South East Europe Online

Summer Universities in Mitrovica & Ohrid

2008-05-22T11:00:00.001-04:00

International Summer Universities in the Balkans.

The third edition of Mitrovica Summer Courses (MSC) and the fourth International Summer University Macedonia (ISUM) will be organized this year by SPARK (formerly ATA) and its local partners. These Summer Universities offer students - from local to international - the opportunity to participate in an exciting academic program.

Mitrovica Summer Courses 2008

SPARK together with its local partners, is currently preparing the third edition of the MSC which will be organized from the 12^th - 26^th of July 2008 in Mitrovica, Kosovo (1244). Intensive academic courses will be offered in the fields of international relations and conflict studies, among others. Rewarding each successful student with 3 ECTS. Each course will be taught by an international professor and a local co-professor. Additionally, for each course an assistant professor is appointed who will lead workshops and homework classes in the afternoons. All courses will be taught in English. In some courses, translation into Serbian will be provided. Around 150 students will participate and there is no tuition fee. Books, readers, accommodation, and food will be provided free of charge for local and students from South East Europe. Travel costs will be remunerated. For International Students food and accommodation can be provided for a modest price.: around 130 euro's in total for 2 weeks. Besides an extensive academic program, exciting leisure activities such as parties, excursions, public debates, field trips and more will be organized. The deadline for application is the 30^th of may 2008.

For more information please see: http://www.my-program.org & http://www.spark-online.org.

International Summer University Macedonia 2008

ISUM 2008 will be held from the 7^th of till the 20^th of July. This year it will be organized in Ohrid, a beautiful resort also known as 'the pearl of the Balkans'. 12 courses will be offered in the fields of Law, Economics, Business & Public Administration, Gender, Education Science and Teacher Training. Students who successfully complete their course receive 3 ECTS. Each course will be taught by an International professor, a local co-professor and a student assistant. 320 local and international students will participate. A small participation fee of 50 Euros is required but scholarships will be provided for 80 applicants from South East Europe. The scholarship will cover travel expenses, accommodation, and food. Besides the rich educational program, a diverse recreational program with activities such as sports, excursions, course lunches, field trips and parties will be organized.

For more information please see: http://www.spark-online.org

Summer Universities in Mitrovica & Ohrid

2008-05-22T10:59:00.001-04:00

International Summer Universities in the Balkans.

Mitrovica Summer Courses 2008

For more information please see: http://www.my-program.org & http://www.spark-online.org.

International Summer University Macedonia 2008

For more information please see: http://www.spark-online.org

Will the Real Serbia Please Stand Up?

2008-04-23T09:19:00.001-04:00

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW BRIEFING

Will the Real Serbia Please Stand Up?

Belgrade/Brussels, 23 April 2008: The international community should refrain from counter-productive intervention in Serbia's 11 May elections, including offering to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA).

Will the Real Serbia Please Stand up?,* the latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the situation after Kosovo's independence and ahead of parliamentary and local elections. The vote is unlikely to change Belgrade's policy towards the new state, even in the unlikely event a pro-Western government comes to power.

"Public anger over Western support for Kosovo's independence is such that any attempt by the EU or US to support pro-Western parties prior to the elections risks strengthening the nationalist vote", says James Lyon, Crisis Group Senior Adviser.

Kosovo's independence declaration on 17 February 2008 sent shock waves through Serbia's politics and society. Rioting led to attacks on nine Western embassies, destruction of foreign property and looting. The government fell on 10 March, split over whether to pursue a nationalist or pro-Western path. Belgrade's efforts to create a de facto partition of Kosovo's north threaten the new state's territorial integrity, challenge deployment of EU missions there and complicate implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan.

There is a real likelihood the Serb Radical Party will win the elections and form a coalition government. If that happens, Euro-Atlantic integration would halt, and nationalists could be expected to support a more belligerent response in Kosovo, including use of low-level violence by Kosovo Serbs. The nationalists might also encourage Republika Srpska to leave Bosnia-Herzegovina and meddle in Macedonia. A backlash against pro-Western activists and increased media repression could likewise be anticipated.

Yet Serbia could also remain without a government until September. Kostunica would stay caretaker premier and continue to define Kosovo policy. He is likely to play a significant role in forming a new government, perhaps even as premier once again.

At best, the West will have limited influence for many months. Meanwhile, any attempt before the 11 May elections to pressure or induce Belgrade into more cooperation risks strengthening the nationalist vote.

"In the run-up to 11 May, Brussels and Washington would be well served to lower levels of rhetorical support for the pro-Western parties", says Sabine Freizer, Crisis Group's Europe Program Director. "In particular, EU leaders should not appease nationalist forces by offering a Stabilisation and Association Agreement before Serbia has met the long-standing condition for it: full cooperation with the Hague Tribunal".

Contacts: Andrew Stroehlein (Brussels) +32 (0) 2 541 1635
Kimberly Abbott (Washington) +1 202 785 1601
To contact Crisis Group media please click here
*Read the full Crisis Group briefing on our website: http://www.crisisgroup.org

The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation covering some 60 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

International law experts debate Kosovo independence legality

2008-04-15T06:04:00.001-04:00

International law experts debate Kosovo independence legality

Source: VOA Albanian

Tuesday, 15 April 2008

Kosovo's independence debated
One of the arguments of those who reject the independence of Kosovo is that it violates the international law based on the UN Resolution 1244. However, a group of international law experts who think otherwise is discussing the issue in a conference organized by The American Society of International Law in Washington DC. The legality of the declaration of Kosovo independence on February 17 has been discussed when it occurred, and it is still being discussed in the international debates. However, what effects will this act have in the future of the international law?
The question has been discussed by The American Society of International Law whilst a thorough lecture to this question was given by the internationally well-known lawyer of international law, Richard Goldstone. Mr. Goldstone, who was a former chairman of an investigative committee on Kosovo’s future status in 1999, said “Even at that time when Kosovo future status was being discussed ‘we unanimously recommended the supervised independence for Kosovo’ because we knew there was neither any legality nor any fairness to ask Kosovars to return under the Belgrade rule, after considering the fact how they were heinously treated, mass murdered and ethnically cleansed by Serbia.” The preposition was rejected by Russia which has demanded to preserve the sovereignty of Serbia over Kosovo. Mr. Goldstone explains that "here is a contradiction because while Russia was demanding to preserve Serbia’s sovereignty over Kosovo, simultaneously Russia was supporting the UN resolution to implement the deployment of the UN administration to run Kosovo."

The resolution 1244, which has become the basic law of the UN mission in Kosovo, was one of the main discussions at the conference. Paul Williams, a professor of the international law at the American University in Washington DC, said that “Resolution 1244 does not preserve the sovereignty of Serbia over Kosovo. If we make a thorough analysis of the UN Resolution 1244, it does not state that the Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has to be asked or decide over the future status of Kosovo on whether it will be independent or not”, added Paul Williams, a noted professor of international law.

According to Professor Williams, “the declaration of Kosovo independence does not set a precedent, because in the last 15 years we have encountered at least 26 cases of countries that declared independence and became sovereign countries without any agreement with the country they lived under, and the Republic of Kosovo is among them.” John Bollinger, the legal attorney at the US State Department who presented his argument during the discussion said that ”the United States had tried to reach a new resolution over Kosovo but unfortunately it was not possible due to objections from Russia.” He does not agree that Kosovo declared its formal independence in a unilateral way. “This is not a unilateral act but it is a coordinated act by the effort of a large number of countries that worked on achieving this solution, the independence of Kosovo,” added Bollinger, the legal attorney at the US State Department.

The act of Kosovo independence continues to be discussed in various circles. Additionally, one of the experts said that Kosovars will have to work hard to fight all the myths created following the independence of Kosovo. Professor Williams said to VOA that the government of Kosovo should not ignore this debate. “This is a serious debate which the government of Kosovo must participate in a very active way. There are a few myths being created that reject the international recognition of Kosovo independence. Among them is that Resolution 1244 does not permit independence and that the independence is a unilateral act and so forth. All of these are myths, fabricated by the chauvinistic leadership of Serbia that ignores to understand and learn the international law and resolutions,” said Professor Williams.

New Kosova Report - International law experts debate Kosovo independence legality

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Kosovo's new constitution: Egyptians have rights too | FP Passport

2008-04-10T09:20:00.001-04:00

Kosovo's new constitution: Egyptians have rights too

Wed, 04/09/2008 - 3:36pm

Armend Nimani/AFP/Getty Images

Kosovo is one step closer to full statehood. Today, its assembly officially adopted a new constitution declaring Kosovo a democratic, secular, multiethnic state. Right from the start, the constitution makes clear that Kosovo will not be partitioned nor will it be joining a Greater Albania. From Article 1:

The Republic of Kosovo is an independent, sovereign, democratic, unique and indivisible state . . . The Republic of Kosovo shall have no territorial claims against, and shall seek no union with, any State or part of any State."

Per recommendations from U.N. Special Envoy to Kosovo Marti Ahtisaari, the constitution also includes an entire chapter spelling out the rights of and provisions for Kosovo’s minority groups, including parliamentary seat allotment. Twenty of the assembly’s 120 seats shall be reserved for minorities, each of whom are guaranteed a respective minimum number of seats as follows:

the Roma community, one (1) seat; the Ashkali community, one (1) seat; the Egyptian community, one (1) seat; and one (1) additional seat will be awarded to either the Roma, the Ashkali or the Egyptian community with the highest overall votes; the Bosnian community, three (3) seats; the Turkish community, two (2) seats; and the Gorani community, one (1) seat. . ."

Bet you didn’t know that Kosovo even had an ethnic Egyptian community.

