for the mission before an agreed deadline, a diplomatic source said.
"The (EU) Council has decided to launch the European Union rule of law mission in Kosovo," the EU said in a statement, adding the operation would take over powers from the existing U.N. mission in the territory after a 120-day transition period.
The statement also named Dutchman Pieter Feith as the EU civilian administrator in Kosovo. He is expected to take over from United Nations supremo Joachim Ruecker in June.
The EU rule of law mission will chiefly mentor and advise Kosovo police and judicial authorities but will have some executive powers, notably in the fight against organized crime, corruption and the hunt for war criminals.
EU foreign ministers will discuss their response to Kosovo's decision on Monday.
Diplomats said up to 20 EU countries were likely to recognize the new state rapidly but at least six -- Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia, Spain, Bulgaria and Romania -- have indicated they will not do so immediately.


RECOGNITION ON MONDAY?


The major EU powers involved in Balkan diplomacy -- Britain, France, Germany and Italy -- may announce recognition immediately after Monday's meeting, along with the United States, diplomats said.
Despite the likely absence of full international recognition, the European Commission and the World Bank are already planning a donors' conference to help build Kosovo's shattered economy and tackle mass unemployment.
A Commission spokeswoman confirmed the conference was in preparation and said it would probably be held in June.
A presidency source said that in the statement to be issued on Monday, ministers would recall EU leaders agreed in December that the status quo in Kosovo was unsustainable and stressed the need to move towards a settlement, vital for regional stability.
They would call for a democratic multi-ethnic Kosovo committed to the rule of law and to the protection of minorities and of cultural and religious heritage.
The declaration would underline the EU's readiness to play a leading role in strengthening stability in the region and in implementing a Kosovo settlement and pledge economic and political assistance "through a clear European perspective".
A European Commission official said U.N. Security Council resolution 1244, adopted in 1999 after NATO bombing drove Serb forces out of Kosovo to halt ethnic cleansing, provided a legal basis for the EU rule of law mission and for continuing aid after independence.
Russia has argued the EU would be in breach of that resolution if it sent a police mission to Kosovo or if its member states recognized the territory's independence without the Security Council's agreement.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080216&t=2&i=3183503&w=&r=2008-02-16T160544Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[RedAnarchist]

I bet it all kicks off. I don't see another war, but there's most likely going to be some violence, especially between the most extreme pro-independance Kosovans and the most extreme Serbian nationalists.

[Bandito]

And the best thing would be that all of them clash and die.

FREEDOM FOR THE BALKAN PEOPLES!

[hajduk]

BELGRADE, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Serbia's leaders pledged peaceful resistance after Kosovo's declaration of independence on Sunday, but angry protesters turned to violence in Belgrade and a Serbian stronghold in Kosovo.

Some 2,000 people gathered at the U.S. embassy to vent their anger at American backing for the breakaway province.

"Kosovo is the heart of Serbia," many chanted as they ripped up paving stones and prised concrete and tiles from nearby buildings to throw at riot police along with bottles and flares. Several police and rioters were bloody and injured.

In the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Mitrovica, hand grenades were thrown at EU and U.N. buildings. One exploded causing no major damage.

Local news agencies also reported protests in Novi Sad in northern Serbia and in Banja Luka, capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic whose leaders look to Kosovo for a precedent they could use to try and secede from Bosnia.

In Serbia, political leaders were united in their anger at Kosovo's declaration but gave out very different signals on how the move would affect Belgrade's ties with the West.

Nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who led a diplomatic battle to retain the region, attacked the United States and European Union for supporting the secession of a province Serbs see as their religious and historic heartland.

In a televised address to the nation minutes after Kosovo formally severed ties after nine years under U.N. control, he accused the United States of being "ready to violate the international order for its own military interests".

"As long as the Serb people exist, Kosovo will be Serbia," Kostunica said.

"The declaration by the false state under the tutelage of the United States and EU is the final act of the policy of force which started with the insane bombing of Serbia and continued with the arrival of NATO troops in Kosovo.".

The United States spearheaded the 1999 NATO air war that expelled Serb forces from the province to stop the mass killing of Albanian civilians in a counter-insurgency crackdown.

Kostunica said mass protests would be called soon.

PRESIDENT RULES OUT VIOLENT RESPONSE

Pro-Western President Boris Tadic, whose party is in a shaky coalition with Kostunica's, called for calm.

"Serbia will never recognise the independence of Kosovo," but "will go through this peacefully, with dignity", he said in a statement. "Serbia will persist ... and defend its interests and international law, no matter how long it takes."

Russia, Belgrade's strongest ally, called U.N. Security Council talks on Kosovo for Monday. Tadic was heading off to New York late on Sunday to attend the closed-door session which has no real chance of reversing Western backing for Kosovo.

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic will go to Brussels on Monday where EU foreign ministers will meet on Kosovo, which hopes most member states will swiftly recognise it.

Tadic favours separating the issue of Kosovo from Serbia's long-delayed EU membership bid. But Kostunica insists Brussels must give up support of Kosovo if it wants Serbia as a member.

The staunchly nationalist Radicals, Serbia's strongest party, called on Kostunica and Tadic to "channel the unrest and anger" of Serbs into a huge rally.

"As long as there are Serbs, we will go on fighting for Kosovo," their leader Tomislav Nikolic said.

The sharpest reaction was from the Serb Orthodox Church in Kosovo, whose leader Bishop Artemije denounced the army for doing nothing and said Serbia should buy arms from Russia to fight.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190015&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
MOSCOW, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Breakaway states in the former Soviet Union said on Sunday Kosovo's independence would give new impetus to their decades-long campaign for international recognition.

Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Azerbaijan's rebel Nagorno-Karabakh region and Transdniestria, which split from Moldova, all declared independence in the 1990s but have not received international recognition.

Western backers of Kosovo's independence say it does not create a precedent that can be applied elsewhere, but the ex-Soviet rebel regions say that is a double standard which will be harder to defend now Kosovo has declared independence.

"South Ossetia will appeal to the countries of the (ex-Soviet) Commonwealth of Independent States and the United Nations with a request to recognise our independence," said South Ossetia's separatist leader Eduard Kokoity.

"We have a stronger case under international law for recognition than Kosovo," Kokoity's spokeswoman quoted him as saying.

"For us, Kosovo is an opportunity to once again bring attention to the problem of political entities like South Ossetia.

"For 18 years South Ossetia has been building its statehood and has all the attributes of a state, unlike Kosovo. Nevertheless, Kosovo is being recognised but the problem of South Ossetia and Abkhazia remains unclear."

Abkhazia's President Sergei Bagapsh said that following Kosovo's move on Sunday his separatist region on Georgia's Black Sea coast would be making a new appeal for recognition to the U.N. and Russia, its biggest backer.

"The situation with Kosovo is a precedent," Russia's Interfax news agency quoted Bagapsh as saying. "All the talk about the Kosovo situation being unique is an example of a policy of double standards."



RESTORE CONTROL

Nagorno-Karabakh's foreign minister said Kosovo demonstrated a breakaway region could win international recognition even if the state it broke away from opposes the move.

Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh threw off Azerbaijan's rule in a 1990s war that killed about 35,000 people. Azerbaijan has vowed to restore its control.

"The recognition of Kosovo's independence will become yet another factor solidifying Nagorno-Karabakh's position in its talks on settling the conflict with Azerbaijan," the separatist region's foreign minister Georgy Petrosyan told Reuters.

In Moldova's Transdniestria region, the separatist parliament was expected to issue a statement on Monday responding to Kosovo's declaration of independence.

Former colonial power Russia is likely to play a crucial role in the breakaway regions' renewed bids for recognition.

It backs the separatists in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdniestria and some analysts have predicted it could grant them recognition in the wake of Kosovo independence.

Russia's foreign ministry said last week international recognition for Kosovo would influence its policy towards the breakaway regions in its own backyard.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia despite objections from Belgrade and Russia, Serbia's big-power ally. The United States and most European Union states are expected to recognise Kosovo independence soon.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190013&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
BELGRADE, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Serbia's leaders pledged peaceful resistance after Kosovo's declaration of independence on Sunday, but angry protesters turned briefly to violence.

Some 2,000 people vented their anger at American backing for the breakaway province in a protest in Belgrade.

"Kosovo is the heart of Serbia," they chanted, ripping up paving stones and tiles to throw at the U.S. embassy and riot police guarding it. Several police and rioters were injured.

Some 500 demonstrators clashed with police in the northern city of Novi Sad. McDonalds restaurants were vandalised in Novi Sad and Belgrade, while in the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Mitrovica, hand grenades were thrown at EU and U.N. buildings.

One exploded causing no major damage.

Local news agencies also reported protests in Banja Luka, capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic whose leaders look to Kosovo for a precedent they could use to secede from Bosnia.

In Serbia, political leaders were united in their anger at Kosovo's declaration but gave out very different signals on how the move would affect Belgrade's ties with the West.

Pro-Western President Boris Tadic called for calm, saying Serbia will "defend its interests and international law, no matter how long it takes".

"Serbia will never recognise the independence of Kosovo," but "go through this peacefully, with dignity", he said.

But nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, whose party is in a shaky coalition with Tadic's, attacked the United States and EU for supporting the secession of a province Serbs see as their religious and historic heartland.

