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When the United States and its key European allies ignored Russia’s protests and recognized Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blithely insisted that the Kosovo situation was unique and set no international precedent whatsoever. Prominent members of the foreign policy communities in Europe and the United States echoed her argument. Moscow’s August 26 decision to recognize the independence of Georgia’s separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia demonstrates the arrogant folly of that position. In just a matter of months, the Kosovo precedent has backfired on the United States and generated dangerous tensions...

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia's foreign minister said the link is clear — U.S. and Western support for Kosovo's secession from Serbia has helped fuel tensions in Georgia's separatist province of South Ossetia. Minister Vuk Jeremic was quoted by the Vecernje Novosti daily on Thursday as saying the recognition of Kosovo's independence on Feb. 17 by the United States and its NATO allies has "destabilized" other parts of the world. "We have pointed out to the international community from the very start that the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo could present a dangerous precedent," Vuk Jeremic was quoted as...

Belgrade - Serb nationalists protesting the arrest of Bosnian war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic trashed businesses and clashed with police Tuesday in downtown Belgrade, news reports said. After several hundred demonstrators gathered at Republic Square, a group of about 50 broke chairs and windows in several bars and attacked police. They fled when riot police appeared. Three young men were arrested, Serb media said. No injuries were reported. The protesters, who sang patriotic songs and wore shirts with Karadzic's face, began dispersing after a speech by the secretary- general of the ultranationalist Radical Party, Aleksandar Vucic. Vucic said the Radicals...

Radovan Karadzic is accused of the most heinous crimes against humanity, from the siege of Sarajevo to the Srebrenica massacre. He is charged with having the blood of 20,000 lives on his hands and of bringing an entire country down by ethnic hatred. Today relatives of the thousands of victims said they had been waiting for this moment of justice for 13 years.

.....Radovan Karadzic will be duly convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, and he will not come out of jail alive. The verdict is already written, but it reflects a fundamental imbalance. It ignores the essence of the Bosnian war—the Serbs’ striving not to be forced into secession—while remaining mute about the culpability of the other two sides for a series of unconstitutional, illegitimate and illegal political decisions that caused the war. The judgment against Karadzic at the U.S.-sponsored and largely U.S.-funded tribunal at The Hague will be built on this flawed foundation. It will be neither fair or just,...

The travel section of the paper featured a story on Kosovo the other day with a recommendation that readers visit this latest "must see" spot on the globe. It made me laugh. Almost forty years ago--1971 to be exact -- I traveled in what was then called Yugoslavia and is now called Kosovo. The memories of that trip remain so vivid and so utterly at odds with this report.

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Some are concerned about what NATO, the United Nations, and the European Union have nurtured there since the military and humanitarian intervention in 1999. James Jatras, a U.S.-based advocate for the Serbian Orthodox Community, put it bluntly last year when he said Kosovo was a “a beachhead into the rest of Europe” for “radical Muslims” and “terrorist elements.” It’s an assertion without evidence. “We’ve been here for so long,” said United States Army Sergeant Zachary Gore in Eastern Kosovo, “and not seen any evidence of it, that we’ve reached the assumption...

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment deployed to the Balkans earlier this year to provide Kosovo Forces with armored capabilities during Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia, according to Army officials. Information on the deployment was kept under wraps until now because of the mission’s sensitivity. In the days following Kosovo’s declaration of independence, protesters marched in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica. Kosovo Force troops and U.N. police closed the border with Serbia after hearing that protesters were being bused to Mitrovica to join the protest. During the deployment 1-4 soldiers were manning Bradley fighting...

British Nazi-Al Qaeda Links? They are unmistakable and definite The Independent reported on July 10, 2005 that Al Qaeda may have hired a gang of “white mercenary terrorists� to carry out the London bombings.The Daily Mirror reported on July 16, 2005 that the four bombers may have been “duped� into carrying their bomb-laden backpacks on to the Underground and a bus. There is also intelligence that points to Italian neo-fascist, Pentagon Task Force 121, and Balkan Islamic fundamentalist links to the London bombers. French counter-terrorism official have reported that Balkans or Eastern European-origin military grade explosives were used in the...