Pieter Feith, head of the EU-led supervisory office in Kosovo, has already approved of the new constitution, but Kosovo's U.N. mission (UNMIK) has been less than eager to react. In 1999, U.N. resolution 1244 granted UNMIK the authority to administer Kosovo until the Security Council could agree on a more lasting solution. But because Russia has blocked all efforts to pass a new Kosovo resolution, UNMIK now lacks the mandate to actually hand over their authority to Kosovo’s fledgling government, new constitution or not.

Kosovo's new constitution: Egyptians have rights too | FP Passport

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Abandoned house

2008-04-09T11:20:00.001-04:00

Abandoned village 2, originally uploaded by haxhinexha.

in a Kosovo abandoned village.

Lubinje e Poshtme

2008-04-09T11:18:00.001-04:00

Lubinje e Poshtme, originally uploaded by haxhinexha.

Kosovo village

Albania - Yours to discover!

2008-04-09T06:05:00.001-04:00

Embedded Video

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NATO, UN and Serbia Engage in High Stakes Game Over Kosovo

2008-03-26T05:17:00.001-04:00

NATO, UN and Serbia Engage in High Stakes Game Over Kosovo

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The UN and NATO accuse the Serbian government of inciting the violence in Mitrovica

Tensions continue on the streets of Mitrovica a week after rioting Serbs clashed with police and NATO troops in the town on Kosovo's northern border. DW-WORLD.DE talked to a Balkans expert about the latest developments.

The violence in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica last week was the worst since Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority declared independence on Feb. 17. Hundreds of United Nations peacekeepers and NATO soldiers pulled out of the frontier region that abuts Serbia after coming under fire from automatic weapons and hand grenades. A Ukrainian police officer was killed during the unrest.

Three days after the withdrawal, the UN and NATO mounted an operation to retake a courthouse taken over by ethnic Serb protesters and restore military control over the northern border region around Mitrovica. The town is now once again under UN control.

In the days since the violence, the rhetoric coming from Belgrade has increased in its bellicosity as accusations of armed provocation fly between the Serbian government and the Western powers in Kosovo.

DW-WORLD.DE spoke to Professor Stefan Wolff, a political scientist and director of the Center for International Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution at Nottingham University, about the latest developments.

DW-WORLD.DE: Who is behind the current unrest in northern Kosovo? Is it public anger or do you think this violence is orchestrated by organized powers with an agenda?

Stefan Wolff: The violence in northern Kosovo over the past several weeks is both an expression of public anger by local Serbs and something that is at least encouraged by Belgrade. Similar to the violence that happened in the immediate aftermath of Kosovo's declaration of independence when the American and other Western embassies were targeted, the government in Belgrade is not doing enough to send a strong message to the rioters, nor does, for that matter, the Serb Orthodox Church. Quite clearly, the resulting instability serves Serbia's, and to some extent Russia's, agenda well, offering, as it were, proof for the claim that Kosovo's independence is the source of unrest and insecurity.

What is the goal of those who are behind or are carrying out these violent protests?

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The northern region was soon reclaimed by UN forces

Many of those participating in the violence undoubtedly feel very strongly about Kosovo and the fact that Kosovo's independence has no basis in international law and is a violation of Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Having said that, those people are also deluding themselves somewhat in believing that any other "solution" would have brought any more stability or that their violence will affect any change for the better.

Attacks on the UN in northern Kosovo, or on Western embassies in Belgrade, merely confirm to Kosovo Albanians and many others beyond Kosovo -- and in my opinion wrongly -- that peaceful coexistence with Serbs and Serbia is very difficult to achieve. Making things difficult for the UN, the EU, NATO and other international organizations in Kosovo and the region is ultimately a futile strategy that may pay off for some politicians in the short term but will harm Serbs and Serbia as a whole in the long term. Thus was the case with [former Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic, who built a reputation on "standing up" against the West. The sooner Serbs realize that Kosovo was lost some 20 years ago when its autonomy was revoked and Milosevic and his allies brutally asserted their control, the sooner they can move on with building a viable, democratic, European state.

Are we watching the beginnings of a new conflict in the Balkans?

It is unlikely that the situation in Kosovo itself will escalate into a new conflict in the Balkans, but in combination with the instability that Macedonia is experiencing in the wake of the fall of its government and the increasing belligerence of Serbs in Bosnia, it is difficult to see how the region would achieve greater stability in the near future. The strong international presence in the region will hopefully prevent anything on the scale of the wars of the 1990s, but similar to the events then, we must be realistic about the limitations of organizations like the EU and NATO to resolve the self-determination conflicts that have persisted since the break-up of Yugoslavia. The best we can hope for, at the moment at least, is effective containment.

The UN has put parts of northern Kosovo back under military control. How can Kosovo hope to be an independent state when its government can be so easily over-ridden?

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: NATO and UN troops came under attack from armed Serbs

The problem with northern Kosovo is that this region has never been under any kind of control from Pristina since the late 1980s. After the end of NATO's humanitarian intervention in 1999 the area around Mitrovica became a military sector of its own, and gradually Belgrade established its own control through its links with local Serbs, paying, for example, all local administrators a salary from Belgrade in addition to what they received from the United Nations Mission in Kosovo [UNMIK]. Belgrade also discouraged local Serbs from participating in elections in Kosovo and from taking up their reserved seats in the Kosovo Assembly.

This has created a situation in which we have almost complete segregation of Serbs in the north from Albanians. While close links between Belgrade and Mitrovica exist, these are links that Belgrade can now exploit in its strategy to effectively partition Kosovo. This has, so far, been resisted strongly by the international community, and it is difficult to see that this position will change any time soon.

So who is actually in control in Kosovo?

Formally, the UN remains in charge, but as we have seen recently, it depends heavily on NATO's military muscle to assert its control. This gives more and more weight to NATO in Kosovo, and through NATO's member states to the EU, which has formally committed to playing a major role in supervising and facilitating Kosovo's transition to full independent statehood.

NATO has threatened to come down hard in Kosovo. What could this mean? Where could NATO's power be directed and against whom? What would it achieve and what could be the consequences?

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: NATO will crack down in response to further attacks

If there is more violence of the kind recently experienced in Mitrovica, NATO is clearly able to respond swiftly and decisively in restoring law and order. More importantly, NATO needs to assert full control of Kosovo's borders to prevent an influx of radical extremists from Serbia bent on destabilizing the situation further.

At the same time, NATO will need to make sure that any unrest in Kosovo does not spread to other volatile areas of the region, such as Bosnia and Macedonia. It is highly unlikely that there will be prolonged and open hostilities with Serbian forces, but there is always a chance that localized violence might occur especially in border areas. The worst case scenario would be that, following parliamentary elections in Serbia in May, a new government deliberately provokes such incidents. This would be a vey dangerous scenario, and an unwise strategy for any government to follow.

What effect is the current unrest likely to have in the wider Balkan region? Is there any chance that the unrest will spread beyond the region's borders?

We have already seen the negative effects of Kosovo's independence in the region: Bosnian Serbs have, unsurprisingly, become more assertive about their own aspirations of eventual unification with Serbia, and even though the Serbian government itself has kept relatively quiet in this respect, it is an open secret that many politicians and ordinary people in Serbia would welcome any developments that brought Bosnian Serbs closer to them.

The collapse of the coalition government in Macedonia has once again raised the specter of further separatist violence there as well. If anything positive has come from the recent unrest, it is NATO's obvious determination not to tolerate any kind of violence that would put into question the borders that exist now or undermine the constitutional frameworks that were put in place in Bosnia in 1995 and in Macedonia after 2001.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Separatists in the Caucasus apply pressure on Russia

On the other hand, international effects are more difficult to gauge. While several separatist movements -- for example in the Caucasus and in Moldova -- have intensified their rhetoric in the wake of Kosovo's declaration, and its subsequent recognition by so far over 30 states, it is important not to overestimate the "Kosovo effect" --separatist movements existed in these areas before, and they are unlikely to receive any greater degree of international recognition now than they did before.

Could Kosovo's declaration of independence be linked to the pro-independence protests in Tibet? Where could this lead? Could there be a knock-on effect all around the world where separatist organizations and oppressed minorities rise up, emboldened by the Kosovo declaration?

What goes for the South Caucasus and Moldova, equally applies to Tibet and other separatist conflicts. The unrest in Tibet is much more closely related to the international attention that China receives now in light of it hosting the Olympic Games this summer.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Unrest in Tibet is unlikely to be linked to Kosovo

This is not to say that protesters in Tibet may not have good reason to protest against China, but it is equally a reality -- and a sad one -- that international media attention increases with the level of violence present. This was the case with Kosovo in the late 1990s, with Darfur since 2003, and with both of the Palestinian intifadas.

In this sense, it would be wrong to blame any other violence and unrest merely on Kosovo. We must not forget that it still takes political leaders to decide on a path of violence and their supporters to follow them before we can see the kind of violence that Tibet has experienced again of late -- and this is true for separatists and the states they challenge alike.

If this is the start of a wave of empowered separatist uprisings, who could be next to demand their independence?

Everyone who wants independence probably has demanded it already, and several times over. There have been almost 80 separatist movements worldwide since the 1950s which pursued their goals with violence. At the moment, we have about 25 active armed movements and another 50 or so who pursue their aims by peaceful means. What matters is not whether they declare or demand their independence, but rather how the international community reacts to this.

Short of consensual separation, as was the case with Czechoslovakia, for example, it is unlikely that any declarations of independence would be met with widespread recognition. Turkey is the only state to have recognized Northern Cyprus, and not even Armenia has so far recognized Nagorno-Karabakh even though it fought a long and bloody war with Azerbaijan over this area.

Thus, Kosovo is unique in that its declaration of independence has been followed by significant international recognition. This is unlikely to be the case in relation to almost every other separatist movement. As a consequence, states challenged by separatists, as well as the international community, need to continue looking for other ways to resolve the conflicts that result from these demands. This demands vision, skill, and determination on the part of local political leaders and the international community, yet these qualities are all too often missing when personal agendas turn legitimate political struggles into a tug-of-war over personal power, status and wealth.