In a televised address to the nation minutes after Kosovo formally severed ties after nine years under U.N. control, he accused the United States of being "ready to violate the international order for its own military interests".

"As long as the Serb people exist, Kosovo will be Serbia," Kostunica said. Kosovo's declaration was "the final act of the policy of force which started with the insane bombing of Serbia and continued with the arrival of NATO troops in Kosovo".



HUGE RALLY

The United States spearheaded the 1999 NATO air war that expelled Serb forces from the province to stop the mass killing of Albanian civilians in a counter-insurgency crackdown.

Serbia's parliament was due to meet on Monday or Tuesday for an urgent session, state television RTS reported, with party leaders agreed to call citizens to mass protests on Thursday.

Russia, Belgrade's strongest ally, called immediate U.N. Security Council talks on Kosovo. Tadic was heading to New York on Sunday to attend a full council session on Monday which has no real chance of reversing Western backing for Kosovo.

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic will go to Brussels on Monday where EU foreign ministers will meet on Kosovo, which hopes most member states will swiftly recognise it.

Tadic favours separating the issue of Kosovo from Serbia's long-delayed EU membership bid. But Kostunica insists Brussels must give up support of Kosovo if it wants Serbia as a member.

The staunchly nationalist Radicals, Serbia's strongest party, called on Kostunica and Tadic to "channel the unrest and anger" of Serbs into a huge rally.

"As long as there are Serbs, we will go on fighting for Kosovo," their leader Tomislav Nikolic said.

The sharpest reaction was from the Serb Orthodox Church in Kosovo, whose leader Bishop Artemije denounced the army for inaction and said Serbia should buy arms from Russia to fight.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190039&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Kosovo Albanians declared independence on Sunday, confidently awaiting Western recognition for their state despite the anger its secession provoked in Serbia and Russia's warnings of fresh Balkan unrest.
Serbia vowed undying but peaceful resistance to the loss of its cherished southern province. Mass protests were being organized for the coming days.
Protesters called "hooligans" by Serb media attacked the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, where riot police drove them back. Three hand-grenades were tossed in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo, one of them exploding in a U.N. car park.
By Balkan standards, it was a relatively peaceful start to the latest drama in the tortuous break-up of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia that began nearly two decades ago. But the diplomatic repercussions were just beginning.
Serbia's backer Russia called for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, and although it had no prospect of changing Western backing for the secession, the chances of Kosovo gaining a U.N. seat any time soon were close to nil.
"We, the democratically elected leaders of our people, hereby declare Kosovo to be an independent and sovereign state. This declaration reflects the will of our people," said Kosovan Prime Minister Hashim Thaci.


1,000 YEARS


The former guerrilla commander fought the forces of late Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic in a 1998-99 war which claimed about 10,000 civilian lives, the climax of a ruinous decade of Serbian ultra-nationalism and war that ended with NATO intervention.
Serb police crushed the Kosovo Albanians' first declaration of independence in 1990. But on Sunday, there was nothing Serbia could do to prevent the move, which has the backing of major European Union powers and the United States.
Adoption of the independence declaration in Kosovo's parliament went swiftly with all 109 deputies present voting in favor by a show of hands.
A new flag, with the outline of Kosovo in yellow on a blue background under six stars, was lofted into the cheering assembly.
Albanians partied in the snow-swept streets of the capital, Pristina, and neighboring Albania threw a huge street party in Tirana.
"We feel the end of Serbia in Kosovo," said one Kosovo man. "I can't believe I'm alive to see this day," said another.
Serbs vow never to surrender Kosovo, steeped in 1,000 years of history and dotted with ancient Orthodox monasteries.
In a speech to the nation minutes after Kosovo voted, nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica branded it "a false state", the brainchild of Washington and its readiness to "violate the international order for its own military interests".
Serbia's pro-EU president, Boris Tadic, avoided attacking the West for backing Kosovo's independence. Serbs may be called on to decide which policy they prefer in a snap election that could come soon.

LAST CHAPTER?


While Russia's opposition will prevent if from endorsing an EU mission about to take over supervision of Kosovo from the United Nations, the Council cannot annul independence, since permanent Western members back Kosovo's 2 million Albanians.
Serbs in the north of Kosovo will certainly reject it, however, cementing an ethnic partition that has existed since NATO and the United Nations took over Kosovo in 1999 and which may weigh on the new state for years to come.
About 120,000 Serbs still live in the province. Many more fled in 1999 when Serb forces left.
Kosovo, the world's 193rd country, will be the sixth state carved from the former Serbian-dominated Yugoslav federation since 1991, after Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Montenegro, which became the world's newest state in 2006.
Whether Kosovo will mark the final chapter in Yugoslavia's fragmentation remains an open question.
Serb nationalists in the autonomous republic which now forms half of post-war Bosnia say that if Kosovo is allowed to secede, they too can break links with Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation.
Westerns powers say they have no right and no reason to do so. But Russia argues that the West's unilateral handling of Kosovo has changed the rules and let the genie of separatism out of the bottle.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190037&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE4 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)

LONDON (Reuters) - Russia backed ally Serbia on Sunday in condemning Kosovo's declaration of independence and called for the United Nations to annul the move Serbia's prime minister said was accomplished to further U.S. military goals.
The immediate U.S. response to Kosovo's long-anticipated decision to split from Serbia was muted by comparison. The State Department said it noted the declaration and was "reviewing the issue and discussing the matter with its European partners".
It called on all parties to "exercise the utmost restraint and to refrain from any provocative act".
The European Union's foreign policy chief also called for stability in Kosovo and the whole Balkan region. "I urge everybody to act calmly and in a responsible way," Javier Solana said in a statement.
But despite the appeals for calm, the stage was set for tense diplomatic sessions over the latest turn in the long and bloody break-up of Yugoslavia, and possible new crises as breakaway regions far from the Balkans said Kosovo's move strengthened their own independence bids.
"The situation with Kosovo is a precedent," Russia's Interfax news agency quoted Abkhazia's President Sergei Bagapsh, whose country seeks independence from Georgia, as saying.
"All the talk about the Kosovo situation being unique is an example of a policy of double standards," he added.
The West supports the demand of Kosovo's 2 million ethnic Albanians for their own state, nine years after NATO went to war to save them from Serbian forces. The United States and most EU members are expected to quickly recognize Kosovo.
Russia says a unilateral independence declaration by Kosovo is illegal and the council should oppose it and demand more talks between the ethnic Albanians and Belgrade.


"IMMEDIATE ACTION"


Kosovo's vote in favor of independence was expected.
Prime Minister Hashim Thaci read out a text in parliament made by leaders of Kosovo's 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority.
The parliament, which includes former guerrillas who fought for independence in a 1998-99 war, approved the declaration 109-0. Eleven minority deputies, including Serbs, were absent.
Minutes after the vote in Pristina, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica branded the southern region "a false state".
He said in an address from Belgrade that Kosovo was propped up unlawfully by the United States which was "ready to violate the international order for its own military interests".
Russia's response was almost as swift. It called for immediate U.N. Security Council consultations on Sunday.
"We expect the U.N. mission and NATO-led forces in Kosovo to take immediate action to carry out their mandate ... including the annulling of the decisions of Pristina's self-governing organs and the taking of tough administrative measures against them," a statement from Russia's Foreign Ministry said.
"The decisions by the Kosovo leadership create the risk of an escalation of tension and inter-ethnic violence in the province and of new conflict in the Balkans," it said.
Kosovo's break with Serbia was watched closely by regions far from the Balkans seeking independence.
Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Azerbaijan's rebel Nagorno-Karabakh region and Transdniestria, which split from Moldova, all declared independence in the 1990s but have not received international recognition.
After Kosovo's declaration, South Ossetia's leader, Abkhazia's president, Nagorno-Karabakh's foreign minister all said the move strengthened their positions.
The separatist parliament in the Trandniestria region was expected to issue a statement on Monday on Kosovo's declaration.
In Belgrade, meanwhile, angry Serbs stoned the U.S. embassy. In the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Mitrovica, three hand grenades were thrown at U.N. and EU buildings, causing minor damage.
NATO said it would continue to provide security in Kosovo and deal firmly with any violence.
"All parties should recognize that KFOR will continue to fulfill its responsibility for a safe and secure environment throughout the territory of Kosovo ... unless the (U.N.) Security Council decides otherwise," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a statement.
The EU will send a supervisory mission to take over from the current U.N. authorities. NATO ambassadors were due to meet on Monday to discuss Kosovo, as are EU foreign ministers.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190036&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE5 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190034&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE6 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190035&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE7 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Protesters took to the streets in key Serb centers across the Balkans on Monday to vent their anger at Kosovo's declaration of independence a day earlier.
A march by several thousand people in Banja Luka, capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic, turned violent as protesters -- who demanded their own independence from Bosnia -- threw stones at the U.S., French and German consulates.
"Kosovo is Serbian", "Serbia is one joint state", read placards they carried. They chanted "Kill, Kill Shiptars", a pejorative name for Albanians, and praised Ratko Mladic, the indicted war crimes fugitive who led Bosnian Serbs in the 1992-95 war against Bosnian Muslims and Croats.
The protests there fizzled out before France became the first major country to recognize Kosovo but police in the Serbian capital Belgrade, where various marches were planned later in the day, were on alert.
Earlier, some 7,000 people gathered in Republic Square, the heart of the capital, carrying Serbian flags and singing anti-Albanian slogans.
"This country is getting smaller and smaller. We are marching to show that we're against it," said Jelena, 24, a student who added Serbs could not abandon their religious heritage in Kosovo, home to many ancient Orthodox monasteries.
Some of the demonstrators raised their hands in a Nazi salute, but most sang anti-Albanian slogans.
The march was more peaceful than the night before when rioters pelted the U.S. embassy with stones and attacked the mission of current European Union president Slovenia, that have both backed Kosovan secession.
Smaller protests took place around Serbia, with some McDonalds outlets and a few Albanian-owned shops vandalized.
Several thousand people gathered in the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Mitrovica, a flashpoint for Serb-Albanian violence since the 1998-99 war.
They shouted "Kosovo is Serbia" and marched to the bridge across the River Ibar that divides them from the Albanian south of the town. French NATO troops have had concrete and razor-wire barriers ready for days to close the bridge if necessary.
In the Serb monastery enclave of Gracanica, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo called on the province's 120,000 minority Serbs not to leave.
"Serbs in Kosovo should stay on their land, around their holy sites and the graves of their forefathers. Only if we leave this holy land will it stop being forever Serb," Bishop Artemije told the crowd. "Kosovo can never be anything but forever Serb."
Hardline Kosovo Serb leader Marko Jaksic, an ally of Serb Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, called on the Serbian government to commit to defending its people in the territory.
"Serbia has to decide whether it wants to use its army to defend to defend Serbs in Kosovo if they are attacked by Albanians," he told the crowd.
One banner read: "Use all means to defend Kosovo".
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190033&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE8 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190031&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE9 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190032&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE10 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)

PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Europe's biggest states said they were recognizing the independence of Kosovo on Monday, ending hours of suspense after Prime Minister Hashim Thaci assured his new republic of swift Western recognition.
France was first to announce its move after an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, a great relief for Pristina.
Germany said 17 of the European Union's 27 members had decided on quick recognition of the province that broke away from Serbia on Sunday after nearly nine years under U.N. administration.
"The recognition of Kosovo is as important as the declaration of independence," Kosovo's deputy prime minister Hajredin Kuci told Reuters.
"We are grateful to France for recognition. This is a crucial issue for new state of Kosovo and its functioning."
Britain, Germany and Italy followed Paris minutes later, saying they had or would imminently inform Pristina of their decision. Finland said it would be among those recognizing too.
The smooth response Thaci had expected from the EU and the United States was tripped up earlier, when EU member Spain broke ranks to say "no".
Then U.S. President George W. Bush appeared to jump the gun ahead of his own State Department.
In a television interview during his tour of Africa, Bush said the people of Kosovo "are now independent". The remark was flashed in Kosovo as meaning U.S. recognition but White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "He didn't announce that."
"What he meant by that is that the Kosovars have declared their independence," Perino said, making clear it was the job of the U.S. State Department to officially declare recognition.
Bush was due to make a statement about Kosovo on Tuesday, in line with the original script which calls for the EU to go first in announcing its policy on what the West insists is a "European issue" that Serb ally Russia should not interfere in.
But the first word from Brussels had been a disappointment for Kosovo, though a ray of relief for Serbia.
"The government of Spain will not recognize the unilateral act proclaimed yesterday by the assembly of Kosovo," Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters, and confirmed Madrid's stance after the Brussels talks.
"We will not recognize because we consider ... this does not respect international law," said the minister, whose country is grappling with separatist movements of its own.
Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania have indicated they too are not keen to recognize Kosovo.
Afghanistan officially greeted the new Balkan state. Kosovo confidently expects recognition from up to 100 states.
There was no shortage of protest by Serbs against the unilateral secession of the southern province, run by the United Nations and NATO for the past nine years.
Serbs protested against Kosovo's secession for a second day in Belgrade, in their Kosovo stronghold of Mitrovica, and in isolated Serb enclaves in central Kosovo. Several thousand turned out for the rallies, which remained peaceful.
Serbs in the Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka also demonstrated, shouting "Kill the Albanians!"
The EU appealed for calm after Serb nationalist protesters stoned Western embassies in Belgrade on Sunday night.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190029&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE13 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190024&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE17 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)

PRISTINA, Serbia, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Europe's biggest states recognised the independence of Kosovo on Monday, ending hours of suspense after Prime Minister Hashim Thaci assured his new republic that Western recognition would come "any minute".

France was first to announce its move after an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, a great relief for Pristina.

Britain and Italy followed minutes later and Germany said it and a majority of European Union states would recognise a democratic Kosovo.

The smooth response Thaci had expected from the EU and the United States was tripped up earlier, when EU member Spain broke ranks to say "no".

Then U.S. President George W. Bush appeared to jump the gun ahead of his own State Department.

In a television interview during his tour of Africa, Bush said the people of Kosovo "are now independent". The remark was flashed in Kosovo as meaning U.S. recognition but White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "He didn't announce that."

"What he meant by that is that the Kosovars have declared their independence," Perino said, making clear it was the job of the U.S. State Department to officially declare recognition.

Bush was due to make a statement about Kosovo on Tuesday, in line with the original script which calls for the EU to go first in announcing its policy on what the West insists is a "European issue" that Serb ally Russia should not interfere in.

But the first word from Brussels had been a disappointment for Kosovo, though a ray of relief for Serbia.

"The government of Spain will not recognise the unilateral act proclaimed yesterday by the assembly of Kosovo," Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters.

"We will not recognise because we consider ... this does not respect international law," said the minister, whose country is grappling with separatist movements of its own.

Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania have indicated they too are not keen to recognise Kosovo.

Afghanistan officially greeted the new Balkan state, but Vietnam and Azerbaijan said they would not recognise it.

Kosovo confidently expects recognition from up to 100 other governments.

There was no shortage of protest by Serbs against the unilateral secession of the southern province, run by the United Nations and NATO for the past nine years.

Serbs protested against Kosovo's secession for a second day in Belgrade, in their Kosovo stronghold of Mitrovica, and in isolated Serb enclaves in central Kosovo. Several thousand turned out for the rallies, which remained peaceful.

Serbs in the Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka also demonstrated, shouting "Kill the Albanians!"

The EU appealed for calm after Serb nationalist protesters stoned Western embassies in Belgrade on Sunday night.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190045&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE23 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190046&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE25 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190050&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE28 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190052&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE30 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190053&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE31 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190054&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE32 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3190059&w=&r=2008-02-17T211820Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE34 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)

[MAKAVELI025]

--------------------------kosovo Is Serbia-----------------------------------

[palotin]

A bit late now, but yeah I did. With the weakening of the nation-state in the wake of triumphant global Capital secessionist movements offer a potential source and locus for revolutionary foment. Let's hope this offers encouragement to the Basques and Kurds. Hell, let's hope this stimulates Vermont in the right direction. Nationalism itself will always be counter-revolutionary. But in view of the extreme and systematic disempowerment of people across the world, maybe new nation states can be a stepping stone if they actually let the people learn what they are capable of.

[RedAnarchist]

--------------------------kosovo Is Serbia-----------------------------------

I've heard a lot about how Kosovo is supposedly the heart and "cradle" of the Serbian nation, but why is this? Its dominated by ethnic Albanians, so I assume this hasn't always been the case?

[hajduk]

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3212293&w=&r=2008-02-19T144757Z_01_N18200247_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3202909&w=&r=2008-02-19T010121Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3200849&w=&r=2008-02-18T185635Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
PRISTINA, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Europe's major powers and the United States said on Monday they recognised Kosovo's new independence, as Serbs reacted with anger and some states warned that its secession from Serbia set a dangerous precedent.

Serbian President Boris Tadic told the U.N. Security Council that unless it stopped Kosovo's independence, it would tell the world that no country's sovereignty and borders were safe.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica ordered the immediate recall of Belgrade's ambassador from Washington.

He said envoys would be recalled from other capitals that recognised Kosovo but did not mention by name Paris, which did so first after a European Union foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, nor London, Berlin and Rome, which followed.

"The United States has today formally recognised Kosovo as a sovereign and independent state. We congratulate the people of Kosovo on this historic occasion," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said -- words Kosovo's 2 million ethnic Albanians had long dreamed of hearing.

"In light of the conflicts of the 1990s, independence is the only viable option to promote stability in the region."

Washington led NATO allies to bomb Serbia over its treatment of Kosovo Albanians in the 1998-99 guerrilla uprising.

Recognition was a relief for Pristina, which had nervously awaited the West's expected blessing of its secession, but a black day for Serbia, which vowed never to concede the loss of a spiritual homeland steeped in myth.

"The recognition of Kosovo is as important as the declaration of independence," Kosovo Albanian Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuci told Reuters. "We are grateful."

In Banja Luka, capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic, protesters demanding Serb independence from Bosnia threw stones at U.S., French and German consulates. They chanted "Kill, Kill Shiptars", a pejorative name for Albanians.

Serbs marched peacefully in Belgrade, where riot police were on alert after Western embassies were attacked on Sunday night. A few Albanian-owned shops had their windows smashed, but there was no new rioting.

