Free Republic

Thu 25 May 2006 11:52 AM ET (Updates with U.N. statement, details) PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, May 25 (Reuters) - U.N. police in Kosovo fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of ethnic Albanians who stoned a United Nations convoy escorting Serb defence lawyers in the west of the province on Thursday. Three U.N. police officers and one translator were wounded when villagers blocked a road and lobbed stones at vehicles escorting two Serb members of a defence team accredited to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, a U.N. statement said. "Police then had to clear the crowd,...

24 May 2006 | 20:14 | FOCUS News Agency Banja Luka. The Muslims gave away a state to the Montenegrins because if they hadn’t taken a mass part in the referendum for the state status and hadn’t voted for its independence the country would not have received its independence, the leader of the Islamic community in Montenegro Rifat Fejzic stated cited by Serbian agency TANJUG. “The Muslims voted for Montenegro’s independence so that the Great Serbia and its ideas would come to an end,” he said and added that now “Montenegro has the great obligation to value that which the...

Montenegro's independence could open a Pandora's box for other separatist movements in Europe and the former Soviet Union, with some already claiming the right to follow the same path. Separatists in Spain's Basque and Catalan regions were among the first to welcome Montenegro's independence vote as a positive omen for their aspirations of loosening ties with Madrid. But Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos stressed the situations in his country and Montenegro were "politically, diplomatically, juridically" incomparable and that making such a comparison would represent a "great irresponsibility". His view was supported by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana,...

Vecernje Novosti daily, Belgrade Wednesday, May 17, 2006 We torched everything! (transcripts of Kosovo Albanians) By Zeljko Pantelic, May 16, 2006 Organized Albanian criminal groups involved in the sale of drugs, people, illegal immigration, etc. were behind the March 2004 pogrom against Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. This conclusion follows from taped telephone conversations between leaders of Albanian mafia organizations which since 2003 have been illegally transferring hundreds of illegal emigrants per year from Kosovo to Italy, and who were uncovered by Italian police at the beginning of this week. By wiretapping the conversations of Albanian criminals, investigating prosecutors in...

Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku has says independence for mostly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo of Serbia's government in Belgrade is near. "A great dream of independence is close and it is only months away," said Ceku Monday in his regular weekly address in Kosovo, Serbia's southern province whose population of 1.8 million is 90 percent ethnic-Albanian........

For a long time the proponents of Kosovo’s independence have acted as if the game was up, that all that remained was for the “international community” to settle on the formula for independence—and for Serbia to sign on the dotted line under pressure. Until recently, many old Balkan hands in the world’s capitals that matter expected that by the end of 2006 it would be all over. There are recent signs, however, that “it” won’t be over that soon, and that the outcome is by no means preordained. It did not look that way when the United Nations abandoned its...

Russian state-owned company Technopromexport has announced it will build a thermal power plant in Serbia within three years. The company Wednesday signed a contract with Serbia and Switzerland's Mentor Energy, company officials said. The construction of the plant, with two 450-megawatt blocks, is estimated to cost $877 million. Maja Gojkovich, mayor of the Serbian town Novi Sad, where the plant will be built, said the project will greatly benefit the economy of the town and the country, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. "It will provide work for 5,000 to 6,000 Serbs and guarantee orders for a number of Serbian...

Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women and children forced into prostitution). Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral part of the war on terror. Amazingly, that's what the international community seems to want to help establish in the Serbian province of Kosovo. When Kosovo was placed under United Nations administration and NATO military control at the end of the 1999 war, some hoped the province soon would meet...

Mass of conflicting property claims since war leads many Kosovars to try solving disputes with guns. By Krenar Gashi in Pristina (Balkan Insight, 26 Apr 06) A bloody shootout in a town in Kosovo has come as an unwelcome reminder to many Kosovars of how many battles over real estate end in death. Two people were killed, including a deputy mayor, and eight others were injured, in the shooting on April 22, in Shtime/Stimlje, 25 kilometres from the capital Pristina. The Kosovo Police Service, KPS, confirmed nine arrests over the shootings in which Aziz Xhelili and Vezir Bajrami, a deputy...

7 May 2006 | 14:54 | FOCUS News Agency Sofia. The Sarajevo based newspaper Free Bosnia published on its title page pictures of killed Serbs in Sarajevo in 1992, Radio TV Serbia reports. The killed from the Sarjevo municipality of Novi Grad and from Ali Pasino Pole have been displayed on the pictures. The publication pointed that during the war in Sarjevo 850 Serbs were massacred while the official representatives of Republic Serbia claim that their number is several thousand, RTS reports.

WASHINGTON - Catholics in Bosnia-Herzegovina feel pressure, threats and discrimination from an unfair political system and from Muslims financially backed by Islamic countries, said the head of the Bosnian bishops' conference. Successful dialogue between Catholics and Muslims, which is solely "about coexistence," depends on the political situation, Cardinal Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo told Catholic News Service in a May 2 interview. During the 1992-1995 war for independence and up to today, radical influences from Eastern Islamic countries infiltrated into Bosnia, the cardinal said through a translator during a visit to Washington. Bosnian Muslims have access to funding and permits to...