Interview: Nick Amies

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The Israel of the Balkans

2008-03-21T05:53:00.001-04:00

"All we want is to reduce the Albanian population to a manageable level." – Zoran Andjelkovic, former Serbian governor of Kosovo

Genocide is the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." – United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

The State of Israel is divided on the Kosovo question: should the world's newest country be recognized? Some, like former Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, worry that Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia might encourage Palestinians to make the same move. The small Balkan state, however, may have more in common with Israel than with the West Bank and Gaza.

Israelis, as Amir Mizroch notes in the Jerusalem Post, have excellent relations with the Kosovars. "Israel has an interest in helping to establish a moderate, secular Muslim state friendly to Jerusalem and Washington in the heart of southeast Europe," he writes. Indeed, Kosovo is neither an enemy state nor a jihad state. Its brand of Islam is heavily Sufi, which is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Wahhabism and Salafism that inspire Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Kosovo doesn't belong to the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis. On the contrary, Kosovo has thrown in its lot with the West, and especially with the United States. Serbia's breakaway province is perhaps the most pro-American country in all of Europe. Bill Clinton is lionized there as a liberator – a main boulevard through the capital Prishtina is named after him – just as George H. W. Bush and his son George W. Bush are hailed as saviors in Iraqi Kurdistan. It should be no surprise then that Mizroch quotes an Israeli official who says Israel most likely will recognize Kosovo if its "influential friends" in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and France, decide to do so.

Concern that Kosovo's independence might trigger a similar declaration from the West Bank to Spain's Basque country to Chechnya and beyond is understandable but perhaps overwrought. Bosnia declared independence without unleashing a domino effect beyond Yugoslavia. So did Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Montenegro declared independence from Serbia less than two years ago. It's doubtful the Palestinians even noticed. Hardly anyone else did. In any case, it had no effect on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The irrelevance of Kosovo to the Arab-Israeli conflict is underscored by the fact that not a single Arab country has recognized Kosovo. The only Muslim countries which so far have bothered are Turkey, Malaysia, Senegal, Albania, and Afghanistan. The governments of all these countries are, to one extent or another, either moderate, in the pro-Western camp, or both. All aside from Albania have sizeable ethnic minorities of their own. Turkey especially frets about its own separatists – the Kurds in the east – but still went ahead and recognized Kosovo almost instantly.

Many in Kosovo are well aware that they have more in common with Israel than with the West Bank and Gaza. "Kosovars used to identify with the Palestinians because we Albanians are Muslims and Christians and we saw Serbia and Israel both as usurpers of land," a prominent Kosovar recent told journalist Stephen Schwartz. "Then we looked at a map and woke up. Israelis have a population of six million, their backs to the sea, and 300 million Arab enemies. Albanians have a total population of eight million, our backs to the sea, and 200 million Slav enemies. So why should we identify with the Arabs?"

"Many Palestinians also nurtured a similar sympathy for [genocidal Serbian dictator Slobodan] Milosevic," Schwartz himself wrote in Middle East Quarterly. "What may be considered the most surrealistic gesture during the entire decade of recent Balkan wars occurred six months after NATO's bombing of Serbia: on December 1, 1999, the Palestinian Authority (PA) invited Milosevic to Bethlehem to celebrate the Orthodox Christmas. News of this invitation, although more or less ignored in the West, was reported with banner headlines in the Balkans. An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said that if Milosevic accepted the invitation he would be arrested on arrival, since Israel, as a U.N. member, is obliged to fulfill arrest orders issued by The Hague tribunal, which had indicted him. The PA, not being a U.N. member, was under no such obligation. And the PA was not the only Palestinian element to vacillate over Kosovo. Earlier in 1999, the Palestinian Islamic extremist Hamas movement issued a statement, denouncing U.S. intervention to settle the Kosovo crisis as 'hiding under the slogans of human rights to impose its power in the Balkans.' Hamas thus echoed the allegations of Milosevic's own media, as well as the Russians and various leftists worldwide."

Palestinians weren't the only Arabs to side with Milosevic against their fellow Muslims. Milosevic also had close ties to Saddam Hussein, as did Vojislav Koštunica's democratic government that replaced him. Ed Bradley reported in 2003 that as much as three billion dollars worth of weapons, explosives, and equipment – including equipment that would bolster Iraq's arsenal of Scud missiles – was shipped by the Serb-controlled Yugoslav arms export agency to Iraq before interception by Croatian authorities.

Israelis and Kosovars don't merely line up on the same Western side geopolitically. They share a moral and ethical temperament with each other, one they also share with the Kurds of Iraq. All are ethnic minorities in their respective regions that wish to be left alone on their own land, untroubled by regional ethnic majorities that wish to suppress or eject them.

90 percent of Kosovars are ethnic Albanians. They lay no claim to proper Serbian land. They have no wish to seize Serbia's capital Belgrade and ethnically cleanse it of Serbs, nor to rule over Serbs. They want sovereignty over themselves, not over others. They merely want what the other countries of the former Yugoslavia have managed to hammer out for themselves.

While almost the entire world agrees that the Palestinians must someday have a state of their own, Israel's right to exist is still hotly debated in some quarters, just as Kosovo's right to exist is denied by many and likely will continue to be denied. No one argues about any Arab state's right to exist, or about the right of Serbian or Slavic states to exist. Kosovo has joined a small club.

If Albania were using Kosovo as a launching pad for a conquest of Belgrade, the Serbs would have a case for occupying their land, just as the Israelis occupied the West Bank and Gaza after a multi-state Arab assault with destructive intent in 1967. Albanians generally, and Kosovars in particular, have no such designs in store for the Serbs.

Belgrade's current claim to Kosovo is dubious in any case. Serbia only "owned" Kosovo when Milosevic revoked the autonomy it previously enjoyed before Yugoslavia came apart. The land should be theirs, Serbs say, because Kosovo Polje is a crucial place in their history and in the emotionally-charged myths that make up Serbian nationalism. Kosovo Polje is important because Serbian leader Czar Lazar lost a war there to the Turks in the nearby Field of Blackbirds in 1389. The Arab case for their right to Tel Aviv is stronger than this.

Unlike the Jews of World War II Europe, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have a state they could move to – Albania – to flee genocide and oppression. They're like the post-1948 Jews of the Middle East who could escape to the state of Israel. This does not, however, mean they should have to.

About the Author

Michael J. Totten is a freelance writer and blogger who has reported from Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Cyprus, Turkey, and Israel. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, LA Weekly, Reason, and numerous other publications.

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Reassuring Kosovo's Serbs

2008-03-20T11:02:00.001-04:00

Reassuring Kosovo's Serbs

The sky has not fallen since Kosovo declared independence, as some predicted it would. The task now is to prevent the ethnic divide widening

Sabine Freizer

March 20, 2008 7:00 AM | Printable version

One month after Kosovo declared independence, the sky has not fallen. As countries have one by one recognised the new state, the predictions of apocalypse have come to naught. Despite the violence in Mitrovica on March 17, massive displacement and regional instability that many said would occur simply never materialised.

The Pandora's box of further independence claims by entities as widespread as South Ossetia, Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, the Basque region, Scotland and Flanders was not flung open. The international order did not collapse. The US and Europe are still able to talk with Russia.

Most importantly, in Kosovo itself, the new government has reached out to the Serb minority, adopting multi-ethnic state symbols including a new flag. It is passing laws and finalising a new constitution. The EU has acted with remarkable unity. Even in the face of a few member states' hesitancy to recognise Kosovo, the EU approved the deployment of a large rule of law mission and a special representative. Nato is continuing to perform its assigned security tasks, and the UN is supporting governance in advance of turning these functions over to the Kosovans and the EU representatives. A multinational donors' conference is planned for June, and a number of foreign donors have already pledged major financial support.

Of course, it is still early days, and there is ample reason for caution. The violence in Mitrovica, involving Serb attacks on UN and Nato forces as they removed peaceful protestors who had occupied a regional court and led to at least one death, coincides with the four-year anniversary of rioting by ethnic Albanian mobs in which 19 died, hundreds of Serb homes were destroyed, and dozens of churches and monasteries were damaged. Kosovo's Serbs plan to commemorate the deplorable events of March 2004 with more large scale demonstrations. Unlike in 1999 however, most of Kosovo's Albanians and Serbs both now know that violence will do nothing to help their cause.

These ethnic divides are at the heart of the challenge for a future democratic Kosovo. Kosovo's Albanians and Serbs simply do not trust each other, they do not communicate, and they do not give the same meaning to events. The situation is obviously not helped by Belgrade encouraging Serbs to boycott Kosovo's new governing institutions, including the courts, police, hospitals and universities. These are precisely the forums where normal citizens have the chance to interact and overcome their differences.

The new Kosovo leadership also needs to be sensitive to the concerns of its Serb minority and realise that it is going to take time to integrate them into its institutions and society. The March 17 violence in Mitrovica shows how difficult this will be. While resisting an expansion of Serbian links with northern Kosovo and the Serb enclaves, Kosovans should move toward decentralisation of local governance and the creation of a new municipality for the majority Serb area of north Mitrovica.

The biggest tension line in Kosovo today runs along the Ibar river, north of which Kosovan Serbs are insisting on maintaining allegiance to Belgrade as if they were still citizens of Serbia. Serious violent incidents over the past month occurred here not only at the court but also at border crossing points between Serbia and Kosovo, manned by the Kosovo police service and the UN. Serbs do not want the border to be formalised because this would put an end to their illusion of living within Serbia and close down lucrative trafficking routes.

