Posted on 03/24/2008 7:25:04 PM PDT by Diocletian
Serbia has formally proposed partitioning Kosovo along ethnic lines for the first time, asking the United Nations to ensure that Belgrade can control key institutions and functions in areas of the newly independent country where Serbs form a majority. In a document sent to the UN in New York, proposed to the UN in Kosovo last week and published in the Belgrade press yesterday, the government in Belgrade insists that Serbia be allowed to control the police, the courts, the judiciary and customs in the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo and in the northern strip around the tense Serb-controlled town of Mitrovica. Described as a blueprint for the "functional division of Serbs and Kosovo Albanians" by the Serbian minister pushing the policy, the proposal is the nearest Serbia has come to calling openly for partition, although it is working on the ground on Kosovo to make the division a reality. The Serbian government of Vojislav Kostunica, which utterly rejects Kosovan independence, never officially urges the ethnic partition since to do so would be to forfeit its claim to Serbian sovereignty over all of Kosovo. But the proposal acknowledges the UN as the sole authority in Kosovo, rejecting the legitimacy of both the Kosovo government and the EU mission that is supposed to take over from the UN over the next three months. Clashes between Serbs and UN and Nato forces in Mitrovica last week left one Ukrainian dead and scores injured. The UN said Belgrade was behind the trouble, which erupted over a Serbian takeover of a local courthouse. Mitrovica Serbs are promising to stage a large demonstration again today in the town, which Serbia has controlled for most of the nine-year UN mission in Kosovo.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
thoughts?
So sad that radical islam has done what it what it wanted to do there with the help of appeasement from the west.
The Serbs should not give an inch of their land IMHO
also if the likes of the guardian and the BBC reported exactly what has happened there then outrage would ensue but of course the media as usual takes the other view especially chrisiana ammapour
It’s already gone. Period. If they can get northern Kosovo, they should be very satisfied... I’ve said all along,they should try to get a partition... There’s no way that keeping all of it was sustainable...
The partition plan was actually floated during the Slobodan Milosevic days.....Albanians have an incredibly high birthrate.
I am sure the partitioning will be worded as "temporary" or something to the effect similar to UN SC Resolution 1244 which allowed "temporary" occupation of Kosovo by NATO forces, and which also guaranteed the return of Serbian authorities in Kosovo's institutions, and recognized Kosovo as integral part of a UN recognized member state to which present-day Serbia is a full inheritor.
This may be a slap in the face of the US which wants to built another NATO fortress on the outskirts of Russia, because it made statement that Kosovo's indpeendence is "irrevocable" and "permanent." Of course, nothing is! So it is expected that the US will oppose and all its lapdog member EU states will do as the master tells them (roll, play dead, bark, etc.)
This is all part of the "contingency plan" drawn up by the Serbian government to increase pressure, step-wise, in making its claims. Remember also that despite all the hoopla the Resolution 1244 is still in full force.
It's been "gone" before. This isn't the first time some major power ripped Kosovo away from the Serbs. But the Serbs always get it back sooner or later -- historically, it's been when that major power overextends themselves and finds messing with the Balkans to be too costly, and it has usually proved to be that major power's undoing.
like all muslims really.
I hope the serbs can save part of Kosovo I really do
Very true.
The Contact Group Guiding Principles of November 2005 make clear that there should be: no return of Kosovo to the pre-1999 situation, no partition of Kosovo, and no union of Kosovo with any or part of another country.
Next?
It’s really sad to see the Serbs assent to the division of their own country.
Northern Kosovo controls the water supply for the south, including the water supply to Camp Bondsteel. There was no way that the US was going to allow that to be messed with.
This has nothing to do with what is fair or right, it has to do with "want" and "need".
I can’t believe my country is involved in this, it disgusts me.
We’re supposed to be fighting Islamic terror, and in the course of that we set up a new terrorist state in Europe AND royally piss off two nations who have long histories of fighting Islamics?
The world is turned on its head.
"Very true."
The Ottoman Empire, Austro-Hungary, and Nazi Germany all met their fate in the Balkans when they overreached themselves and messed with Balkan politics. This is why I wanted to the US to stay out of there and not take ANY side, not even the Serb side. There is just some kind of hoodoo on that place when it comes to major powers messing with it.
I know that many think, "It will be different this time" Ding, ding, ding -- I don't think so! Hillary may have just lost all hope of winning the election based on lying about what? Bosnia! The curse continues -- and I couldn't be more pleased with who got the hoodoo this time!
I was at the State Capitol in Sacramento today. And I was standing there thinking about someone I knew as a kid -- Rose Anne Vuich -- first female Senator for the State of California back in the 1970's. Rose Anne Vuich was one tough cookie. The ladies room in the Senate is actually called "The Rose Room", because she got sick and tired of using the secretaries' restroom down all the way at the other end of the hall & demanded a ladies room adjacent to the Senate. Female senators today use it and don't even know or think about her and what she went through to get that ladies room. The major freeway that runs through Fresno, California is also named after her -- another tough fight.
It just hit me just how much one little American Serb girl from a farm in the outskirts of Fresno (Dinuba) changed the way things ran in the State of California.
Yet today, all "Serbs" -- and even Serb-Americans are supposed to be "suspect". Glad Rose Anne didn't live long enough to see what's happening in Kosovo -- she'd be setting fire to the Capitol lawn, before allowing any politicians today get away with doing this without a fight!
The Contact Group is an informal grouping of influential countries. They have NO legal power. UNSCR 1244 remains the framework for the ongoing status process. However, it is good that they recognize the unity of Kosovo within Serbia!
I think the big question is what will become of the Nation State since a nation can be dismantled by a more powerful group of nations at any point in time? What legal and moral right does NATO have in building nations?
NATO has certainly demonstrated that the Nation State is a obsolete concept for those who do not fall in line with their interests. Rules only apply to the governed even though the governed never consented to being governed. This is imperialism.
They are trying to dilute national identities in Europe because they are telling us that nationalism is the cause of war, but they fail to realize that Islam is not a nation. In fact, Islam sees this as an opportunity. I suppose then religion will be next.
Yet, it's NATO that was fanning nationalistic flames to break up the Russian sphere of influence. They needed nationalism to create distinctions between a Russian and the Georgian just as they needed it to create distinctions between the Kosovar and the Serb. The result? Pure hatred for generations to come. Better off? No, but the empire has certain expanded.
However, some EU members will find themselves fighting to preserve their own national identity and self determination when they find out they fought a war just to hand over their sovereignty and self determination to some pin head in Brussels.
Not as the Contact Group.
But within the Contact Group are 4 of the 5 permanent members of the UNSC, and the Contact Group has gone with the Ahtisaari plan, which is why the Ahtisaari plan is being implemented in Kosovo as we speak.
Whether you choose to accept it or prefer to comfort yourself with denial is really irrelevant.
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