A group comprising survivors and relatives of the victims of the massacre in Srebrenica have called on a court in The Hague to lift the United Nations' immunity. The six thousand Bosnians want to bring charges against the UN and the Netherlands for their role in the fall of the Muslim enclave. But that can only happen if the judge in The Hague makes legal proceedings against the UN possible. The judge will consider the request and deliver a ruling in mid-July. The Muslim enclave in Srebrenica fell on 11 July 1995 into the hands of Bosnian Serb troops who...

“If Yugoslavia was the laboratory of Communism, then Communism would breathe its last dying breath here in Belgrade. And to judge by what [Slobodan] Milosevic was turning into by early 1989, Communism would exit the world stage revealed for what it truly was: fascism, without fascism's ability to make the trains run on time.” - Robert D. Kaplan “You bombed my country.” These were the nearly first words I heard after clearing passport control on arrival in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, from a taxi driver who flagged me down inside the airport. “Fifteen countries bombed my country.” I didn't...

CAMP ATTERBURY, Ind., May 15, 2008 – Many mothers sit at home and wonder what their deployed son or daughter is doing, hoping everything is all right and waiting for the next phone call. Some might see a mother deploying with her son as a great thing, but what onlookers might not think about is what is left back home. Army National Guard Spc. Roschell Eaton and her son, Spc. Jason Hutchins, both from 3175th Military Police Company, train at Camp Atterbury, Ind., for their upcoming deployment as part of Kosovo Force 10, Multinational Task Force East. U.S. Army...

Perhaps some insiders (or those unwillingly part) of the Clintonistas’ administration realized that what we (the USA) were doing was just not right - and so the award/medal could not be called/designated in more accurate terms as the “Re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate” Medal… So better to have sent in the Girl Scouts - as things would have ended up basically the same as they have, except perhaps with less loss of innocent life. Anyway, it’s is also off of my uniform forever. My only desire is that in some very small way it may help people to become aware...

MOSCOW: Russia plans to considerably step up its humanitarian aid programme for the Serb minority in Kosovo, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies late on Friday. We will soon begin delivery of up to 10,000 tonnes of medicine, medical equipment and wheat, Shoigu was quoted as saying after meeting Serbian Economy Minister Predrag Bubalo in Belgrade. Shoigu said this would be the second phase of Russia’s humanitarian aid programme for Kosovo Serbs, after four aircraft carrying a couple hundred tonnes of aid arrived in Serbia earlier this month.

(Political Animal) THE KOSOVO QUANDARY....Liberal internationalist types tend to believe that non-defensive military action shouldn't be undertaken unless it's authorized by the UN. But Kosovo wasn't authorized by the UN, and most liberal internationalists seem to think it was a worthy effort anyway. Matt Yglesias, blogging about his new book over at TPMCafe, ponders this: It's a tough question for the liberal internationalist because generally speaking I would like to have my cake and eat it too here. Kosovo mostly accomplished good things, but the process — moving in without Security Council authorization — isn't something I can strictly speaking...

Newsmax.com | The Kurdish regional government in Northern Iraq is providing a safe haven to several thousand Iraqi Christians who have fled persecution in other parts of the country, government officials and local pastors told Newsmax. Unlike refugee camps set up for some 100,000 Shia Muslims fleeing attacks from Sunnis, which are closely monitored by Kurdish security forces, Christians have been encouraged to live anywhere. “Christians in Iraq need special attention, because they’ve been suffering because they are Christians,” Deputy Prime Minister Omar Fattah told Newsmax in an exclusive interview in Erbil. “Maybe we give some instructions to others where...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin asked ministers on Monday to draw up plans to send humanitarian aid to Serb-populated enclaves of Kosovo, Russian media reported. Moscow has joined its ally Belgrade in opposing Kosovo's independence from Serbia and has refused to recognise it as a sovereign state. The United States and most European countries have recognized Kosovo's independence. Russian television showed a meeting between Putin and his ministers at which Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Serbian government had requested the aid, citing a deterioration of the situation in Serb-populated areas of Kosovo. "We considered it important to...