The international community - the UN, EU and Nato - should coordinate its message to Kosovan Serbs and make it very clear: we will protect your rights, but within the borders of Kosovo. The UN and Nato should seek to effectively control the border, police stations, courts and jails, and cooperate in reshaping their northern presence to aid transition and gradually introduce the EU rule-of-law mission (Eulex), first at border and customs posts. This will only work if the internationals have a comprehensive coordinated policy.

The world could also more actively embrace the fledgling state. A month on, 27 countries have already recognised independent Kosovo, including 16 EU member states. The US, EU member states, and Kosovo itself, should push for more bilateral recognitions to increase stability.

As for relations between Serbia and Kosovo, we need to take a long view. Some years from now, both countries will likely become member states of the EU. True, Serbia's upcoming elections may determine that Belgrade will take a nationalist detour first, but in the end, they will get there. As partners within a broader union, the natural advantages of economic, political and social ties between these two nations will help to overcome the tensions and animosity that manifested themselves over the past decades. No doubt, the past few weeks, despite some disturbances, have moved Europe closer to that end goal.

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Albania: once and future glories

2008-03-18T05:16:00.001-04:00

Albania: once and future glories

Jeremy Seal

Last Updated: 5:47PM GMT 17/03/2008

Albania is rich in ancient ruins that could pave the way to prosperity for the country's burgeoning tourist industry, writes Jeremy Seal.

Getty Images

On a promontory high above the Vjose river valley, among olive trees and turban-topped Dervish graves, we came to the ruins of Byllis. We explored the city's stout Roman walls, its agora, theatre and bathhouse, and pottered about the column-strewn foundations of late-antique basilicas. Glimpses of mosaic – a figure milking a goat, or feeding a hunting dog – hinted at the magnificent pavements beneath the protective covering of sand.

It might have frustrated us that – this being Albania – such mosaics could not be displayed for lack of funds. Even so, lunching at a nearby restaurant on pork chops sprinkled with oregano and washed down with a robust local wine, the overall feeling was exhilaration that we had the place – restaurant, view, archaeological site and even, it sometimes seemed, the entire oddball country – all to ourselves.

Albania's abundant archaeology has been recognised since the likes of Lord Byron and Edward Lear discovered this atmospheric Balkan backwater in the 19th century. Even in the 1980s, with the country deep in communist isolation, Westerners holidaying on adjacent Greek Corfu returned bright-eyed and tantalised after day visits to the evocative coastal site at Butrint.

Now, 10 years after pyramid investment schemes bankrupted the population, it is Albania's sites, citadels and monuments – Greco-Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Venetian – that are nourishing tourism's very first shoots. Improvements to the appalling roads have yet to reduce travelling times, with the 140 miles between Tirana and Sarandë taking an all-too-typical seven hours, but it is now possible to explore Albania in something approaching a comprehensive, coherent and comfortable fashion.

Much of the credit must fall to archaeology tour specialist Andante – one of only two British operators currently featuring the country – and its guide lecturer, Butrint-based archaeologist Oliver Gilkes, who is steeped in Albanian culture and history. Gilkes took us to barely visited sites like the hillside fortifications in the Selo Valley, the domed monastery church at Mesopotam, and the remarkably preserved theatre at Hadrianopolis.

He also showed a knack for turning up memorable cameos from Albanian life, leading us to the restaurant in the Greek-speaking village of Terihat just as a gathering of 30 family and friends, arranged in exact order of seniority, joined in a haunting polyphonic chant to celebrate the 80th birthday of the village man at the table head.

In the government-designated "museum city" of Berat, handsome stuccoed merchants' houses perched above the river, and white beards read their Korans in the late-Ottoman mosques. Bats stirred the dank air in the crag-top citadel's cavernous cistern, and a display collection of exquisite icons by medieval master painters including Onufri, known for the shade of red particular to his work, adorned the nearby St Mary church.

From the window of my room at the faded Tomori, I admired the town square's vehicle assortment – bicycles and a horse-drawn cart, dodgem cars and a period-piece steam roller rusting in a parking space, flanked by shiny Mercedes – before retiring to read by the bare light of a ceiling bulb. My wake-up call took the form of a sharp rap on the door, and for a moment I was back in this hotel's communist heyday.

And so to Byliss, a site barely known beyond Albania, though the approach road through the Mallakaster Hills proved more a reminder of Albanian dereliction. There were rusting oil derricks, blighted housing blocks, abandoned factory buildings and state farms. Written-off cars were stacked at the roadside and unfinished concrete constructions rose alongside the country's 700,000 communist-era concrete bunkers. To the first rule of archaeology – that structural condition is what distinguishes ancient sites from modern buildings – Albania may just prove the exception.

But not always. Where the road led into the mountains and over the Muzinë Pass, we were suddenly among meadows and forests of walnut trees where stone churches perched on picturesque crags. A spring known as Syri I Kalter (the Blue Eye) rises to pool among a glade of plane trees (before flowing on to feed a hydro-electric station formerly named after Stalin).

At the isthmus site of Butrint, where we wandered from the Classical theatre and the columned sixth-century baptistery to the 17th-century forts of the Venetians, it was as if every age had left its mark. We circumvented the momentous walls and climbed through a gateway to picnic on fruit and savoury pastries in the grounds of the superbly displayed museum.

The armaments museum at Gjirokastër, where they had not got round to dismantling the communist propaganda, had an appeal all of its own.

Grim cell blocks remembered the torment meted out by King Zog's imperialists, while a statue showed Mother Albania extending an authoritative finger to banish cringing representations of fascism and religion from the country. An American jet, forced down by the communists in 1957, mouldered on an outer terrace.

Elsewhere, however, visible efforts were being made to save the town, a World Heritage Site since 2005. Gjirokastër possesses a unique stock of late-Ottoman mansions which are now crumbling beneath the weight of poverty, neglect and massive stone roofs.

Elenita, a young woman from the town's conservation office, led us round the recently restored Zekate House where the painted family rooms and walnut wood screens, ornate ceilings and high balconies evoked the one-time decorousness of provincial life in this far-flung corner of empire.

The likes of Elenita, who proved more communicative and capable than many of her communist-moulded elders, suggested the human potential was there to save Gjirokastër, and hinted at a brighter Alabanian future. Tourists would help, too. And when a queue of buses disgorged hundreds of cruise-ship passengers near the great concrete plinth which had once been home to the statue of Enver Hoxha, Gjirokastër-born Communist tyrant, it was clear that a great many people – Elenita and Oliver Gilkes among them – were very happy indeed to see them.

Essentials

Andante Travels (01722 713800; www.andantetravels.co.uk) offers nine-day Albania tours in May and October at an all-inclusive cost of £1,850 per person.

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Bear convicted for theft of honey

2008-03-15T08:11:00.001-04:00

Bear convicted for theft of honey

By Paddy Clark
BBC News

Temptation was too great for the bear

The taste of honey was just too tempting for a bear in Macedonia, which repeatedly raided a beekeeper's hives.
Now it has a criminal record after a court found it guilty of theft and criminal damage.
But there was an empty dock in the court in the city of Bitola and no handcuffed bear, which was convicted in its absence.
The case was brought by the exasperated beekeeper after a year of trying vainly to protect his beehives.
For a while, he kept the animal away by buying a generator, lighting up the area, and playing thumping Serbian turbo-folk music.
But when the generator ran out of power and the music fell silent, the bear was back and the honey was gone once more.
"It attacked the beehives again," said beekeeper Zoran Kiseloski.
Because the animal had no owner and belonged to a protected species, the court ordered the state to pay for the damage to the hives - around $3,500 (£1,750; 2,238 euros).
The bear, meanwhile, remains at large - somewhere in Macedonia.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Bear convicted for theft of honey

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Bulgarian Music Idol 2 - Mariah Carey - Without You (Funny)

2008-03-12T18:38:00.001-04:00

Ken Lee

Massive Tree Planting in Macedonia

2008-03-12T11:44:00.000-04:00

Massive Tree Planting in Macedonia

"Plant Your Future" Logo

12 March 2008 Skopje _ Athletes, pop stars, actors, politicians and police in Macedonia are taking part in a massive tree planting campaign on Wednesday.

Thousands of people are pouring in to various pick up points from where they will be transported on buses, leaving every two hours, to 63 locations around the country where tree planting is underway.

The campaign, under the slogan "plant your future", was initially launched by local and international non-governmental organisations but has gained in momentum after the government gave its backing to the project at the beginning of the month.

The aim is to plant some 2.1 million trees across Macedonia on Wednesday - one to match each citizen residing in the country.

Wednesday has been designated a non-working day in order to achieve a greater response.

The start of the campaign was marked with a symbolic planting of a cherry tree, near the grave of the recently deceased pop icon, Tose Proeski who was killed in a car accident in Croatia on October 16 last year. His death shocked the country and there was a outpouring of emotion for several days after the tragedy. Read more at http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/6051/

The Jewish community has also announced it will plant 7200 trees to mach the number of Jews that perished during the fascist regime which occupied Macedonia during the Second World War.

In a sign of friendship, the country's border police together with colleagues from neighbouring states will plant trees along the main border crossings.

"We want to see Macedonia as a small oasis of forest," government spokesman Ivica Bocevski told media two weeks ago when he announced backing for the campaign.

The campaign is part of a bigger programme that envisages planting some 10 million trees by the end of 2008. Macedonia was hit by a series of wildfires that raged across the whole Balkans region during the summer of 2007.

The government has previously calculated a damage of over 60 million euros, but ecologists claim that the harm to the environment is in fact incalculable.

Organisers have said they would like to see this campaign in other Balkan countries as well.

Kosovo Isn’t the Problem, Serbia Is

2008-03-06T08:32:00.000-05:00

Kosovo Isn't the Problem, Serbia Is
Testimony of Vice President for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations Daniel Serwer before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

March 4, 2008

It is a pleasure to be here today to offer my personal views—not those of the U.S. Institute of Peace, which does not take positions on policy issues—on the challenges facing the United States and Europe in the aftermath of Kosovo's independence.