"I appeal to citizens to stop all protests which lead to violence and unrest, because that is not the way to help either Serbia or the defence of Kosovo," Kostunica said, calling Serbs to a major rally on Thursday.

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3199941&w=&r=2008-02-18T171629Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE8 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

DISSENT

Around the globe, states with their own restless minorities are dubious or strongly critical of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence -- Spain, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Sri Lanka and China among them.

Tadic asked the Council: "If you cast a blind eye to this illegal act, who guarantees to you that parts of your countries will not declare independence in the same illegal way?"

"Who can guarantee that a blind eye will not be cast to the violation of the charter of the United Nations, which guarantees the sovereignty and integrity of each state, when your country's turn comes up?"

Russia stood by its ally Serbia in refusing recognition. Moscow has vowed never to allow Kosovo to win a U.N. seat. The West insists Kosovo is a "European issue" in which Russia should not interfere.

Turkey recognised Kosovo, a territory it ruled for 500 years in Ottoman times, and neighbouring Albania -- anxious not to be first, to avoid charges that it covets Kosovo -- joined the list ready to send in their ambassadors.

Kosovo Albanians poured onto streets of the capital Pristina waving and kissing French, German, British, Italian and U.S. flags. Britain's envoy in Kosovo announced an immediate upgrade to embassy status.

Spain, facing its own separatist struggles, led a minority of EU states saying "no" to independence, complaining the move had "no international legal basis".

Italy, sensitive to Serbia's sense of grievance, noted that it "recognises Kosovo as an independent state under international supervision" -- a reminder that Kosovo will remain under outside control, as it has been for the last nine years since NATO drove out Serb forces to protect ethnic Albanians.

"Around 17 (EU) states have decided to react quickly so as to avoid creating a vacuum with indecisive behaviour," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, Hungary joined or were joining the early recognisers.

The Czech Republic, Netherlands, Portugal, Greece and Slovakia were still making up their minds.

Romania's parliament said outright it would not recognise Kosovo, in a reflection of fears the move will fuel separatist moves elsewhere in the Balkans.

The 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference congratulated Kosovo, whose Albanians are nominally Muslim.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Kosovo's independence marked "the end of the Balkan troubles". In Serbia's capital, student Jelena had a different view.

"This country is getting smaller and smaller," she said. "We are marching to show that we're against it."
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3201778&w=&r=2008-02-18T212516Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3201779&w=&r=2008-02-18T212516Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3201781&w=&r=2008-02-18T212516Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE3 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - If the U.N. Security Council does nothing to stop Kosovo from seceding, it will send a message to the world that no country's sovereignty and borders are safe, Serbian President Boris Tadic said on Monday.
But the 15-nation council remained deeply divided over Kosovo and took no action at an emergency meeting held after the United States and major European Union powers recognized the former Serbian province as an independent state.
Tadic repeated that Serbia saw the majority ethnic Albanian territory's secession as a violation of international law and urged the council to avoid setting a dangerous precedent.
"If you cast a blind eye to this illegal act, who guarantees to you that parts of your countries will not declare independence in the same illegal way?" he told the council.
"Who can guarantee that a blind eye will not be cast to the violation of the charter of the United Nations, which guarantees the sovereignty and integrity of each state, when your country's turn comes up?"
Tadic received strong support from the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, who called Kosovo's declaration of independence on Sunday "a blatant breach of the norms and principles of international law."
Serbia's argument is that the secession is illegal because it's neither endorsed by Belgrade, which considers Kosovo its sovereign territory, nor by the U.N. Security Council, which has had ultimate authority over Kosovo since 1999.
Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya also expressed concern about Kosovo's move, saying it posed a "serious challenge to the fundamental principles of international law." Envoys from Vietnam and South Africa also expressed reservations about it.
Serbia and its ally Russia, a veto-wielding Security Council member, have been urging the council to intervene against Kosovo's independence. But Moscow and Belgrade have failed to move the council due to Western support for Kosovo.
Tadic reiterated that Serbia was committed to peace and would not use force to prevent Kosovo from going its own way. But he said Belgrade would never recognize independent Kosovo.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3199960&w=&r=2008-02-18T171629Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE19 (javascript:nextPhoto();) LEGACY OF MILOSEVIC


Russia and Serbia have recently called three emergency council sessions to bridge the differences Moscow has with Western states that say secession is the only viable option.
Monday's session made it clear the impasse remained.
Italian envoy Aldo Mantovani told Serbia and the council: "Kosovo's independence is a fact. It's time to move ahead." This view was supported by council members United States, Britain, Croatia, Belgium and France.
Even though more than two years of talks between Pristina and Belgrade on the future status of Kosovo yielded no agreement, both Russia and Serbia continue to demand a new round of negotiations.
The United States and most EU member states trace the need for independence back to late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's brutal suppression of Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians, which led to a 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia to compel it to stop killing and expelling Albanians.
"(Milosevic) had tried in 1999 to expel the majority population from Kosovo," British Ambassador John Sawers said. "People being herded onto trains provoked images from the 1940s. The events of 1999 shaped the events we see now."
Sawers said today's Belgrade was not responsible for Milosevic's actions but must accept that his legacy meant that Kosovo would never be ruled from Belgrade again.
Tadic dismissed this view. He also warned EU member states that recognized Kosovo that they had done nothing to bring Serbia closer to the bloc.
"By recognizing the independence of Kosovo you are not helping the European future of Serbia," Tadic said at the end of the meeting. "It's not a friendly act to my country."
Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since 1999, when NATO troops were deployed there after its bombing campaign.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the council the U.N. mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, would remain there. In response to journalists' questions later, he declined to say whether he thought Kosovo's independence declaration was legal or not.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3201780&w=&r=2008-02-18T212516Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE4 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3201157&w=&r=2008-02-18T195139Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3201782&w=&r=2008-02-18T212516Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE6 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
(Reuters) - The United States and Europe's leading powers said on Monday they were recognizing the independence of Kosovo, a day after the majority Albanian territory seceded from Serbia.
Serbia opposes the move, as does Russia. Germany said 17 of the European Union's 27 members would take a quick decision on recognition.
Here is a list of countries which have declared their intentions.


*RECOGNISED:

AFGHANISTAN - Afghanistan said on Monday that it recognized and supported Kosovo as an independent country.


ALBANIA - Prime Minister Sali Berisha said Albania recognized Kosovo's independence. Albania has said it will help the new state's economy by giving access to its Adriatic ports.


BRITAIN - Foreign Minister David Miliband announced on Monday that Britain will recognise the independence of Kosovo.


FRANCE - France recognized Kosovo's independence on Monday after European Union foreign ministers adopted a joint statement on the breakaway Serbian province's future. The EU vowed in a statement to work for stability in the region while leaving each member free to decide on recognizing Kosovo's independence.


GERMANY - Germany said it will recognise the independence of Kosovo.


ITALY - Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said on Monday Italy will recognise Kosovo "as an independent state under international supervision."

TURKEY - Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said on Monday that Turkey had decided to recognise Kosovo as an independent state.


UNITED STATES - The United States formally recognized Kosovo "as a sovereign and independent state", Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement on Monday.


* Foreign ministers and diplomats in Brussels said they expected Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria and Hungary to recognise Kosovo soon.

* NOT RECOGNISED:


AZERBAIJAN - Ex-Soviet Azerbaijan says it does not recognise Kosovo's independence.


CHINA - China said on Monday it was "deeply concerned" about Kosovo's independence declaration and urged both sides to continue negotiations.

EU COUNTRIES - Cyprus and Slovakia have indicated they will not recognise Kosovo. Both are concerned about the legal precedent or minority rights.


ROMANIA - Parliament said on Monday that Romania will not recognise Kosovo's independence.

SPAIN - Spain, grappling with its own separatist movements, said on Monday it will not recognise Kosovo, saying legal secession required the agreement of both parties or a U.N. Security Council resolution.


GEORGIA - Foreign Minister David Bakradze said Georgia will not recognise Kosovo's independence.

RUSSIA - Russia has said Kosovo's declaration of independence is illegal.


SERBIA - Serbia vowed undying but peaceful resistance to the loss of Kosovo and its prime minister called Kosovo "a false state."


SRI LANKA - Sri Lanka said on Monday Kosovo's independence declaration was a violation of the U.N. Charter.


VIETNAM - A non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, says it opposes the declaration of independence.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3201520&w=&r=2008-02-18T203831Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3201506&w=&r=2008-02-18T203623Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3200561&w=&r=2008-02-18T181840Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - President George W. Bush recognized on Tuesday the independence of Kosovo from Serbia and said it would bring peace to the Balkans.
Bush said in Dar es Salaam that the United States would soon establish full diplomatic relations with the new state, home to 2 million ethnic Albanians, that seceded from Serbia on Sunday.
"We will work with the leaders of Kosovo to carry out a smooth and peaceful transition to independence," Bush said to reporters shortly before leaving Tanzania for Rwanda, the third leg of his five-country African tour.
Serbia has recalled its ambassador from Washington to protest against American recognition of Kosovo, first announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday. Russia also strongly opposes independence.
The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, called Kosovo's declaration "a blatant breach of the norms and principles of international law."
But Bush said the United States had been in close touch with Moscow and that U.S. recognition of Kosovo should have been expected.
"We have been in close consultation with the Russians all along. This wasn't a surprise to Russia," Bush said.
Washington's action followed recognition of Kosovo by Europe's largest states -- France, Britain, Italy and Germany -- and some Muslim states, such as Afghanistan. More countries are expected to follow suit, although Spain, facing its own separatist struggles, has said it will not recognize Kosovo.
The United States and most European Union countries say Serbia relinquished the moral right to rule the people of Kosovo because of brutality under late President Slobodan Milosevic.