NEW YORK -- The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has released a new report. It warned that the axis between South American drug cartels and the Albanian mafia have reached "alarming proportions", while reports by several intelligence agencies show that Kosovo is a distribution center on the crossroads of global routes and pathways of drug trafficking. This presents reason for concern, primarily because of the new pathways of drug trafficking, and "inclusion of cocaine in the range of products offered by the groups that are active along the Balkan drug route", the UNODC annual report for 2007...

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...

The Hague Prosecution learned while investigating war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbs and other ethnic communities that people that disappeared in 1999 in Kosovo were subjected to surgery in which their kidneys and other organs were taken from them and then the smugglers were selling them to foreign clinics, Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal wrote in her book ‘Hunt’. ‘The victims were most likely abducted after NATO bombing when international peace-keeping forces were already deployed in Kosovo’. Even high KLA members were involved in the operation of smuggling of organs, Del...

Serbian daily "Kurir" claims that Polish NATO soldier fiered upon un-armed protestors from a than-occupied buildin of a courthouse in Northern Mitrovica. "By direct order of KFOR hedaquorters in Pristina, Polish soldiers opened sniper fire on un-armed Serb demonstrations. This was done while French soldiers used rubber-bullets and tear-gas to disperse demonstrations, Polish troops recieved orders to fire upon Serbs." Nebojša Vukomanovic, protestor was shot in head by the sniper, his friends claim this : "All of this was simple trap for Serbs, and was planned in Pristina and US base Bondsteel. Wounded Vukomanivic was one of the Serb policeman...

PRISTINA, Kosovo - The United Nations accused Serbian officials Tuesday of complicity in the violence in northern Kosovo that left a U.N. policeman from Ukraine dead and dozens of people hurt. Larry Rossin, the deputy U.N. administrator for Kosovo, told reporters in Pristina that "it is clear to us that the violence ... was orchestrated." At the very least, Rossin said, Serbia's government failed to use its influence to prevent ethnic Serbs in Kosovo from launching the attacks, which left more than 60 U.N. and NATO forces and 70 Kosovo Serb protesters wounded. The U.N. pulled out of the Serb-dominated...

Last Sunday's unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, former warlord/commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), heralds the birth of a new European narco state. The illegal dismemberment of Serbia, completing the U.S./EU/NATO destruction of Yugoslavia, is proclaimed by ruling elites and their sycophants as an exemplary means to bring "peace and stability" to the region. This provocative move, outside the framework of international law, threatens any sovereign state with similar treatment should they deviate from the "Washington consensus." Far from bringing "peace" let alone "stability," an "independent" Kosovo will serve as a militarized outpost for...

PARIS -- A Basque separatist leader yesterday said that his "struggle was inspired by the Kosovo example". Gabriel Mueska, who spent 17 years in prison for his membership in the terrorist group ETA, was speaking in a French television debate, dubbed "The death of nations", that also included Serb, Albanian and Flemish separatist representatives, and French analysts. "The Basques were exceptionally happy after the declaration of Kosovo's independence," he confided. "I was with the young people when the declaration took place and I did not manage to explain to them why us Basques do not have this possibility for freedom,"...

fighting wordsThe Serbs' Self-Inflicted Wounds With Kosovo independent, Yugoslavia is finally dead.By Christopher HitchensPosted Friday, Feb. 22, 2008, at 12:51 PM ET Someone with a good memory of the conversation once told me how Lord Carrington, then one of the "mediators" of the incipient post-Yugoslavia war, came to the conclusion that Slobodan Milosevic was a highly dangerous man. Well-disposed toward Serbia (as the British establishment has always been), Carrington told the late dictator that he understood Serb concerns about significant Serbian minorities in Bosnia and Croatia. But why did Milosevic also insist on exclusive control over Kosovo, where the Albanian...