My main point is this: Kosovo isn't the problem, Serbia is. I will offer a policy on Serbia that departs from what we have been doing. I call it the Clear Path Forward, because it makes clear what Belgrade needs to do to make its way towards Europe.

Kosovars celebrate but have not misbehaved

Independence generated excitement and celebration in Kosovo, but its Albanian population—about 90 per cent of the total—has refrained from violence against minorities. Despite provocations, Kosovars have not sought, as some feared they might, to chase Serbs from the new state. This correct behavior needs to continue.

Kosovo needs massive assistance, but it also needs wise restraint to develop as a state. While providing international judges and prosecutors as well as police monitors, we need to be careful not to create dependency: politicians who feel no obligation to take on tough issues because they know the internationals will act. States need to make their own mistakes. We should intervene only to prevent the potentially fatal ones.

Belgrade is trying to turn back the clock

While Albanians celebrate, Serbs are protesting. Serb police supported rioters who burned UN and Kosovo police checkpoints near the now international border. Serbia's minister for Kosovo hailed these efforts as consonant with government policy, thus disrespecting UN Security Council resolution 1244, to which Belgrade often appeals, and causing Kosovo Serbs to ask him to resign. Young extremists attacked the U.S. and other embassies, left unguarded during a government-endorsed demonstration. There have also been riots outside Belgrade, as well as attacks on independent media.

The Serbian government is trying to turn back the clock. Parliament, where no Kosovar has sat since Milosevic deprived the province of autonomy almost 20 years ago, announced it had annulled the independence declaration and declared deployment of an EU mission to maintain rule of law unacceptable. The Supreme Court failed to act when the Serbian government struck Kosovars from the voter rolls to ensure approval of a new constitution prohibiting recognition of Kosovo's independence, but it quickly denounced the independence declaration as illegal.

The Prime Minister praised the youthful rioters after the U.S. embassy attack, accused the President of the United States of violence against Serbia and claimed, "As long as the Serbian people exist, Kosovo remains Serbia," no matter what its population wants. Serbia's ambassador to Washington has been recalled. Serbia's president has pledged he will never accept Kosovo independence. One of its leading bishops has called for the Serbian army and police to retake Kosovo, after rearming with Russian supplies. Belgrade has encouraged secession rumblings in the Serb half of Bosnia.

The situation in northern Kosovo is particularly dangerous. If NATO and the EU allow continued Serbian control there—as the UN and NATO have for nine years—there will be division along ethnic lines, with consequences for Bosnia and Macedonia. Pristina cannot assert sovereignty in the north without creating big problems; the EU and NATO need to do it on Pristina's behalf, blocking Belgrade's partition plans.

Serbia is the problem

Serbia, not Kosovo, is the problem in the Balkans.

Its leadership promised to hold on to Kosovo and cannot now deliver. By keeping the issue open, the prime minister aims to strengthen nationalists, whose most extreme political party is already the largest in the Serbian parliament, and slow Serbia's democratic transition. Belgrade's refusal to accept a sovereign Kosovo will limit its influence in international bodies and scare off foreign investors. Serbia's current path leads to isolation from Europe and the U.S. as well as alignment with Russia, which has been paid off for its role in blocking a UN Security Council resolution on Kosovo with advantageous Serbian energy deals.

Brussels and Washington tried to prevent this sad turn of events by offering, up front and without conditions, a series of incentives. These included normal trade relations, membership in NATO's Partnership for Peace, negotiation of a Stabilization and Association Agreement opening European markets, over one billion euros in assistance in 2007-11, facilitated visas for EU entry and extensive protection for Serbs remaining in Kosovo. Since Milosevic's fall, the EU has already provided billions of euros in aid and preferential credits; the U.S. has provided $635 million in assistance.

Serbia has pocketed these incentives and provided little in return since 2003.

We need better policy

It is time for Washington and Brussels to get smarter. While hoping that Serbia will come to its senses sooner rather than later, both need to plan for a long period in which Belgrade, aligned with Moscow, will try to block NATO and EU expansion in the Balkans. Transitional democracies in Croatia, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo will have to share the Western Balkans with a backward-looking, resentful and ill-spirited Serbia. NATO and the EU should move quickly to welcome as members those countries that are doing the right thing, in the hope that will encourage Serbia to come along.

Washington and Brussels should also signal that they are determined not to give Serbia any more freebies. Ambassadors should be recalled for consultations on a new, coordinated EU/U.S. Serbia policy. The still unsigned Stabilization and Association Agreement should be taken off the table. The people, including Serbian security officials, who participated in attacking checkpoints inside Kosovo should be brought to trial quickly in a Pristina courtroom, under EU supervision.

At the same time, Brussels and Washington need to make clear that there is a route out of the dead end into which Serbia has driven itself, provided it meets reasonable conditions. American and European ambassadors should return to Belgrade once Serbia ends violence against the legitimate forces of law and order in Kosovo and begins to cooperate with NATO and the EU there. If Serbia turns indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic over to the Hague Tribunal, the Stabilization and Association Agreement should proceed. Serbian candidacy for EU membership should be conditional on Kosovo's entry into the UN, currently blocked by a Russian veto threat at Belgrade's behest.

By laying out a Clear Path Forward to improved relations conditional on Belgrade's behavior, Brussels and Washington can over time bring Serbia out of its funk and enable it to occupy its rightful place in Europe. Offering more freebies without conditions will have the opposite effect, encouraging reactionary forces in Serbia and strengthening its alliance with Russia.

I hasten to add that generous support should go to the courageous Serbs who have continued—despite the prevailing political winds—to advocate human rights, free media, dialogue with Kosovars and doing what is necessary to get Serbia into the EU. Likewise, Voice of America and RFE/RL should continue to broadcast in Serbian and Albanian.

Collateral damage

Let me briefly address the issue of collateral damage due to Kosovo's independence, in particular in Bosnia and in American relations with Russia.

In Bosnia, the only serious risk arises from Belgrade encouraging Serb separatists. Left to their own devices, Bosnia's Serb leaders prefer being someone in Sarajevo to being no one in Belgrade. The U.S. and EU need to make it clear that Republika Srpska can either exist within Bosnia, or not exist at all and have its territory—which was home to a Muslim majority before the war—become part of a unitary Bosnian state.

With Russia, it is time to put Kosovo in the past, starting at the April NATO Summit in Bucharest. This can be done by considering Russia's interests across a wide spectrum of issues—including anti-ballistic missile radars, NATO enlargement and Moscow's ties to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. We need Moscow to abstain from using its veto to block Kosovo's UN membership. Without caving to the Russians, we need to ask ourselves what they will value that the U.S. can give up without high cost.

Conclusion

We have done the right thing to join our European partners in recognizing Kosovo as a sovereign state, a move that has prevented much worse violence and instability than we have seen so far. We need now to repair relations with Serbia by delineating a Clear Path Forward and patiently awaiting Belgrade's realization that its citizens will be far better off if their government embarks on it. It may take a long time for that to happen.

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Newborn

2008-03-05T05:39:00.001-05:00

Mon Mar 3, 11:25 PM ET

A newborn harp seal pup with its distinctive white coat on an ice floe in the Gulf of St. Lawrence March 3, 2008. The annual Gulf of St. Lawrence seal hunt is tentatively set to begin later this month.

REUTERS/Paul Darrow (CANADA)

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The limits of analogy in Kosovo's independence bid

2008-03-04T19:04:00.001-05:00

The limits of analogy in Kosovo's independence bid
By Shlomo Avineri
Commentary by
Wednesday, March 05, 2008

The ensuing resistance - initially peaceful, later violent - led to ever harsher Serbian measures, culminating in threats of massive ethnic cleansing, verging on genocide. For the first time in modern history, this brought about an effective American-led international humanitarian intervention. Many of the intellectuals and public figures all over the world who supported the intervention were Jewish: Elie Wiesel, Michael Walzer, Richard Holbrooke, Bernard-Henri Levi, Bernard Kouchner and others. They called on the world community, which failed so dismally to protect the Jews from the Nazis, not to abandon Kosovo's Albanians. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright explicitly mentioned her Jewish roots in her insistence that the US could not abandon the Kosovars.
That Kosovo's independence did not enjoy the support of all European Union members has very little to do with the merits of the case, but stems from the realpolitik considerations of countries with territorially-based national minorities. That is why Spain, Slovakia, Romania, Greece and Cyprus did not follow the United States and the majority of the EU in recognizing Kosovo's independence. Russia's opposition is similarly motivated by obvious analogies with the Chechen uprising. Even democratic Canada is hesitant, because of Quebec.
Obviously there have been echoes in the Middle East, and from opposing camps. In Israel, the nationalist right wing expressed concerns that Kosovo may become a precedent for a Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence, and even for an attempt by Palestinian Arabs in Israel, especially in the Galilee, to secede unilaterally. In parallel, some Palestinians maintained that if the current post-Annapolis Israeli-Palestinian talks should fail, the Palestinians might adopt the Kosovo model and declare their independence unilaterally.
These analogies seem plausible, but are fallacious for a number of reasons. First of all, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not limited to the post-1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It is a conflict between two national movements - the Jewish national movement, Zionism, and the Arab Palestinian movement, both laying claim to the same piece of land. The Kosovars, on the other hand, never claimed Belgrade and all of Serbia as their patrimony. Hence in the Israeli-Palestinian case a two-state solution, based on partition, is the only reasonable and fair solution, and is viewed as such almost universally. Such national conflicts can be resolved only by mutual consent and agreement: That this is difficult and may take time is obvious, but there is no alternative to negotiations.