"CORRECT MOVE"


Independence for Kosovo is an opportunity to move beyond past conflicts and towards stability and peace, Bush said.
"History will prove this to be a correct move, to bring peace to the Balkans," he said.
"The United States supports this move because we believe it will bring peace. And now it's up to all of us to work together to help the Kosovars realize that peace," Bush said.
Kosovo has been under United Nations supervision since 1999, when NATO bombing forced a withdrawal of Serb forces that had been attacking the province's ethnic Albanian majority. There are some 17,000 NATO-led troops in Kosovo.
Rice urged Belgrade to work with the United States to ensure the protection of Kosovo Serbs who make up about 10 percent of the territory's population.
Bush also urged the protection of the Serbian minority, saying he welcomed the new government's commitment "to the highest standards of democracy, including freedom and tolerance and justice for citizens of all ethnic backgrounds".
Washington has said it will support Kosovo economically as well as politically. A donors conference will be held soon in Europe and the United States will give $335 million in aid to Kosovo this year.
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3200851&w=&r=2008-02-18T185635Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3200850&w=&r=2008-02-18T185635Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE3 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080218&t=2&i=3199935&w=&r=2008-02-18T171629Z_01_HAM534379_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
PRISTINA, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Kosovo Serbs sacked border posts in the newly independent republic on Tuesday, to warn they won't let a new frontier separate Serb from Serb, whatever Kosovo's Albanian leaders and their Western backers say.

Mobs of several hundred men, some masked, torched U.N., customs and police offices housed in containers at two border posts on the boundary line between Kosovo and Serbia.

No casualties were reported but the crossings were temporarily closed.

"It seems well organised, according to the number of buses we saw moving to the north," said a spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeeping mission KFOR, whose troops were called in by Kosovo's United Nations administrative mission, UNMIK.

NATO troops went in to back up local police and restore order.

Until 1999, this was an unmarked Serbian provincial border. Until last week, it was a U.N.-supervised crossing. But with Kosovo's declaration of independence on Sunday, it became an international frontier, at least for states recognising Kosovo.

A Serb journalist told the BBC the attacks were triggered by rumours Kosovo's new flag was about to be raised at the posts.

Kosovo Serbs, backed by the Serbian government and its ally Russia, have warned that they will not recognise the authority of a European Union law-enforcement mission due to assume supervision of Kosovo from UNMIK over the next four months.

Serbia, which has been hoping to move closer to the EU, has recalled its ambassadors to Washington, Paris and some other countries in protest at recognition of Kosovo but insisted it was not cutting ties.

"We do not intend to find ourselves in self-imposed isolation," Beta news agency quoted the ambassador to Moscow, Stanimir Vukicevic, as saying.

EU CHIEFS ARRIVE

EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana, mission chief Yves de Kermabon, and the head of the EU's new International Civilian Office, Pieter Feith, arrived in Kosovo in the afternoon.

Serbs dominate the northwest corner of Kosovo, where the United Nations failed to establish its authority since taking control of the province in 1999 after NATO bombed Serbia to force an end to repression and compel its troops to leave.

Serbian state institutions are well entrenched in the enclave, now with explicit Russian diplomatic backing.

"We'll strongly warn against any attempts at repressive measures should Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with this unilateral proclamation of independence," Russia's U.N. ambassador Vitaly Churkin said on Sunday.

A Western official said Tuesday's violence showed "we are inches from partition" of Kosovo, which would move its de facto northern border from the provincial line to a line formed by the River Ibar running through the divided city of Mitrovica.

He said it was "only a matter of time before KFOR closes the bridges" at Mitrovica, dividing Kosovo Serbs from Albanians.

But a U.N. official in Mitrovica played down the isolated violence, saying: "We have had the major earthquake (independence). These are just aftershocks."

Some 2 million Albanians live in Kosovo alongside around 120,000 remaining Serbs. Half of these are concentrated in the area running north from Mitrovica to the Serbian border, the rest in isolated enclaves further south.

The EU mission of 2,000 police and justice officials is intended to protect minority rights and uphold the rule of law.

But NATO has no plans to leave just yet. French, Danish, Belgian and American troops are deployed in the northern sector.

In Vienna, Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic urged KFOR to remain even-handed and protect Serbs in Kosovo, where those in southern enclaves are particularly vulnerable should ethnic tensions rise.

U.S. President George W. Bush welcomed independence.

"History will prove this to be a correct move, to bring peace to the Balkans," he said. "We will work with the leaders of Kosovo to carry out a smooth and peaceful transition."

Russia, with its own separatist problems, stuck to its opposing view, telling Washington independence endangered international stability.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

Is there a way to stop hadjuk doing this? He could just post a link or something. It's really annoying.

[RedAnarchist]

Is there a way to stop hadjuk doing this? He could just post a link or something. It's really annoying.

He's been told about it numerous times and he knows that he could be unrestricted if he made normal posts, so he's only keeping himself restricted by posting these articles.

[hajduk]

I've heard a lot about how Kosovo is supposedly the heart and "cradle" of the Serbian nation, but why is this? Its dominated by ethnic Albanians, so I assume this hasn't always been the case?it is about clerical myth which Serbs creat since battle on kosovo field in middle centyries, where serbian army lost battle against Turkish army and turkish army leader Bajazit,so after that serbs are frustrated and that is big reason why they slaughtered bosnians during 1992-95,so serbs continuing to maintain that frustration arguing that Kosovo is cradle of ortodox serbian church and for them that it means that Kosovo belonged to serbian theritory which is not truth becouse Kosovari and Albanians are natives and serbs are not,so anyone of those comraders who telling you that proclaiming Kosovo independence is one more NATO and U.S.A. bad politic against serbian nation is actualy nationalist,including this guy who post that Kosovo is Serbia,Serbs talking about protecting clerical politic like argue against Kosovo independency,actualy serbs whant only theritory without Kosovari on it so you can make conclusions Red Anarchist

[hajduk]

see video

http://uk.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76453&newsChannel=worldNews

http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080220&t=2&i=3226907&w=&r=2008-02-20T133533Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE3 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080220&t=2&i=3226908&w=&r=2008-02-20T133533Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080220&t=2&i=3226906&w=&r=2008-02-20T133533Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080220&t=2&i=3226909&w=&r=2008-02-20T133533Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[Sky]

The frontiers of developing countries are inviolable. Territorial integrity of a developing country is necessary in order to stave off imperialist intrigues. When Yugoslavia was intact, it was able to maintain an independent, non-aligned existence due to its unity. But when its members seceded at the instigation of the imperialists, its successor countries became little more than neo-colonies of the imperialist powers. A common method of neo-colonialism is the incitement of racial and ethnic strife in order to divide and conquer a country. The deadly secessionist conflicts in Nigeria, Sudan, and elsewhere were made possible through systematic interference by the imperialist powers.

[Bandito]

Hajduk is a nationalist and because of that he shouldn't be restricted,he should be banned.
He is giving you people the wrong picture of leftist thought in Serbia at the moment.
Everyone who claims himself of being a marxist is actually FOR Kosovo's rightfull inedendance.

[Dean]

Hajduk is a nationalist and because of that he shouldn't be restricted,he should be banned.
Nationalism in and of itself isn't usually that despicable; in Hajduk's case, I can't comment, becauase I honestly don't know much about the region he speaks of - for all I know, his "nationalism" could be more progressive than what you propose.


He is giving you people the wrong picture of leftist thought in Serbia at the moment.
Everyone who claims himself of being a marxist is actually FOR Kosovo's rightfull inedendance.
Then give us the "right" picture instead of calling to silence him with such scant evidence.

[RNK]

An independant Kosovo is a catch-22.

On the one hand it affords Kosovoians much-needed security, self-determination and social and economic freedom (to a point).

On the other hand, the development of yet another state apparatus should atleast worry us Marxists. Afterall, we should not be cheering the creation of more vessels for the exploitation of workers. Granted, the people of Kosovo can't really become much more exploited (unless by some miracle Kosovo becames a capitalist dream kingdom, but in the long run it is unlikely to dramatically change due to this development).

So we should support Kosovo's independance temporarily. Our overall goal will always be the emancipation of humanity via the destruction of the state but we can not turn a blind eye to those who are suffering under the oppression of another ethnic or religious group.

[lutondave]

both sides are racist

[Bandito]

I did.
In "Politics" there is a thread called "Your ideas on Kosovo issue".
Than decide between communism and nationalism,if you can't choose sides between those two.

[hajduk]

Hajduk is a nationalist and because of that he shouldn't be restricted,he should be banned.
He is giving you people the wrong picture of leftist thought in Serbia at the moment.
Everyone who claims himself of being a marxist is actually FOR Kosovo's rightfull inedendance.so tell me are you supporting the independence of Kosovo? I did.

