ICJ on Kosovo: Less Than Meets the Eye

The ICJ majority opinion combines the best of sophistry with the worst of pettifoggery. Its advisory ruling is a perversion of truth and justice. In other words, just more of the same we have seen in the Balkans since 1991, and even before.

The three-hour-long reading of the majority opinion of the International Court of Justice had barely begun when cheerleaders of the pseudo-state hit the world media with their pronunciamentos that the Kosovo question had been settled in favor of independence. Their sole piece of evidence was the tortured holding of ten of the judges that the February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) “did not violate general international law.”

Leave aside for the moment that, on cue, the ICJ’s insubstantial observation immediately was morphed – as the ten unworthies knew it would be – into “Kosovo independence is in accordance with international law” and thence, to “Kosovo really is a state.”

Expert: ICJ has lost its legitimacy
24 July 2010 | 09:50 | Source: Blic
BELGRADE — Constitutional law professor and one-time Serbian legal advisor, Thomas Fleiner, said that the ICJ has lost its legitimacy.

He said that the opinion of the International Court of Justice on the unilateral proclamation of Kosovo’s independence would have “catastrophic effects for international law.”

“The court has lost all of its legitimacy because of its poor argumentations. I am almost sure that there was political pressure, because the arguments that were given in the ICJ’s opinion were identical to the arguments that the U.S. gave the judges in December,” Fleiner said.

He said that the ICJ’s decision is contradictory.

“The problem is that the legal meaning of the opinion is very narrow, because the court only decides on the paper that states that the Kosovo government proclaimed independence, and only decides on whether that sentence violates international law or not. The judges believe that this sentence does not violate international law, but at the same time believe that Kosovo does not have the right to a unilateral secession. Everyone can understand that this is a case of contradiction,” Fleiner said.

He said that the political effects of the ICJ decision are much greater than the legal ones, because the political leaders of territories that want to secede are getting a message that they have the right to do so.

“For me, the worst thing is that the court did not even discuss the question of whether the rights of the Serb minority were violated in Kosovo. I believe that there rights have been violated greatly, they have not been given the right to address the Serbian constitutional court without any compensation, and secondly, the Serbs in Kosovo do not have the possibility of stating their own political will, for example, to want to secede from Kosovo,” Fleiner said.

So he is lobbyist for Serbia ?

Actually, he was a paid lobbyist for Kosovo's Serbs, but he's not anymore -- he works for free on this now (as he did before he got paid for it) because it what he believes in.

Besides which, what Jim Jatras once got in his Kosovo lobbying days was chump change compared what the Albanian Mafia ponied up for their paid "friends"

February 13, 2008 Source: Svet "He (John McCain) did everything that we asked of him, including arming the KLA", said Albanian lobbyist Joe DioGuardi. The Albanians collected one million dollars for the presidential campaign of this senator.

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