Secondly, while the Kosovars gained almost universal support and the international community, under US leadership, used force to intervene on their behalf, the Middle East situation was totally different. Here it was the Palestinians who in 1947-1948 rejected the United Nations partition plan and went to war not only against the emerging state of Israel but also against a UN decision. It was the Arab side then that was condemned by the UN, with both US and Soviet support, for combating Israel.
Thirdly, since the Oslo accord there exists a legitimate, albeit not sovereign, Palestinian Authority. Its legitimacy has recently been greatly attenuated by the Hamas putsch in Gaza - and solving this is a serious challenge to the Palestinian national movement. Moreover, since Annapolis both Israel and the Palestinians have been continuously negotiating. That no agreement has yet been reached is the consequence of both the complexity of the issues and the relative weakness of both leaderships. Nothing similar to this existed in the Kosovo context.
There is, however, a case in the Middle East that is similar to Kosovo: the Kurds in Iraq. Here, like in former Yugoslavia, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture, language and history has been continuously oppressed by a series of brutal Arab regimes. Like the Kosovo Albanians, Iraqi Kurds are entitled to self-determination and sovereignty. That Turkey, Iran and Syria oppose this has as little relevance to the merits of the case, as has Spanish or Russian opposition to the independence of Kosovo. It is difficult, on moral and political grounds, to support the independence of Kosovo while opposing the same rights for Iraqi Kurdistan.
All this shows the limits of analogy and the sometimes cynical and propagandistic use made of it. Each conflict has its own characteristics and has to be addressed - and hopefully settled - on its own merits, difficult as this may be.
Shlomo Avineri is professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He is currently visiting professor in the Nationalism Studies Program at the Central European University in Budapest. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons.org, an online newsletter.
The recent declaration of independence by Kosovo is an important victory for the ideas of self-determination and national sovereignty. Ever since most of the old Ottoman vilayet of Kosovo was annexed to Serbia in 1912 after the First Balkan War, the province's mainly Muslim Albanian population suffered under Serbian rule. After 1918, Yugoslavia tried to change the demographic balance by encouraging Serbs to settle in the province, viewed as the birthplace of the Serbian nation. In Tito's Yugoslavia, Kosovo enjoyed an autonomous status, but with the reemergence of Serbian nationalism under Slobodan Milosevic this was cancelled: Albanian-language schools were closed, and Serbian functionaries from Belgrade replaced local Kosovar Albanian officials.

The Daily Star - Opinion Articles - The limits of analogy in Kosovo's independence bid

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Zabrane vode u lager

2008-03-04T11:55:00.001-05:00

Otvoreno pismo drugu Ivici Dačiću, koji bi ponovo da zabranjuje nepodobne

Zabrane vode u lager

Lazar Stojanović

Pišem Vam u vezi s Vašom izjavom da valja zabranjivati organizacije koje priznaju Kosovo. Nisam organizacija, ali ne samo da podržavam nezavisnost Kosova nego sam na tome aktivno i neskriveno radio koliko sam umeo i mogao od 1972. godine. Sagledao sam temeljno prikrivanu kolonijalnu suštinu tog problema dok sam kao disident robijao s Albancima drakonski osuđenim za organizovanje otpora srpskoj okupaciji Kosova, koja je trajala od 1912. do 17. februara ove godine.
Poreklom sam pet kilometara od Orašca. To Vam kažem jer znam da se u šovinističkim krugovima poreklo shvata vrlo ozbiljno, "krv i tlo". Utoliko me je više stid zbog nedavnog paleolitskog nasrtaja jedne od vladajućih partija na "Peščanik" u Aranđelovcu i nacionalno ostrašćenog sretenjskog govora koji je pre par dana u tom Orašcu održao političkom kombinatorikom i ucenom nametnuti premijer Srbije.
Okupaciju iz 1912. Evropa je rado i lako priznala, jer je to bilo slabljenje i komadanje poražene Turske, a države Albanije tada još nije bilo, njene granice utvrđene su tek 1913. Broz je planirao da 1945. Kosovo ustupi Albaniji, a kasnije se predomislio, da bi se umilio partizanskoj ali ipak nacionalističkoj Srbiji, pomoću koje je vladao Jugoslavijom, jednako kao Austrijanac Hitler Nemačkom, Korzikanac Napoleon Francuskom i Gruzijac Staljin Rusijom. To SANU nikada neće priznati, jer njen famozni "memorandum" tvrdi da je Broz činio upravo suprotno, da je naročito radio protiv interesa Srbije. To evropsko priznanje okupacije Kosova i Brozovo predomišljanje čine jedini okvir legitimiteta na koji biste Vi i ini kolonijalisti mogli da se pozovete u vezi sa potraživanjem teritorije Kosova i prava na vladanje tamošnjim stanovništvom.
Dve neuspele kolonizacije, 1913. i 1919, dokazuju da je reč o pukoj koloniji, odocneloj i neuspeloj, naravno. Kosovo je bilo jedina kolonija u Evropi ikad. Zato je to specijalan slučaj u savremenoj svetskoj politici. Evropa je upravo ispravila svoju grešku iz 1912. O devedeset šest godina kolonijalne represiji pitajte Albance, oni o tome znaju više nego Vi.
Za potrebe novih kosovskih bojeva, SANU i SPC oživeli su imperijalni kosovski mit koji uz državni blagoslov propagiraju glavna TV i glavni dnevni list već čitavih dvanaestak godina posle Osme sednice. Kosovo je 1999. oslobođeno kolonijalne stege, a ta propaganda još traje i Vi ste deo nje.
U sadašnje vreme kakvog-takvog pluralizma medija i partija "pranje mozga" javnosti, pretvorene u tupu gomilu, ne amnestira pojedinca. Ko god je svojedobno digao ruku za Slobodana Miloševića odgovoran je i danas, politički i moralno. Znam da je to sedamdeset procenata tadašnjeg stanovništva, ali to nije moj nego njihov problem. I Nemaca je bilo oko sedamdeset procenata kad su "demokratski" izabrali Hitlera.
Vi ste, gospodine Dačiću, digli više od ruke. Vi ste mali, ali ne i zanemarljivi deo tog aparata. I sada biste Vi nekoga da zabranjujete. Vi ste puka, greškom pretekla, štetočina nelustriranog aparata za vršenje zločina. Zakon o lustraciji je usvojen, iako voljom tekućeg premijera i njegovog bivšeg, za lustriranje idealno podobnog, ministra pravosuđa Stojkovića, nikad nije primenjen. Nemojte da računate s tim da taj zakon neće da se svali na Vaša pleća i na mnoge takve kao Vi kad vrh vlasti bude promenjen. Bolje Vam je da ćutite. To nije dovoljno, ali je bolje nego ništa.
Vi ćete možda moći nekoga i nešto da zabranjujete tek kad se srećno sparite s Putinom i Lukašenkom, čemu neskriveno težite. Decenijama, od 1948, trajalo je naše oslobađanje iz tog zagrljaja smrti u koji Vi hoćete da nas vratite. Mislite da će ova ogromna većina birača sklonih Evropi da odluči da se okrene Aziji i da podrži Vas i Vaš politički projekat refeudalizovanja Srbije i vraćanja u lager?
Ako moram da prihvatim realnost političkog uticaja velikih i zlih nacionalističkih partija u Srbiji (ne mislim na premijerovu, ona je džepnog formata kao i Vaša), ne moram da respektujem političku olupinu Vaše partije čiji se jedini značaj sastoji u veličini zla koje je nanela kome god je uspela, prvenstveno tokom ratova koje je planski izazvala i vodila dok god je imala topovskog mesa. Ne postoji ni jedna jedina sitnica koju ste Vi ikada uradili, koja je bila od koristi stanovništvu ili državi, dočim je spisak stvari koje ste uradili na korist sebi, a na štetu svima drugima, vrlo dug. Uključujući i onaj kofer.

www.danas.co.yu

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False Fears and False Hopes - Kosovo as "Muslim State in Europe"

2008-03-03T08:57:00.001-05:00

Kosovo as "Muslim State in Europe"

False Fears and False Hopes

The declaration of independence in Kosovo has brought a new nation to Europe, with a population that is 90 per cent Muslim. Islam, however, has no influence on the country's politics. Balkans and Kosovo expert Konrad Clewing explains why

| Bild:
Independence Day in Kosovo. The region was under Ottoman rule for almost 500 years, up until 1912. In February Kosovo declared independence from the Republic of Serbia |

The newest member in the community of states, Kosovo, brings with it an assorted baggage of hopes and joys, but just as much in the way of troubles and worries.

Hope is centred on the belief that a line has finally been drawn under the long-standing territorial conflict between the country's Albanian majority and Serbia – a struggle that has taken a heavy toll on both sides. Joy has been in evidence mainly in Kosovo itself, where February 17th's declaration of independence was greeted by scenes of delighted celebration among 95 per cent of the population.

Trouble, meanwhile, has been brewing in Belgrade and in Serbia, where the feeling is that the country has been robbed of a part of its territory.

The worries are worldwide and centred on the possible repercussions for international law if it should turn out that a precedent has now been set with regard to the right of self-determination of peoples at the expense of national law where territorial integrity is concerned.

There is worry, too, about the potential consequences for international diplomacy, about the new state's feared lack of viability, about the repercussions for Serbia – and about the emergence of Kosovo as a "Muslim state".

Islamist terror or democratised Islam?

Here, in the middle of Europe, a future stronghold of global Islamism is being nurtured, which will serve as a springboard for Islamist terror. So, at least, runs one argument that is finding favour not only in Belgrade, but also in neighbouring countries such as Romania, as well as on German Internet forums, for example.

There are also very different hopes being aired with regard to "Muslim Kosovo". In the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper of February 20, for example, Avi Primor, former Israeli ambassador to Germany set out his vision of how Kosovo could become the first truly democratic, secular Muslim country in a Western sense, as well as becoming a model for the entire Islamic world and for Muslim minorities in Western Europe.