Serbian prosecutors said Saturday they were hunting rioters who targeted the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade leaving one person dead while a senior Serbian minister blamed Washington for the violence triggered by Kosovo's breakaway. Authorities said they had arrested nearly 200 rioters who took part in the violence on Thursday that prompted the United States to evacuate non-essential embassy staff and warn Serbia it would be held responsible. "We are collecting evidence and are identifying the culprits," Slobodan Radovanovic said in a statement, according to The Associated Press. Serbia's Kosovo minister Slobodan Samardzic said Saturday that the U.S. -- which backed...

Angry demonstrators protesting Kosovo's independence from Serbia attacked the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade on Thursday, throwing rocks, breaking windows and setting fires. Serbian TV showed someone trying to set fire to the U.S. flag at the embassy, which was closed and unstaffed when the masked protesters attacked. Riot police fired tear gas at the rioters and lines of armored vehicles were on the streets before the embassy perimeter was secured. A State Department official told CNN "things are under control." Kosovo declared independence last Sunday and the United States was among the first countries to offer official recognition of its...

By James George Jatras Abraham Lincoln was fond of asking the rhetorical question: "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg." That pretty much sums up the recent unilateral declaration of independence by Albanian Muslims in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Several countries, disgracefully led by the United States, have recognized Kosovo. Major media have hailed creation of the "world's newest country." But calling Kosovo a country doesn't make it one. Serbia has denounced the move as the illegal creation of a...

BRUSSELS, KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- Beta says an analysis shows Kosovo's unilateral declaration will first be recognized by some Islamic countries. The news agency has had insight into the document, put together "by some EU countries", that says the province's independence declaration, rejected by Serbia, will be recognized in "three waves". Albania, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and some other Muslim countries will lead the way, the report says. This will be followed by Austria, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and, the document speculates, France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy. The United States is also likely to recognize Kosovo very soon. The "second wave"...

PRISTINA, Kosovo -- Kosovo's parliament declared the territory a nation on Sunday, mounting a historic bid to become an "independent and democratic state" backed by the U.S. and European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.....

“U.S. offering friendship to Serbia� 14 February 2008 | 11:49 | Source: Beta, Tanjug WASHINGTON -- Condoleezza Rice says that America hopes Serbia will accept the solution for Kosovo’s future status. Condoleezza Rice (FoNet) The U.S. secretary of state told Congress yesterday that America was offering friendship to Serbia at a time when Kosovo Albanian leaders were preparing to declare independence from Serbia. Association Press reiterated that Serbia had stated that it would never recognize the independence of the province, which has an Albanian population of some 90 percent. AP adds that the U.S. and a majority of EU member-states...

Unwanted, unwelcome, illegal, illegitimate, the EU mission is poised to make a Nazi style blitzkrieg into Kosovo to broker the Sudetenland Germans, I mean Albanian mafia criminal terrorists, for an unprecedented, unparalleled post World War 2 land grab, tearing away for the first time the land of a sovereign European state in violation of all norms, all agreements, the UN Charter and UN Resolution 1244...the first time for such an occurrence since the UN was founded to prevent such a thing from happening again after the horror and devastation of bloody warfare throughout Europe. The Treaty of Rome establishing a...

BELGRADE -- The government has information suggesting that Hashim Thaci will declare Kosovo independence on February 17. In talks with EU High Representative Javier Solana’s adviser Stefan Lene, Kosovo Minister Slobodan Samardžić said that the EU could not expect Serbia to sign off Kosovo’s independence, right before a unilateral declaration of Kosovo independence, said the Kosovo Ministry. At this moment in time, by signing any sort of agreement with the EU, Serbia would be giving its consent and justification to creating a fake state on its territory, Samardžić reiterated, adding that Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica “will not sign such an...

