Kosovo: Ethnic Albanians 'Ready To Declare Independence'

Pristina, 9 Nov. (AKI) - Ethnic Albanian leaders in the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo have said they are ready to unilaterally declare independence if the United Nations Security Council postpones a decision on the future status of the province, which has been under UN control since 1999. Most of Kosovo's overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian majority want independence, which is opposed by Belgrade and by the tiny minority of Serbs remaining in the province.

Members of the ethnic Albanian negotiating team on the status issue told Kosovo television Wednesday night that they were ready to activate the so called 'Plan B' and propose to Kosovo's president Fatmir Sejdiu the signing of a declaration of independence.

When the presidency signs the declaration, it would go to the parliament which would adopt it at a formal ceremony and independence would be proclaimed," said negotiating team member Veton Suroi. He said the first recognition of independence might take place the same day, but didn’t specify which country this might come from.

The international community had hinted it would make a status decision this year, and had seemed to be moving towards granting independence to Serbia. But the decision now appears to have been postponed until next year because of parliamentary elections expected in Serbia before the year's end. Negotiating team members remained adamant however that "this or the next year, Kosovo will become a sovereign and independent state."

Kosovo prime minister Agim Ceku said that "historical arguments, the injustice done to our people and demographic arguments, work in favor of independence." Ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs in Kosovo by 17 to one and an extremist group called vetevendosje (self-determination) has threatened to hold mass pro-independence demonstrations on 28 November.

Meanwhile, Kosovo Albanian language media reported on Thursday that the 18,000-strong international military force in Kosovo (KFOR) was getting 2,500 American reinforcements this month to safeguard peace while the status decision nears. But KFOR officials said it was just a regular tour of duty replacement and no new reinforcements were coming.

A Kosovo Serb leader, Marko Jaksic, said a declaration of independence by the Kosovo parliament would not be valid, although it could be expected. "Albanians are known for practising violence, they have done it for the past seven years, expelling Serbs, destroying their homes and religious objects, and it's no wonder that they would now resort to a legal violence as well," he said.

Over 200,000 Serbs have fled Kosovo since it was put under UN control and some 3,000 have been killed or listed as missing, according to the International Red Cross. It believes about 1,500 have been murdered.

Violence flared in the province when the Kosovo Liberation Army, supported by ethnic Albanians, came out in open rebellion against Serbian rule in the mid-1990s, sparking a brutal Yugoslav military crackdown. Serbian forces began their 'ethnic cleansing' campaign against up to half of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, triggering a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 that drove Serb forces from the province. Some 800,000 people fled to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro and approximately 10,000 died in the conflict.

Bokababe, here are some good news:) 11/09/2006 Defence agreement signed by Greece and Serbia

Bilateral relations between Greece and Serbia and the situation in the wider region - focusing particularly on the Kosovo - dominated talks held by Defence Minister Evangelos Meimarakis in Belgrade on Thursday.

Meimarakis was formally received by his Serb counterpart Zoran Stankovic at Topcider military base in Belgrade.

Talks focused on bilateral defence cooperation while a new broader defense agreement was signed by the two sides. Meimarakis stressed in a press conference that the new agreement gives special emphasis to military training and cooperation between training centers for peace operations in Belgrade, Serbia and Kilkis, Greece, while he assured his Serb counterpart that the Greek government supports Serbia’s Euro-Atlantic prospect.

On his part, Stankovic thanked the Greek minister for the support and revealed that Greece will back Serbia’s accession into the NATO Partnership for Peace initiative in the imminent NATO summit to take place in Riga, Latvia in late November.

Kosovo was the dominant issue at the meeting Meimarakis had with Serb Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who reiterated that his country cannot accept a solution that will not respect its sovereign rights in the region. The Greek minister pointed out the need for a mutually acceptable solution soon, stating that a likely extension of uncertainty would have a negative effect on stability in the wider region.

Meimarakis wrapped up his contacts in Belgrade by meeting Serb Patriarch Pavle. The head of the Serb Orthodox Church referred to the historical ties shared by the two peoples and thanked the Greeks for their support to the Serbs.

Before leaving the Serb capital, Meimarakis visited the newly built St. Sava Cathedral, the largest Orthodox Christian church in the Balkans.

Let me throw something at you....switch it around. Clinton, Clark, Wisner.....et al..for Clinton may I propose that since he was Governor, even maybe when he was going through college he was being groomed for the presidency and an errand boy for the military-Industrial complex. As President, he was there to "avoid Bin laden"...I won't elaborate, and to enter the Balkans using the exaggerations and false pretences......fabrications et al....to get this objective on the road. Wisner's following up with his Fathers' involvement since his days in the CIA, 1948-1952 + (failed CIA operation Fiend); badly......to see Kosovo Independence through....

"After the war [WWII], and even after the CIA was created in 1947, the American intelligence community reverted to harmless information gathering and analysis, thinking that the danger to national security had passed. That changed in 1948 with the emergence of the Cold War. In that year, the CIA recreated its covert action wing, innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination. Its first director was Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner. According to its secret charter, its responsibilities included
propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."

The CIA and Greater Albania: The Origins of the US Role in the Balkans
By Carl K. Savich
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/057.shtml

"The US even sent aid and weapons to a Communist country. Following the 1948 split between Joseph Stalin and Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav government requested through CIA channels that the US provide arms to Yugoslavia , fearing an invasion by the USSR . Frank Lindsay, the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) deputy to Frank Wisner, recalled: “Tito was the man for the West to back… We sent him five shiploads of weapons.”
The US and UK were also determined to keep the Communist guerrillas in Greece from taking power. Operation Valuable/Fiend was also a diversionary operation meant to deny bases for Greek Communist insurgents and to divert Soviet or Communist resources away from Greece .

