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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"...