MOSCOW (AP) - A senior Russian diplomat said Monday that Moscow has prepared an action plan that envisages close coordination with Serbia should the West recognize any Kosovo declaration of independence. Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, the Russian Foreign Ministry's special envoy to the Balkans, said Moscow is encouraging more talks between the Serbs and the province's ethnic Albanian majority. He said, however, that chances for such talks are rapidly decreasing, with Kosovo's leaders expected to declare independence soon. Botsan-Kharchenko said at a meeting with Russian lawmakers that the ministry had worked out a plan of action if Kosovo declares independence, and the...

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As Kosovo goes, so goes northern Cyprus? That's the way the Turkish Cypriots see it. They can't see any distinction between the West's plans for a new "independent" state of Kosovo and the aspirations of Turkey for an independent Turkish Cyprus. It's just one more reason against the creation of a new state of Kosovo, where none has ever existed before. The real problem with these fanciful new "independent" states is that they are not independent at all. Both will be aligned with Islamic world, where freedom, individual liberties and respect for peaceful neighbors and non-Muslim minorities are virtually unknown...

BELGRADE -- The 125th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Belgrade and Washington comes at a difficult time. The anniversary marks the date on which King Milan Obrenovic; signed a decree, putting into effect the Trade Agreement and the Consular Convention between Serbia and the United States. The issue of the status of Kosovo, Serbia's southern province under international interim administration since the end of the 1999 war there, is at the center of serious misgivings between the two countries. Washington insists on supporting the province's independence, while Serbia's top state officials reject this, and issue sometimes strongly worded statements critical...

BELGRADE: The European Union must choose between signing an accord with Serbia or deploying a mission to Kosovo as a prelude to an independence declaration by the breakaway province, Serbia's prime minister said on Thursday. In a written statement, Vojislav Kostunica said that when EU foreign ministers met on January 28, the bloc would have to choose "whether it wants a whole... Serbia as a partner, or it wants to create a 'quasi state' on Serb territory". "The EU must choose... whether it will sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Serbia or, under United States pressure, send a mission...

Kosovo will declare its independence from Serbia any day now. Serbia, Russia and a handful of other states ardently oppose this decision, but that will not stop Kosovo from breaking away. This should make us wonder: How can such a minute little province act so boldly? A few days prior to this announcement Wolfgang Ischinger, the German diplomat responsible for representing the EU in its policy toward Kosovo, gave the world a glimpse of his vision of what Kosovo’s independence might look like. “It will be a state entity,” he said, “which will continue to be under broad international observation....

UN official under investigation for alleged improper behavior loses Kosovo job 2007-12-18 17:12:40 - PRISTINA, Serbia (AP) - A top U.N. official who is being investigated for his ties with Kosovo leaders left the province on Tuesday after being told his contract would not be renewed, a U.N. official told The Associated Press. Retired U.S. Army General Steven Schook's, whose term as deputy head of the U.N.'s Kosovo mission officially ends Dec. 31, will not be invited back to serve in the mission, a U.N. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the case was still pending. The official...

NATO commanders are now contemplating certain unfavorable scenarios that no one wanted to talk about 8 years ago when the war plans were still on the table and an exit strategy could have been forged. While diplomatic recognition can come as swiftly as the victors care to uncap their pens, real control on the ground will be a different matter. The geographic partitioning of Serbia, in this case, will look interestingly similar to another failed peace initiative: the treaty of Versailles and the disappearance of Weimar Germany. Firstly, there are simple strategic problems on the ground that will deny Kosovo...

The European Union wants Hashim Thaci, the former guerrilla leader who looks set to lead the government that emerges from Saturday's polls, to avoid any rash moves that could provoke Serbia and its ally Russia. Noting a December 10 deadline for ending negotiations on the future status of the ethnic Albanian-majority province, EU foreign ministers called on Thaci to let the talks run their course, and do nothing to jeopardize international support. "Kosovo should have her independence (but) it shouldn't be an unmanaged unilateral declaration," said Britain's European affairs minister Jim Murphy. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said: "We need...