Operation Valuable/Fiend

British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin approved the MI6 operation to overthrow the Hoxha regime in February, 1949. The chief of MI6, Stewart Menzies, was not enthusiastic about the paramilitary operation but saw it as a way to appease the former SOE “stinks and bangs people.” The Albanian regime change was a rollback operation meant to “detach” Albania , a “captive nation”, from the Soviet bloc. Strategically, the UK and US objective was to establish a strategic presence on the Balkan peninsula . The British wanted the US to finance the operation and to provide bases. Senior British intelligence officer William Hayter, who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), came to Washington in March with a group of Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) members and Foreign Office staff that included Gladwyn Jebb, Earl Jellicoe, and Peter Dwyer of MI6 and a Balkans specialist. They met with Robert Joyce of the US State Department’s Policy and Planning Staff (PPS) and Frank Wisner, who was the head of the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC), which was administered by the CIA. Wisner had been an attorney who had represented the financial interests of wealthy Albanian refugees who had been members of the Nazi-fascist collaborative group, the Balli Kombetar. So there had also been a monetary connection between US intelligence and the former Nazi/fascist Albanian Balli Kombetar members.

The strategic goal was to establish a foothold on the Balkan peninsula . Before this could occur, the Soviet-backed Hoxha regime had to be overthrown. According to Wisner, the Albanian operation was to be “a clinical experiment to see whether larger rollback operations would be feasible elsewhere.” Amery revealed that the British planned to recruit Balli Kombetar insurgents in the regime change against the Hoxha government. He outlined his plans for the proposed operation to the military commander of the Balli Kombetar, Abas Ermenji.
On May 20, 1949, Harold Perkins, the director of the Special Operations Branch, Neil McLean and Ermenji flew to Rome to meet with Midhat Frasheri, the wartime leader and founder of the Nazi/fascist Balli Kombetar, to discuss the operation. Frasheri was supportive of the operation. Amery believed that “clandestine operations directed at Hoxha would lead to a major uprising” the success of which would “depend on the million odd Albanians living in the Yugoslav Kosovo region.” So Kosovo was always crucial to the planners and organizers of Operation Valuable/Fiend.

By 1952, the CIA had taken over all the intelligence operations of the British in the Balkans. On July 23, 1951, the US air dropped 12 commandos in Albania Six were killed immediately, four were surrounded and burned to death in a house, and two were captured. The operation was a complete disaster. Abas Ermenji did not want to witness any more of his Balli Kombetar followers to take “another tumble through the meat grinder” and so discouraged any more missions. Wisner, nevertheless, sought to continue the pixie incursions, having the support of CIA Deputy Director Allen Dulles. The CIA airdropped Hamit Matjani, the Tiger, in 1952, who was killed during this operation, his 16th mission. Dulles stated: “At least we’re getting the experience we need for the next war.”

Up to 200 agents would be killed during the operation with an estimated additional several thousand Albanian civilians killed in reprisal. Abas Ermenji stated: “Our ‘allies’ wanted to make use of Albania as a guinea-pig, without caring about the human losses, for an absurd enterprise that was condemned to failure.” Halil Nerguti stated: “We were used as an experiment. We were a small part of a big game, pawns that could be sacrificed.” There is no question that the CIA and MI6 used the operation as a small-scale exercise in regime change. The stakes were small. Failure would not be noticed. John H. Richardson, the CIA Director of the South-East Division, terminated Operation Fiend and by 1954 the Company 400 was disbanded and the training facilities in Heidelberg , Germany shut down, as well as the CIA base on the Greek island. The remaining Albanians were resettled in the US , UK , and the Commonwealth countries.

Son.......

US Official: Serbian Referendum Will Not Restore Control of Kosovo
By VOA News
25 October 2006

Frank Wisner

A senior U.S. official has dismissed Serbian efforts to portray its referendum on a new constitution as an opportunity to restore sovereignty over Kosovo.
U.S. Kosovo envoy Frank Wisner told reporters in Pristina that what happens in Kosovo is an international matter and one to be decided by the people of the Serbian province. He said it is not a matter of Serbian sovereignty, which changed when the United Nations Security Council placed the area under U.N. administration in 1999.
The new constitution declares Kosovo an inalienable part of Serbia. Authorities in Belgrade have been rallying voters to back the document in a referendum Saturday and Sunday as the best way to halt the province's independence.
Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians seek full independence. Serbia insists it will never surrender control of the province. Little progress is reported in U.N.-brokered talks on the area's future

another report..................................................Son as a Wisner.........to carry the tradition.

"Frank Wisner, Jr. was a big catch for Enron Corporation. His lineage is impeccable, since his father, Frank Wisner Sr., was a senior CIA official (from 1947 until his suicide in 1965) who was involved in the overthrow of Arbenz of Guatemala (1954) and Mossadeq of Iran (1953). Wisner Junior was well-known in the CIA and he worked as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs; his current boss, Kenneth Lay, Chief Executive Officer of Enron Corporation, also worked for the Pentagon during the US war in Vietnam . With "economic espionage" as a task for the CIA (see PD, 12 October 1997), there is little doubt that Wisner used this instrument during his long-tenure as Ambassador in Asian nations. A Wisner staffer told InterPress Services this year that "ifanybody asked the CIA to help promote US business in India , it was probably Frank".

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