[hajduk]

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3246499&w=&r=2008-02-21T163739Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3246009&w=&r=2008-02-21T160657Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3246113&w=&r=2008-02-21T161354Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3246478&w=&r=2008-02-21T163739Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3246008&w=&r=2008-02-21T160657Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3246305&w=&r=2008-02-21T162704Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3246007&w=&r=2008-02-21T160400Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3246510&w=&r=2008-02-21T163906Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE7 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3245416&w=&r=2008-02-21T152953Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3245134&w=&r=2008-02-21T151403Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3245573&w=&r=2008-02-21T153753Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3243975&w=&r=2008-02-21T140907Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3245526&w=&r=2008-02-21T153631Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3245199&w=&r=2008-02-21T151704Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3245528&w=&r=2008-02-21T153631Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3245229&w=&r=2008-02-21T151853Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3243974&w=&r=2008-02-21T140907Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3245297&w=&r=2008-02-21T152341Z_01_L20871554_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE4 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[hajduk]

soon in theather near by you

http://uk.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76676
http://uk.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76661

http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3215012&w=&r=2008-02-19T172551Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3215013&w=&r=2008-02-19T172551Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3215011&w=&r=2008-02-19T172551Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3215010&w=&r=2008-02-19T172551Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE3 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3215009&w=&r=2008-02-19T172551Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE4 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3215008&w=&r=2008-02-19T172551Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE5 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3215007&w=&r=2008-02-19T172551Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE6 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3215005&w=&r=2008-02-19T172551Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE7 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3215004&w=&r=2008-02-19T172551Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE8 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3212978&w=&r=2008-02-19T151824Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3212979&w=&r=2008-02-19T151824Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE3 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3212990&w=&r=2008-02-19T151824Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE4 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3212991&w=&r=2008-02-19T151824Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE6 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3212986&w=&r=2008-02-19T151824Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE5 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3212980&w=&r=2008-02-19T151824Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE10 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080219&t=2&i=3212982&w=&r=2008-02-19T151824Z_01_L16331144_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE11 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[Bandito]

so tell me are you supporting the independence of Kosovo? I did.

Yes i do.
Independance wil give those people better platform to fight the real enemy. Serbai hasn't been their enemy since 1999. The only way for Kosovans to see the real enemy is to live under its boot.
They have the right of self-determination and that right cannot be taken away from anyone.

[hajduk]

Yes i do.
Independance wil give those people better platform to fight the real enemy. Serbai hasn't been their enemy since 1999. The only way for Kosovans to see the real enemy is to live under its boot.
They have the right of self-determination and that right cannot be taken away from anyone.so why you accusing me that i give bad picture of comraders from serbia when you know that many of them are hidding personal nationalist point of wiew under revleft flag?you can see on this pictures which are been photographed all over the serbia and republic srpska that over 85% of young people from republic srpska and serbia are nationalist,about olders there is no need to discuse

[Bandito]

I am saying that you are the only one from Serbia posting here now and that you thinking about Kosovo is YOUR'S ONLY.
I know about that scandalous thinking of Serbia's youth,but what i am saying is that from point of revolutionary leftists,Kosovo is matter of principles,not "national feelings". Principles amd dialectic views.
I also know that some "communist" parties in Serbia are against the Kosovo independance,such is NKPJ,but keep in mind(or you do know,but just don't care) that these parties ARE nationalistic. NKPJ supported the nationalistic candidate at latest elections. I don't know where to start with criticism on that matter.
It's a shame that Kosovans are so blind at the moment,and soon they will be very ashamed by those US flags in Pristina,but that is the only way to turn against USA and NATO. And historically,independence is theirs to have.

[Dean]

I did.
In "Politics" there is a thread called "Your ideas on Kosovo issue".
I can't post there, so please make a discussion here on it.


Than decide between communism and nationalism,if you can't choose sides between those two.
I don't have to. Communism is the ideal and the driving principle; nationalism is merely a temporary tool. Palestinian nationalism is good, but one day it will run counter to communism, at which point it should be opposed.

[PsciStudent]

and I thought balkanization was over...

[Bandito]

Nationalism is a tool to get to communism????
Wow...

[Bandito]

and I thought balkanization was over...


And btw. what the fuck did you mean by that?
You sound like a missguided elitist.

[MarxSchmarx]

I've heard a lot about how Kosovo is supposedly the heart and "cradle" of the Serbian nation, but why is this? Its dominated by ethnic Albanians, so I assume this hasn't always been the case?

It has a lot to do with the presence of supposedly important Orthodox serb monasteries in the Kosovo.

c.f.
http://www.ce-review.org/99/1/nexh1.html

[Koçi Xoxe]

I am saying that you are the only one from Serbia posting here now and that you thinking about Kosovo is YOUR'S ONLY.
I know about that scandalous thinking of Serbia's youth,but what i am saying is that from point of revolutionary leftists,Kosovo is matter of principles,not "national feelings". Principles amd dialectic views.
I also know that some "communist" parties in Serbia are against the Kosovo independance,such is NKPJ,but keep in mind(or you do know,but just don't care) that these parties ARE nationalistic. NKPJ supported the nationalistic candidate at latest elections. I don't know where to start with criticism on that matter.
It's a shame that Kosovans are so blind at the moment,and soon they will be very ashamed by those US flags in Pristina,but that is the only way to turn against USA and NATO. And historically,independence is theirs to have.

First of all, I want to inform that I am agianst independence of Kosovo under control of west imperialism. Albanians on Kosovo have right for self-determination but not under control of west imperialism. Labour Party (Partija rada) support independence of Kosovo under control of imperialism.It is against Marxist-Leninist policies of that isuess. On other side PR dont support right for self-determination of Serbs in Bosnia which is colony of west imperialsm and do not support anti-imperialist struggle of Serbs in Kosovo.
NKPJ is against independence of Kosovo like every party which is member of International led by Communist Party of Greece (KKE) including Communist Party of Albania (PKSH). So, will Atheist call Greek and Albanian communist as "serbian nationalists".

[hajduk]

I am saying that you are the only one from Serbia posting here now and that you thinking about Kosovo is YOUR'S ONLY.
I know about that scandalous thinking of Serbia's youth,but what i am saying is that from point of revolutionary leftists,Kosovo is matter of principles,not "national feelings". Principles amd dialectic views.
I also know that some "communist" parties in Serbia are against the Kosovo independance,such is NKPJ,but keep in mind(or you do know,but just don't care) that these parties ARE nationalistic. NKPJ supported the nationalistic candidate at latest elections. I don't know where to start with criticism on that matter.
It's a shame that Kosovans are so blind at the moment,and soon they will be very ashamed by those US flags in Pristina,but that is the only way to turn against USA and NATO. And historically,independence is theirs to have.look,if it is like you said Kosovo is in the matter of only principles and dialectic wiews that sound like you hidding national agenda,no matter if you say that is not,if you whant to talk about priciples the only way you can say that is the context of three mafia klan which have moust interests in independency of Kosovo,talking about NATO and how they bombing Serbia becouse of Kosovo is also hidden national agenda,becouse over bosnian victims Kosovo also get independency,dont forget that,so Kosovo is Not Serbia and it not bee any more

[hajduk]

this winter chaos coming in theather near by you
from producers of agression on bosnians,coming new blockbuster
Countdown for Kosovo
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76344
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76737
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76366
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76717
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76699

[Bandito]

do not support anti-imperialist struggle of Serbs in Kosovo.

What?
The only reason why PR supports "Vetvendosje" movement in Kosovo is because that organisation constantly attacks UNMIK forces and advocates the idea of free Kosovo. FREE KOSOVO means Kosovo without:
1)Serbian government,police and army
2)Mobster clans lead by Tachi and other mobsters
3)UNMIK an EULEX forces which they see as invasive
Sure that they are not revolutionary leftists(Albin Kurti himself claims himself as a ghandist),but you as a leninist,should know that sometimes liberation comes in stages,and one stage mustn't be necesarilly communist or even leftist to produce a good lin in perspective.
But i guess you already know all this stuff,it is just you with your pathological fear and repulsion by the only communist party in Serbia that has good line-Party of Labour.

[Koçi Xoxe]

What?
The only reason why PR supports "Vetvendosje" movement in Kosovo is because that organisation constantly attacks UNMIK forces and advocates the idea of free Kosovo. FREE KOSOVO means Kosovo without:
1)Serbian government,police and army
2)Mobster clans lead by Tachi and other mobsters
3)UNMIK an EULEX forces which they see as invasive
Sure that they are not revolutionary leftists(Albin Kurti himself claims himself as a ghandist),but you as a leninist,should know that sometimes liberation comes in stages,and one stage mustn't be necesarilly communist or even leftist to produce a good lin in perspective.
But i guess you already know all this stuff,it is just you with your pathological fear and repulsion by the only communist party in Serbia that has good line-Party of Labour.

Of course Vetvendosje is not anti-imperialist organization but is pro-imperialist organization. That group is against UNMIK administration but not against NATO and KFOR occupation forces in Kosovo.That group is not against pro-imperialist polices of goverment in Pristina and want to see Kosovo as member of NATO and EU.
Serbs in northern part of Kosovo aks NATO,KFOR na UNMIK forces to go home and that is real anti-imperialist position.