The US government is hoping, as it did ten years ago when it gave its support to the Bosnian Muslims, that its actions in Kosovo will show to Muslims all over the world that Washington is by no means anti-Muslim.

Kosovo's Muslim majority

But both the worries and the hopes that are circulating over the "Muslim state" of Kosovo are wide of the mark. It is certainly true that over ninety per cent of the population of Kosovo consider themselves Muslims or at least as people of a Muslim background. The Kosovar Albanians, who make up around ninety per cent of the population, fall almost entirely into this category, a small Roman Catholic minority notwithstanding.

Among the local minorities only the Serbs are non-Muslim. The smaller groupings of Turks, Bosnians, other Slavic-speaking Muslims and Romanies, on the other hand, are all, in the traditional sense, followers of Islam.

A national rather than a religious project

Contrary to the illusions harboured by the international community operating there, however, the state of Kosovo is not primarily a multi-ethnic country and the state project that is "Kosovo" certainly cannot be properly understood as anything other than an Albanian national project.

In paragraph 2 of its independence declaration, this state is already referring to itself not only as "democratic," but also as "secular".

And the contradiction inherent in the spectacle of Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi being accompanied by Mufti Naim Tërnava at the televised announcement that preceded the declaration of independence on February 17th, was one that was more apparent than real.

Because, while Thaçi was flanked by the Mufti on one side, the Catholic bishop of the diocese of Kosovo was on the other. It was a gesture clearly intended to provide a vivid counter image to offset the tendency among Serbs to equate Albanians with "dangerous" Muslims

Nation before religion

The scene does point to something fundamental, however. It is not just the case that Kosovo Muslims are generally and rightly regarded as not being particularly religious, or that strict observance of Muslim beliefs and practices is a rarity in the country, or that the mosques are usually to be found deserted, with hardly a visitor in sight.

No, it is also the case that since in its earliest beginnings in the late Ottoman period, modern Albanian nation-building has been based to a very large extent, both within and beyond Albanian national territory, on the idea that the nation must take precedence over religious belief.

One of the foundations of this nation-building, that has taken place in a religious environment around eighty per cent Muslim (Sunni and various Sufi groups) and twenty per cent Christian (orthodox in the south, Catholic in the north of the Albanian language area), was, and is, that there is no Muslim core to the nation, no fringe of non-Muslim minorities that are at best tolerated.

In this respect, it appears that Albania really is a special case in the Muslim world. Whenever religious loyalty has endangered or shown signs of endangering national loyalty, the defenders of national Albanianhood and the Albanian societies have taken to the barricades to ensure that religion knows its proper place. In this sense the Albanians are not a "Muslim" nation at all, that is to say, not a nation dominated by the religion.

It is much more the case that all three (or four) traditional confessions are seen as equally national Albanian (or during the period of the atheist communist dictatorship as equally anti-national).

Organised Albanian religion

The representatives of organised Albanian Islam, which is spread over Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, express themselves in national rather than religious terms when referring to Kosovo.

On his first visit to the new Kosovo, or more precisely to the Islamic community of the new neighbouring state, Reis ul Ulema of Macedonia, Sulejman Rexhepi, passed on his congratulations on the independence of the "new Albanian state", which he praised as the realisation of a "centuries old dream whose fulfilment the Albanian people deserved". No mention here of Islam or Muslims.

And although, since 1999, Arab money has been increasingly in evidence as a source of pressure or incentive towards the promulgation of "Middle East" style Muslim attitudes in Kosovo, it is unlikely that this will make any serious inroads against the dominance of nationalism in the coming years.

Looking ahead

Reassuring for "Europe". At the same time, however, the role model function attributed to an "Islamic" community that is hardly discernible as such, is unlikely to be of any significance. And whether the American support for Kosovo will do anything to improve the standing of the US with Muslims in the rest of the world must also remain doubtful. The Muslim component of the Kosovo question, then, remains marginal.

Most of all, perhaps, it is likely that the secular majority of Kosovo's Muslims may just succeed in making some of their European neighbours begin to wonder whether Islam really is as all-pervasive an influence on the life and political attitudes of all Muslims as people here like to think.

Konrad Clewing

© Qantara.de 2008

Konrad Clewing is deputy director of the Südost-Institut of Regensburg University. His main research interests include nationalism, Muslim history in the Balkans, the history of the Hapsburg monarchy, and the Kosovo conflict.

Translated from the German by Ron Walker

Kosovo: Time For Serbia To Wake Up

2008-03-03T08:47:00.001-05:00

Kosovo: Time For Serbia To Wake Up

By Gordana Knezevic

Serbs protesting in Mitrovica

(AFP)

Last week's pictures from Belgrade were ugly. Broken windows in the city center, the burned flags of foreign embassies, and thinly veiled justifications of the violence by Serbian officials. A government minister, Velimir Ilic, went so far to say that violence against foreign embassies was the appropriate answer to the "violence" committed against Serbia by taking away its province.

However, Kosovo left Serbia a long time ago. Most Serbs did not notice that departure, since Kosovo was not present in their conscience as a place to visit or, God forbid, a place to move to with a business or the family.

Despite this ignorance of the real Kosovo, the former Serbian province plays a key role in Serbian identity -- an identity that is very much shaped by the idea that Serbs have always been victims, throughout history. In the hands of local politicians, Kosovo is inevitably mentioned as a symbol of a great loss, producing an instant image of a battle against the Turks -- a battle that took place 600 years ago. It has always been packaged as an event that took place yesterday (or might as well have), and conversely, what happened as recently as yesterday is somehow directly related to that medieval battle.

The myth of Kosovo, as an integral part of Serbian identity, was created and cemented by Serbian writers, poets, politicians, and academics. If Serbs happened to disagree on other issues, Kosovo would always be their common ground, their rallying point. A romantic picture of Serbs as both heroes and victims at the hands of brutal Ottoman Turks would suspend all disputes and produce an idyllic picture of national unity.

In other countries, politicians have to work hard and come up with good ideas and policies in order to get reelected. In Serbia, it was always enough to just mention Kosovo and to have the entire nation clapping hands. But what Serbs want to have is not Kosovo as it is, inhabited by an ethnic-Albanian majority. It is Kosovo as it was a few centuries ago, inhabited by Serbs. Or, in the face of the demographic reality, inhabited by whomever, but run by the Serbs.

Selective Curfew

In 1981, as a young journalist, I was sent to Kosovo in the aftermath of large student demonstrations that took place a year after Tito's death. The demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the Yugoslav Army. By the time I arrived in Pristina, hundreds of Albanians had been imprisoned, special police units from all over Yugoslavia had been deployed in the streets of the Kosovo capital, and a curfew was in force after 8 p.m.

Apart from me, two other journalists from Zagreb and Ljubljana were the only guests at the Grand Hotel, run by the Serbian secret police. It was rather unpleasant to have to listen to the frequently drunk policemen singing at the hotel bar every evening. We felt that we were trapped in that place as a result of the curfew. After many boring and uneventful nights at the hotel, we decided to test the curfew and to leave the building long after 8 p.m. Thus the three of us started our dangerous walk through the empty streets of a city that had not yet recovered from the violent demonstrations and the brutal army action. Without ever being stopped or asked for any ID, we spent most of the night moving from one bar and restaurant to another.

The only obvious conclusion was that the curfew was only in force for Albanians, and that each and every police officer in Pristina was aware of the three journalists from outside, so they didn't even ask for our identification. Humiliation and torture by the police were meant for Albanians only. We left Kosovo with the bitter taste of injustice and oppression against the Kosovar Albanians.

Even in those fractious times, most Albanians thought of themselves as Albanians as well as Yugoslavs -- and they did not feel any necessary contradiction between those two identities. Once Yugoslavia ceased to exist, however, they couldn't possibly declare themselves to be Albanians and Serbs, since in that case one clearly excluded the other.

No Serbian policeman or army officer has been allowed in Kosovo since 1999. The terrible crimes committed by Serbs in Kosovo before the NATO intervention were hardly an invitation for Albanians to remain inside the borders of Serbia. Breakup was imminent, and it was not a question of whether it would happen, but when the separation would take place. Even as Serbian officials extended the talks about Kosovo's future, they continued to advance only legal arguments, and never expressed any desire to share a country with Albanians. They wanted only a piece of paper that would give them ownership of Kosovo. A Serbian historian from the beginning of the last century once said that the Serbs would "grow up" as a nation only once they realize that Albanians are human. It is time for Serbs to grow up.

(Gordana Knezevic is the director of RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service.)