The bloody collapse of Yugoslavia shamed Europe. But those of us who live in the Balkans know particularly well that dismantling that artificial state involved a series of murderous ethnic and religious wars and cost at least 100,000 lives, while hundreds of thousands had to flee their homes. This is not to mention the physical devastation. Such appalling and widespread massacres and ethnic cleansing Europe had not seen since the defeat of Nazism. There is, however, one positive story from those dreadful years. It involves my own small but fiercely proud multi-ethnic country, Montenegro, which was wiped off the map...

Pristina. The debatable issues in connection to the border with Macedonia will be discussed after Kosovo’s status is determined, Kosovo’s Parliament Speaker Kol Berisa stated today cited by Macedonian agency Makfax.Kol Berisa pointed out it is also extremely important for Kosovo to have good relations with neighboring Macedonia because a lot of Albanians live there. He added the issue of the border with Macedonia will be discussed after Kosovo’s status is determined and that for Kosovo the contract between Belgrade and Skopje signed in 2001 is debatable.

Standing on the side of justice, as he said, and always with the victims, Austrian writer Peter Handke visited Kosovo several days ago. Standing at burnt homes of the Nikolices, Kostices, Bozanices and Bandices in the villages of Retimlje and Opterusa near Orahovac, Handke said: 'These are universes of pain. I do not have the right to speak. I shall keep silent, I have to keep silent. Thank you for making it possible for me to see this horror personally. This is not the 21st century'. Together with a group of domestic and foreign writers, Handke visited the most jeopardized...

"Since 1999, we saw the departure of the last remaining Jewish family out of Kosovo. Why is Washington shy at actually doing something to protect the minorities in Kosovo? Back in February, we spoke with Julia Gorin, a contributing commentator for the Jewish World Report and Front Page Magazine, about Kosovo and its links with the Islamic terror. The conversation eventually lended a front page cover for the Belgrade independent Weekly Telegraph, abut here we are transmitting it in its original, long format. Why does the US have an ambiguous position on the Kosovo status: it publicly supports a negotiated...

Six prominent wartime Bosnian Croat officials have gone on trial at the United Nations tribunal in The Hague for alleged war crimes. They all deny charges of masterminding a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Bosnian Muslims during the early 1990s. Jadranko Prlic, the one-time president of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Croat mini-state, is the chief suspect. Correspondents say the handling of the trial - the largest of its kind at the tribunal - will face close scrutiny. The charges relate to 11 months in 1993-94 when Bosnian Croats and Muslims - who were allies for most of the 1992-95 war against...

Kosovo: The emerging terror state By M. Bozinovich Back in February, we spoke with Julia Gorin, a contributing commentator for the Jewish World Report and Front Page Magazine, about Kosovo and its links with the Islamic terror. The conversation eventually lended a front page cover for the Belgrade independent Weekly Telegraph, abut here we are transmitting it in its original, long format. Why does the US have an ambiguous position on the Kosovo status: it publicly supports a negotiated solution, while privately numerous individuals involved in those negotiations support independence? What does that mean? Bush does want a negotiated solution,...

…Khalid fought in Afghanistan for two years...Afghanistan represented the birth of the global struggle... In 1993, after Khalid had returned home from Afghanistan,...he went to join the fighting in Bosnia... The combat was much more intense than the action he had seen in Afghanistan...In Bosnia, the enemy was right in front of you, and you had to kill or be killed each day. Khalid fought alongside a group called the Green Berets, named not after the American Special Forces but after the colour of Islam. One day, after a year at war in Bosnia, Khalid was on the front line...

Tucep. Home of Danilo Dzolic (75) was attacked by armed group at about 1 a.m. this morning in Kosovo village of Tucep, RTS reports. No one was injured during the attack but the house in which Dzolic and his wife were at that moment is damaged. The attackers most probably wanted to steal Dzolic’s tractor because so far four tractors had been stolen in the village. Tucep residents chased away the attackers by firing their hunting guns, which Kosovo police and KFOR confiscated today. The Serbs living in the village expressed their concerns the attacks might happen again.

Released : Apr 22, 2006 9:27 AM PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-Two ethnic Albanians were killed and seven were wounded Saturday in a shootout between two families allegedly over a property dispute, police said. The exchange of gunfire occurred in the town of Stimlje, 25 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of Kosovo's capital Pristina following an argument, said Violeta Elezaj, a police spokeswoman. Among the dead was the town's deputy mayor, Vezir Bajrami, an official from the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, the party's spokeswoman said. Most of the injured were being treated at a hospital. Several suspects were arrested, Elezaj said, adding that...