[Sky]

The people of Serbia should take any and all measures to extirpate the NATO occupation forces in the province of Kosovo and annihalate those secessionist traitors in the illegal regime established in Pristina. This partition of Serbia is colonialism of the crudest form. There is no legitimacy to be found in this move by the criminal gang in Pristina. The partition of Serbia is an attempt by the imperialist powers to set a precedent through which to destroy the territorial integrity of developing nations. One method of neo-colonialism is to set ethnic, religious, and tribal groups against one another in order to partition a country for the purpose of weakening it.

[Bandito]

Serbs in northern part of Kosovo aks NATO,KFOR na UNMIK forces to go home and that is real anti-imperialist position.

No.
It is pro-serbian a.k.a pro-russian position.
And it also means imperialism.

[hajduk]

Kosovo for sneakers-Kosovo za patike
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5VWZoKWBYXE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xk2XXdnPZLQ&feature=related

on this clips you will see two girls who came from Batajnica city in Serbia to Belgrade to support protests against Kosovo independency,but when riot start those girls use the situation when some rioters smash the glass on one store to steal merchandise from inside the store,the guy who recordered them when they robbing the store told them that for him both of them are heroes,day after those girls give the interwiev for belgrade radio B92 where on question of journalist from this radio:are you two came to Belgrade to steal or to support protests they answered that first of all they came to support protests but when they saw that mob become more violence and when they saw that mob smashing the glass on store they do what everybody do,go inside the store and took what they like,becouse of this these two girls become very famous on youtube:D

[Koçi Xoxe]

No.
It is pro-serbian a.k.a pro-russian position.
And it also means imperialism.

No,it is not pro-serbian or pro-russian position.
Proimperialist goverment from Belgrade dont control Serbs in Kosovo.Also Putin dont control Serbs in Kosovo. We all know that west imperialism,led by USA, control pro-imperialist goverment in Pristina.
In Kosovo dont exist any Albanian party which is against NATO, EU and KFOR. In Pristina you can see americans and albaninan flags united. It is not correct Comrade Atheist?

[Bandito]

For the time being-yes.
But could the opressed masses rise against the US without seeing their goals in every-day life? No.
Could the opressed masses turn to workers solidarity being in Serbia? No.
All you do is criticise someone's solution. Temporary solution,by the way. You know that Partija Rada is for alliance of all Balkan people.
From all these questions and criticism i don't see a SOLUTION in your talk.
DO YOU HAVE ONE?
Or you are just bullshitting and criticising.

[hajduk]

For the time being-yes.
But could the opressed masses rise against the US without seeing their goals in every-day life? No.
Could the opressed masses turn to workers solidarity being in Serbia? No.
All you do is criticise someone's solution. Temporary solution,by the way. You know that Partija Rada is for alliance of all Balkan people.
From all these questions and criticism i don't see a SOLUTION in your talk.
DO YOU HAVE ONE?
Or you are just bullshitting and criticising.atheist but those riots in Serbia and Republic Srpska been organised by Serbian government(Vojislav Kostunica) of course they said to the proffesional protesters that rioters attack only ambasseys which states recognise the Kosovo as a state,but as you see riots go out of controll,is that solution to?

[hajduk]

the saga continue

http://uk.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76910

http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080225&t=2&i=3288012&w=&r=2008-02-25T183951Z_01_L25511575_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080225&t=2&i=3284762&w=&r=2008-02-25T142912Z_01_L25511575_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080225&t=2&i=3284760&w=&r=2008-02-25T142912Z_01_L25511575_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080225&t=2&i=3288011&w=&r=2008-02-25T183951Z_01_L25511575_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE3 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080225&t=2&i=3283894&w=&r=2008-02-25T133902Z_01_L25269423_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080224&t=2&i=3273794&w=&r=2008-02-24T212549Z_01_L24559847_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1http://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080222&t=2&i=3260274&w=450&r=2008-02-22T151956Z_01_NOOTR_RTRIDSP_0_OUKTP-UK-KOSOVO-SERBIAhttp://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3186578&w=450&r=2008-02-17T102611Z_01_NOOTR_RTRIDSP_0_OUKTP-UK-KOSOVO-SERBIAhttp://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080217&t=2&i=3186350&w=450&r=2008-02-17T092058Z_01_NOOTR_RTRIDSP_0_OUKTP-UK-KOSOVO-SERBIAhttp://uk.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20071210&t=2&i=2430667&w=450&r=2007-12-10T051853Z_01_NOOTR_RTRIDSP_0_OUKTP-UK-SERBIA-KOSOVO-UN (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[Koçi Xoxe]

For the time being-yes.
But could the opressed masses rise against the US without seeing their goals in every-day life? No.
Could the opressed masses turn to workers solidarity being in Serbia? No.
All you do is criticise someone's solution. Temporary solution,by the way. You know that Partija Rada is for alliance of all Balkan people.
From all these questions and criticism i don't see a SOLUTION in your talk.
DO YOU HAVE ONE?
Or you are just bullshitting and criticising.

Dear comrade, Kosovo under NATO control is not solution but occupation.Only real solution,which is interest of both peoples Albanians and Serbs, is that NATO go away!Then both peoples could statr to talk about Kosovo future.

[Bandito]

Exactly!
Just,my point was that Kosovans needed to reject serbian opression to see who "helped" them to gain independency.
Again,all i hear is criticism. Do you offer an answer? The question was:"Do you support Kosovo independancy?" I answered yes.
You answered no. So,are you for Kosovo in Serbia? Back to the nationalistic dungeon? Back to the root of the problem?
Or you are just dropping phrases-UN troops and shit. Do you think I am pro EU and pro NATO?
The troops are there. New enemy is there. You can't change the fact.
You can just fit future opinion in the matter.

[Koçi Xoxe]

Exactly!
Just,my point was that Kosovans needed to reject serbian opression to see who "helped" them to gain independency.
Again,all i hear is criticism. Do you offer an answer? The question was:"Do you support Kosovo independancy?" I answered yes.
You answered no. So,are you for Kosovo in Serbia? Back to the nationalistic dungeon? Back to the root of the problem?
Or you are just dropping phrases-UN troops and shit. Do you think I am pro EU and pro NATO?
The troops are there. New enemy is there. You can't change the fact.
You can just fit future opinion in the matter.

Yes,you are pro-NATO and pro-EU! Kosovo under NATO is bigger problem. Why do you think that for Albanians is better solution indepenent Kosovo under NATO control? You think that Albanians will not be oppressed under NATO rule?Also, what about Serbs on Kosovo? Do you think that pro-imperialist goverment in Pristina is not nationalist about Serbs in Kosovo?Do you think that Serbs in Kosovo now live good?Does Serbs from Kosovo have right for self-determination?
Yes,i am for Kosovo in Serbia becouse Marxist-Leninist never can support imperialist occupation.Kosovo is now under occupation of west imperialism.Witouth west imperialism Albanians and Serbs could solve probelms.

[Bandito]

As you can all see..the member Koci Xoxe has been banned.
His reactionary statements and harrasment of croatian members of Revleft West Balkan has ended his presence here.

[hajduk]

another Kosovo trailers movie
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76978
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=76641

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304493&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304492&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304522&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304518&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE3 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304514&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE4 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304512&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE5 (javascript:nextPhoto();)
http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304513&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE6 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304519&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE8 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304520&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE7 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304517&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE9 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304515&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE10 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080226&t=2&i=3304521&w=&r=2008-02-26T205240Z_01_L26918399_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE11 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[hajduk]

Island alternative star BJORK, WILL NOT PREFORM ON EXIT FESTIVAL THIS YEAR IN NOVI SAD CITY (Serbia) BECOUSE SHE MADE SONG called "DECLARE INDEPENDENCY" AND BECOUSE THAT SONG METHAFHORICLY SUPPORT KOSOVO INDEPENDENCY PEOPLE FROM ORGANISATION OF EXIT FESTIVAL SAYS THAT CANT PROMISE TO BJORK THAT SHE WILL BE SAFE ALL THE TIME ,SO BECOUSE THEY AFRAID THAT SOMETHING BAD CAN HAPPENED TO BJORK ( PROBABLY THEY THAUGHT THAT SOMEBODY WILL TRY TO KILL BJORK), THEY DEICIDED TO CANCELED HER PREFORMING ON THIS FESTIVAL IN THE MANNER OF SECURITY REASONS.

But Bjork said that she dont believe that the reasons why she will not preform on this festival are not in the manner of security reasons,she think the reasons for her removing from this festival are laying in the fact that STAFF and people who are in organisation of EXIT festival are pro-serbian-nationalists who whant with this kind of behave to prove that are just bunch of frustrated people which have complex of Kosovo independency.

Now Bjork is guilty part in the eyes of Serbian people for Kosovo independency?!":D:rolleyes: WOOOOW

[hajduk]

after the chaos is finished
this spring in theather near by you coming new political thriller
SEPARATIONS

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080222&t=2&i=3261070&w=450&r=2008-02-22T162351Z_01_MDJ11_RTRIDSP_0_SERBIA-KOSOVO-BORDERhttp://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080222&t=2&i=3261008&w=450&r=2008-02-22T161830Z_01_MDJ013_RTRIDSP_0_KOSOVO-SERBIA-BORDERhttp://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080222&t=2&i=3261011&w=450&r=2008-02-22T162127Z_01_MDJ12_RTRIDSP_0_SERBIA-KOSOVO-BORDERhttp://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080221&t=2&i=3245128&w=450&r=2008-02-21T151030Z_01_DSK04_RTRIDSP_0_KOSOVO-SERBIA-BORDER

[hajduk]

Kosovo Serbs mark Day of the Dead


http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=77245

[NWO]

Kosovo is Serbian and it always has been. Kosovo is the heart of Serbian civilization. The program to ethnically cleanse Serbs from Kosovo has been going on for a very long time. It started with the Ottoman Empire and continued with the Nazis then Tito's regime (sorry titoists it is true). It is still going on through land confections and refusal to allow Serbian refugees to return. The UN is not protecting Serbs so they are constantly being attacked. As a Russian it is my duty to defend my Serbian brethren.