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What happened to Kosovo could never happen here

2008-02-29T04:22:00.001-05:00

What happened to Kosovo could never happen here

Written by Hana Marku, Contributor

Wednesday, 27 February 2008

Assessing the situation, Canada's stand on Kosovo

In 1989, the autonomy of Quebec was revoked by a single decision by Brian Mulroney. This decision was to be a final solution to the "Quebec problem." Quebec ceased to exist. French-speaking schools closed and French-speaking Québécois children learned how to read and write French in basements and backrooms. All French-speaking citizens employed in governmental agencies were forced to sign "loyalty" pledges to Ottawa or resign and submit to police questioning. The Canadian military moved en-masse into the province and established military bases in Montreal and Quebec City. Police and military forces patrolled the streets, enforcing strict identity checks and making sure no one was on the street past curfew. Student protests, which sought the reestablishment of provincial autonomy, were repressed with tear gas and tanks. Charter rights were suspended for the province, and a state of emergency was announced. Ottawa declared Quebec's legislature unconstitutional. English-speaking enclaves were favoured and granted special privileges, and anglophones across the country believed Quebec was the very soul of their civilization.A francophone shadow government was created, which held a referendum in 1990. Eighty-seven percent of the population voted, and 99 percent voted for secession from the federation of Canada. Ottawa responded by relocating anglophones from other provinces into Quebec, expelling francophones from their houses and apartments to make room for the newcomers. Independent francophone TV stations, newspapers and radio stations were shut down. Between 1989 and 1999, half of the adult population of Quebec would be interrogated, beaten, arrested and detained by police forces.
A Quebecois Liberation Army (QLA) was formed in 1995, which used guerrilla tactics to attack governmental military bases and police stations. Clashes with the QLA and the military increased in intensity and frequency throughout the 1990s.
Rumours of routine civilian massacres performed by Canadian military forces were verified when 45 bodies were found in Joliette. Humanitarian agencies reported 70 bodies found in Trois Rivieres, 14 bodies found in St. Honore and 100 bodies found in Barraute. These massacres included close-range shootings, rape and mutilation. Images of burnt and disfigured bodies were broadcast to the rest of the world.
A massive expulsion of francophones began in the spring 1999. The QLA had grown in size, but were not equipped well enough to present a great threat to the Canadian military. The American border with Quebec became a site for massive refugee camps, overcrowded tent sites with little food, no electricity and no running water. The international community, seeing no other solution despite attempts at a negotiated settlement, opted for a NATO military intervention to halt the ethnic cleansing of the province. Only when a heavy air campaign was well underway and major Anglo-Saxon cities of Canada were bombed did the Canadian military begin to pull out of the province. The exact figures of dead and missing francophones are still unknown.
The above dates and numbers are directly taken from the history of Kosovo, the last piece of former Yugoslavia to break away from Serbian control. NATO's mission in Kosovo was launched to stop Serbian genocide and to allow for the return of Kosovar refugees. Since 1999, the UN and a locally elected government have administered Kosovo, though it remained legally a part of Serbia, until last Sunday when it announced its independence.
Canada currently has no position on Kosovo out of fear of what legal precedent may be created in future clashes with Quebec by doing so.
"We are assessing the situation," was the statement of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Drawing a parallel between Quebec and Kosovo is not only historically irresponsible, it is shameful. Canada did not choose to intimidate, attack or deport any of its Quebecois citizens, despite its historical political difficulties with the province. Arguments for the integrity of state borders become irrelevant when those living within those borders find life intolerable. If a precedent is set by Kosovo, it is one of warning as to what the singling out and mistreatment of an ethnic group can result in.
Serbia has lost the moral authority to rule in Kosovo. Through its brutality and unexplainable hatred towards all non-Serbians, Serbia has broken its own borders and the country which once was called Yugoslavia. This is why Kosovo's declaration of independence is a legal and long-delayed act of justice. This is why it has been recognized by 19 UN members and counting. The United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany all recognized Kosovo within three days of its declaration.
Will Canada have the courage to join, or will it continue to draw non-existing parallels? I will end this letter by quoting journalist Roger Cohen: "Persecute a people with enough savagery, and they will in the end unite, rise up, fight and go their own way."

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Thank you Russia - For what?

2008-02-28T10:05:00.000-05:00

BEOGRAD, 27. 02. 2008.
(FoNet)

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RUSSIA'S SUPPORT OF SERBIA IS MORE ABOUT OIL THAN KOSOVO

2008-02-28T06:03:00.000-05:00

RUSSIA'S SUPPORT OF SERBIA IS MORE ABOUT OIL THAN KOSOVO

By Georgie Anne GeyerWed Feb 27, 7:48 PM ET

WASHINGTON -- Since the end of the Balkans wars in the 1990s, the European attitude toward Serbia has been that this renegade of Europe would eventually, inevitably, join the European Union (E.U.).

Of course, Serbia had started the horrific ethnic-nationalist wars that ended with tens of thousands dead. Of course, Serbia's greatest backer was the former Soviet Union, with whom it shared a heritage of the Orthodox Church.

But the world had changed. The U.S.S.R. had become simply "Russia" once again, or the "Russian Federation." Now one could argue that during these last two weeks everything has changed once more -- back to the past.

The transformed Russia of Vladimir Putin -- who will step aside temporarily as Russian president in putative elections this Sunday (March 2) -- has dramatically reinstated its historic relations with Serbia through its partnership with the Serbian gas and oil industry. Along the way, it has taken two other Eastern European nations who are already E.U. members with it into the transaction.

Serbia, with its mix of a political leadership of the old ethnic-nationalists of the '90s and some more pro-European Serbs, has angrily turned eastward once again. Any remaining pro-American tendencies have been decidedly dampened.

And one would not be too far off the mark by speculating that this could be part of Russia's potentially threatening move back into Europe, this time using its energy resources as the pivot, and that new Balkans conflicts could well be arising that we had thought settled.

It is easy to find, in little, long-oppressed Kosovo, that formerly Yugoslav and then Serb enclave of 2 million mostly ethnic Albanians, an excuse for Moscow to move closer again to Belgrade -- for both the United States and the E.U. supported Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia on Feb. l7. Meanwhile, anyone left in Serbia's more moderate political class proceeded immediately down the road to oblivion.

For comic relief, listen to the words of Serbian President Boris Tadic. At an emergency U.N. Security Council session, he warned that Kosovo's unthinkable act of wanting to rule itself would embolden other separatists across the world. "If you allow this illegal act to stand," he declared, "you will show that right and justice may go unrespected in the world. You will show that, unfortunately, this body of the world organization is losing its authority."

Now it may well be that the United Nations' authority is forever dicey, but to claim "right and justice" for the marauding Serbs of the 1990s should be saved for a Belgrade version of "Saturday Night Live."

Meanwhile, in an ominous sign in Kosovo itself, many Serb policemen in the Serb majority areas were pledging loyalty to Belgrade while separate Serb government and law enforcement bodies were being formed, this probably marking attempts to partition Kosovo still further.

As the new "candidate" for the Russian presidency, Dmitry Medvedev, said with unmistakable clarity, "We proceed from the understanding that Serbia is a single state with its jurisdiction spanning the entire territory."

It was, furthermore, Medvedev, already chosen as interim president by Putin, who traveled in the interesting period between Kosovo's independence and the upcoming Russian elections to Belgrade to sign -- what? -- amazing deals with Serbia on a gas pipeline and almost certainly on buying into the rundown Serb oil refinery in Pancevo.

Medvedev's pipeline deal for Moscow clears the way for the construction of the planned 550-mile South Stream pipeline through Serbia en route to Western Europe. Costs are reported to be in the area of $1.5 billion.

In addition -- and substantively expanding the energy ambitions of Russia toward Europe -- the president presumptive said that the deal to buy Serbia's state oil refinery, NIS, would be signed soon. Russia has offered $600 million for the refinery, with an additional $730 million to modernize the company.

But perhaps surprising for the publicly "progressive" Medvedev, who often speaks out on behalf of liberal issues and personal freedom, was the fact that he spoke out clearly on these deals with Serbia, saying that these energy treaties and agreements "form the foundation of energy stability for all of Europe in the future."

Let's repeat part of that: "for ALL of Europe in the future."

Perhaps it is not all that surprising for the man who is chairman of Gazprom, Russia's natural gas monopoly -- and, yes, that has been his main job -- to take an interest in energy monopolization and its rewards.

What is surprising is that other recent E.U. members are also embracing deals with Russia and Gazprom. In the same week that the Serbian gas deal was consummated, Hungary also backed it; Bulgaria had already done so.

But then, "outgoing" President Putin -- who is scheduled to return as president when Medvedev's term is over -- is rumored to be "suspiciously wealthy." According to a remarkable article, "Putin's Choice," by respected scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski in the upcoming issue of The Washington Quarterly, Putin is reported by Russian sources to have a calculated wealth of billions, "most of it in shares of state-controlled energy enterprises ... including 4.5 percent of Gazprom."

The purport of all of this? To see that the genie of radical nationalism, released so tragically 20 years ago in Serbia, is threatening to pop up again in the Balkans. An angry Russia is attempting to use its energy wealth to move once again into Europe. And the West had better look out.

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Unrest hurts Serbian economy

2008-02-27T05:19:00.001-05:00

Unrest hurts Serbian economy

Sapa-AFP

Published:Feb 26, 2008

Belgrade - Foreign investors have been backing out of Serbia since violence erupted during protests last week against Kosovo's independence, Economy Minister Mladjan Dinkic said.

"At the moment, foreign investors do not consider Serbia as a heaven for financial investment," Dinkic told reporters here.

"The situation is not alarming, but we certainly should not neglect and underestimate it," said Dinkic.

"We have had a week of stoppage, crisis on the stock market, attack against the dinar. We should not let this period continue," he warned.

Citing some examples, Dinkic said several Italian companies had ordered their lawyers to sell previously purchased Serbian land intended for greenfield investments.

He added that representatives of General Motors, the giant US car-maker, had also cancelled a visit to the Balkan country planned for Tuesday.

On Thursday night, hundreds of rioters stormed and set ablaze the US embassy of Belgrade during an anti-Kosovo independence rally, leaving one Serbian man dead.

Also attacked were several diplomatic missions and businesses of other mostly Western countries that have recognised Kosovo's independence, which was proclaimed unilaterally on February 17.

Nationalist Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said Monday that there would be no normalisation of relations with states that recognise Kosovo until the move is "annulled."

But Dinkic said this was only a form of "diplomatic pressure."

"It is important to separate the diplomatic effort (over Kosovo) from what economic departments of the government are doing," Dinkic said.

"If there is peace and order on the streets of Serbia, investors will continue to invest," he said, adding all foreigners were welcome to invest in Serbia "regardless of the country they come from."

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Zabrane vode u lager

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What happened to Kosovo could never happen here

Thank you Russia - For what?

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Unrest hurts Serbian economy

Kosovo Isn't the Problem, Serbia Is
Testimony of Vice President for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations Daniel Serwer before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.