"We will defend what is ours We shall never surrender" -Kosovo Is Serbia- Oficial Serbian Gov. bilboard

On December 10, the US-EU-Russian troika seeking a mutually acceptable settlement of the future status of Kosovo will make its report to the United Nations and to the world. Given the current position of the Russian government, it is unlikely that any agreement will be reached. If this is the case, I believe that further delay would be highly inadvisable. This process, which started far too late thanks to the neglect of the Bush Administration in its first term, has run its course. With Russia threatening to veto any arrangement submitted to the U.N. Security Council, we must be prepared...

October 27, 2007 SERBIANNA US Ambassador to Bosnia, Charles English, has issued a threat to the democratically elected President of Serb entity in Bosnia insisting that the elected Serb lawmakers must accept laws international administrator is making otherwise American response on Bosnian Serbs will be "swift and powerful". "Conflict with the High Representative is the conflict with USA. The safety and stability of Bosnia Herzegovina is in the interest of United States and we are prepared to defend it," said English in an interview to Bosnian news agencies. US Ambassador to Bosnia, Charles English, left, talking to Serb President Milorad...

BELGRADE, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica accused the United States on Tuesday of actively blocking a compromise solution for the breakaway province of Kosovo, whose Albanian majority demands independence. "Every day, statements by American officials that Kosovo will become independent after Dec. 10 ... aim to stop Kosovo Albanians from accepting a compromise solution for the province," he said in a statement. The official news agency Tanjug quoted Kostunica as saying Washington's policy of "force" was an extension of NATO's 1999 bombing of Serbia "to deploy military forces in the province to take away 15 percent...

A member of the Spanish Battalion in the UN peace-keeping force testifies about the Croat-Muslim conflict in Mostar at the trial of former Bosnian Croat leaders. One of the questions for him was: is a hospital surrounded by enemy mortar positions a legitimate target?At the trial of former Herceg Bosna leaders, the prosecution called yet another member of the Spanish Battalion, who testified under a pseudonym and with image distortion about the Croat-Muslim conflict in Mostar. In the examination-in-chief, he confirmed a number of reports filed by the Spanish Battalion about the shelling, sniping and humanitarian situation in East Mostar....

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) - Serbia will offer near complete autonomy to Kosovo during the first face-to-face negotiations with rival ethnic Albanians in New York later this week, a Serbian official said Monday. The minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, said that Belgrade's new proposal includes giving the independence-seeking Kosovo Albanians ``95 percent competence'' in running the province. ``The Serbian proposal is new and specific and offers a form of maximum autonomy not seen in the world today,'' Samardzic said, adding that Kosovo would maintain ``weak and minimal'' links with Serbia.

U.S. involvement in the Balkan wars occurred on President Clinton's watch, and we're still waiting for results. They hardly trump the progress we now seem to be making to win the war in Iraq. Back in 1999, Clinton ordered NATO to bomb Serb positions around the breakaway province for 78 days as the United Nations dithered. Then he passed the buck to the U.N. for final resolution of Kosovo's status. "I think that it's obvious that we are doing the right thing, and we are going to prevail," said Vice President Al Gore in April 1999. Eight years later, 16,500...

Independent Kosovo seen as threat to Israel August 23, 2007 SERBIANNA Most Israeli academics and military brass have expressed grave concerns that an independent Kosovo will be an eventual threat to Israel because of the province's rapid radicalization, says an American delegation that was recently on a visit to Israel where they met with a broad range of Israeli academics, military brass and top government officials. "The academics and generals seemed the most gung-ho for making sure that Kosovo wasn't granted independence," says Julia Gorin, one of the American visitors to Israel. The purpose of the trip that was organized...