[RedAnarchist]

Your Serbian brethren? I assume you mean the working class of Serbia, right?

[hajduk]

Your Serbian brethren? I assume you mean the working class of Serbia, right?definitly he doesnt mean on working class

[NWO]

Your Serbian brethren? I assume you mean the working class of Serbia, right?

I do not know how to write it in English but the Russian term would be Narod. The entire separatist movement has been conducted by Imperialists. If you notice they don't wave the flag of Kosovo but that of Albania and United States.

[Bandito]

Damn...
this guy's rethoric is one of the reasons i am for independent Kosovo....
And,by the way,he is surely a member or supprorter of NKPJ.
See our point now in Revleft WB,Red Anarchist?
Bunch of nationalists and reactionaries....

[hajduk]

I do not know how to write it in English but the Russian term would be Narod. The entire separatist movement has been conducted by Imperialists. If you notice they don't wave the flag of Kosovo but that of Albania and United States.wiskey,tango,cash over....:rolleyes:

[Dejavu]

There are going to be some interesting days ahead for Kosovo.

Atheist- Nisam znao da ovdje ima foruma za zapadnobalkance. Hvala.

[NWO]

There are going to be some interesting days ahead for Kosovo.

Atheist- Nisam znao da ovdje ima foruma za zapadnobalkance. Hvala.

I agree. I just read this news headline.

Rostov-on-Don, January 17, RIA Novosti. The Russian Cossacks of the Don region believe secession of Kosovo from Serbia is unacceptable and will assist in the event that Pristina proclaims independence, declared Vladímir Voroninon, deputy atamán of the Grand Army of the Don Cossacks, on Thursday.

I would post the link but it won't let me

[NWO]

Damn...
this guy's rethoric is one of the reasons i am for independent Kosovo....
And,by the way,he is surely a member or supprorter of NKPJ.
See our point now in Revleft WB,Red Anarchist?
Bunch of nationalists and reactionaries....

I do not know if you are referring to me but I assume you are. First, I am not a Serb; I am a Russian. I am just stating the truth because most people won't even bother looking at the history of what happened in Serbia. Why make the working class in Serbia suffer for the sake of Greater Albania? It is an Imperialist scheme to destroy Serbia . I do not see how any of you so called revolutionaries should side with anyone expect Serbia on this issue.

[hajduk]

Why make the working class in Serbia suffer for the sake of Greater Albania? then why the make working class in Kosovo suffer the sake of Greater Serbia?

[NWO]

then why the make working class in Kosovo suffer the sake of Greater Serbia?

Kosovo was always Serbian.

[hajduk]

Kosovo was always Serbian.by which arguments you make that conclusions if kosovo people are natives on west balkan?

[hajduk]

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080225&t=2&i=3283825&w=450&r=2008-02-25T133737Z_01_MDJ03_RTRIDSP_0_KOSOVO

Kosovo Serbs burn a banner with pictures of Serbian President Boris Tadic and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a protest in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica February 25, 2008. The text on a banner reads: "Deal, I gave Kosovo for EU".

[hajduk]

Vojislav Kostunica dissmised the government of Serbia becouse like he said,this government cant give the solution about Kosovo so he deicided to pronounce new elections 11 may in Serbia.But the real reson is that Kostunica whant to be the boss of the state and to have all political power in his hands...

new Kosovo tease trailer
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=77723&newsChannel=worldNews

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080308&t=2&i=3448613&w=&r=2008-03-08T195357Z_01_L08705359_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080308&t=2&i=3448614&w=&r=2008-03-08T195357Z_01_L08705359_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[hajduk]

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080308&t=2&i=3448616&w=192&r=2008-03-08T195357Z_01_L08705359_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:launchArticleSlideshow();)

[wogboy]

Tadic and Kostunica are both reformers. If you notice, what they want is the return of Kosovo to "protectorate" status, and hence the argument for UN 1244. They differ in regards to the intensity they wish to achieve this outcome. In this regard, I see Tadic as rather spineless. A donkey boy of the West. Kostunica is blunt, expressionless but definately more strategic.

The Radicals are the only party who I believe would pursue a different policy on Kosovo, and one of partition.

[hajduk]

Tadic and Kostunica are both reformers. If you notice, what they want is the return of Kosovo to "protectorate" status, and hence the argument for UN 1244. They differ in regards to the intensity they wish to achieve this outcome. In this regard, I see Tadic as rather spineless. A donkey boy of the West. Kostunica is blunt, expressionless but definately more strategic.

The Radicals are the only party who I believe would pursue a different policy on Kosovo, and one of partition.yeah but,both of them a neo-liberal assholes Tadic whant to make privatization and to sell all state propertyes to world capitalists and Kostunica only whant the power,radicals like Nikolic whant that Serbia become Russian colony and Kosovo is the argument to do that so...

[hajduk]

more tease trailers about Kosovo blockbuster


http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=78251
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=78332http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080318&t=2&i=3563556&w=&r=2008-03-18T120338Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555982&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555985&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3556001&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3556000&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE3 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555984&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE4 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555983&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE5 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555980&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE6 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555981&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE7 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555986&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE8 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555995&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE9 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555991&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE10 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555989&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE11 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555999&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE12 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555988&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE14 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555998&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE15 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555997&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE16 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555996&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE17 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555990&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE18 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080317&t=2&i=3555993&w=&r=2008-03-17T230922Z_01_L1728631_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE19 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[hajduk]

the latest news says that U.S.A. will give the wheaphon to Kosovari so they can defend himself from Serbs and Russia will give the wheaphon to Serbs so they can attack Kosovari

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080324&t=2&i=3626173&w=&r=2008-03-24T173336Z_01_L24525675_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080323&t=2&i=3616025&w=&r=2008-03-23T133219Z_01_L2346476_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

[hajduk]

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080331&t=2&i=3705884&w=&r=2008-03-31T145359Z_01_L31204269_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:nextPhoto%28%29;)

"Kosovo is part of Serbia, so parliamentary and local elections will be held in Kosovo,"

Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic

[hajduk]

Kosovo adopted a state constitution on Wednesday, which will come into force in mid-June when the United Nations completes a handover of powers to the newly independent country and its EU overseers.

Parliament endorsed the document without a vote, almost two months after the 90-percent Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia with Western backing.

It declares Kosovo a secular republic, "an independent, sovereign, democratic, unique and indivisible state".

Kosovo expresses its determination "to build a future ... as a free, democratic and peace-loving country that will be a homeland to all of its citizens", the text reads.

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080409&t=2&i=3820002&w=&r=2008-04-09T132511Z_01_L09274669_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (javascript:nextPhoto();)

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080402&t=2&i=3732834&w=450&r=2008-04-02T103028Z_01_PRI01_RTRIDSP_0_WARCRIMES-KOSOVO A Kosovo Albanian man walks past a giant poster showing Kosovo's former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj with the slogan reading "Kosovo welcomes you", in the Kosovo capital Pristina April 2. 2008. The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague will hand down its judgment in the case against Haradinaj on Thursday. Haradinaj, a Kosovo Albanian who served as a regional commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the 1998-99 war with Serb forces before becoming prime minister, is charged with responsibility for torture, murder, rape and deportation.




The constitution will come into force on June 15, when the U.N. mission that has run the former Serbian province since 1999 is due to hand over its remaining powers to Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders and new EU-led supervisors.

But questions remain over how the transition will proceed, after Serb ally Russia last year blocked the adoption of a U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the EU takeover and a U.N. plan for independence.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, who fought in the 1998-99 guerrilla war against Serbia, told parliament: "The constitution clearly defines our hope, our optimism, our belief and our rights, which are strongly supported and keep us united."

President Fatmir Sejdiu appealed to Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs to accept the document, and to become a "bridge" between Kosovo and "our neighbour, Serbia".

[hajduk]

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=80590
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=80364

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080403&t=2&i=3754691&w=450&r=2008-04-03T163630Z_01_PRI01_RTRIDSP_0_WARCRIMES-KOSOVO Kosovo Albanians celebrate the decision by the U.N. war crimes tribunal to aquit from all charges former Prime minister Ramush Haradinaj and his co-fighter Idriz Balaj, in Pristina April 3, 2008. The U.N. war crimes tribunal cleared Kosovo's former prime minister on Thursday of charges of torturing and murdering Serbs in a 1998-99 war, but sentenced his uncle to six years in jail for mistreating prisoners. Haradinaj, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) considered a hero by Kosovo Albanians, was acquitted of war crimes and crimes against humanity after judges found prosecutors had failed to prove a deliberate campaign to kill and expel Serb civilians from Kosovo. REUTERS/Hazir Reka (KOSOVO)