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Ramush Haradinaj is the most senior ethnic Albanian indicted by the Hague tribunal Former Kosovan Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is going back on trial at The Hague in its first-ever partial retrial for war crimes. He is due to re-appear before the UN War Crimes Tribunal after his 2008 acquittal was overturned on grounds of witness intimidation. The former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighter and two co-accused are being retried. It is the first partial retrial ordered by the UN War Crimes Tribunal. It follows an appeal by the prosecution against the acquittal in 2008 of Mr Haradinaj. The indictment...

Kosovo Serb orthodox priest conducts a religious service near the barricades in the village of Zupce near the town of Zubin Potok on August 1. Serbs vowed to press on with roadblocks and stop NATO's KFOR peacekeeping force from proceeding until Kosovo agrees not to station its police and customs officers at the sensitive border posts. Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters ***** Paris NATO is sending several hundred German and Austrian troops to Kosovo to buttress peacekeeping forces there after border violence left a Kosovar policeman dead and inflamed tensions with Serbia. Fighting erupted after Kosovar special police units in armored cars...

The Kosovo Serbs in the north are defending the millennium old lands of their ancestors and the birthplace of Serbian Orthodox Christianity from the invasion of Hashim Thaci’s special police forces called ROSU to enforce a ban on imports from Serbia. These imports are a matter of elementary existence for the Kosovo Serbs, who have survived what Mary Walsh characterized as genocide on UN/NATO watch in her book Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime against God and Humanity.” She has also characterized Kosovo as the prison without walls. The Kosovo Serbs are also defending the UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution...

BELGRADE (AFP) — A trade embargo imposed by authorities in Pristina has led to severe shortages of food and medicine among ethnic Serbs living in northern Kosovo, media reports said on Sunday. Suppliers from Serbia have been unable to deliver bread and milk to the towns of Lesak, Leposavic and northern Mitrovica, the Belgrade-based Beta news agency reported. Shops in the towns were also on the verge of selling out of meat and sugar products and customers have been stockpiling flour and yeast, it added. Supplies of bottled water were also running low, while doctors at the main health centre...

Violence on the border between Kosovo and Serbia continued to escalate on Wednesday as members of the Serbian minority in northern Kosovo set fire to a border post that has been in dispute since Monday. The attackers also reportedly fired shots at a nearby outpost run by the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR). The border station has been contested since the beginning of the week when Kosovo's special police seized two northern border crossings in attempt to enforce an import ban on Serbian goods. On Tuesday a Kosovar police officer was killed, reportedly with a gunshot to the head. KFOR troops...

It looked like war. Kosovo special units would appear at border checkpoints alternatively. At sound of siren people would run to access roads blocking them, says a Serb, one of witnesses of the incident provoked by Kosovo authorities in their attempt to take by force the checkpoints at administration border crossings of Jarinje and Brnjak. The authorities in Pristina ordered the day before yesterday at 22.00 the action of conquering the checkpoints aimed to establish full control over all access roads to Kosovo. A well informed ‘Blic’ source from Pristina claims that Kosovo authorities got no green light for this...

International concern has been raised over a Kosovo police bid to take over two border crossings in the ethnic Serb north in which one officer was killed. Kosovo police units, who came under fire, pulled back after Serbs refusing to recognise their authority took up arms and mounted roadblocks. Nato-led peacekeepers moved into the area to calm the situation. The US and EU criticised the Kosovan government for acting without consulting international bodies. Continue reading the main story Analysis image of Mark Lowen Mark Lowen BBC News, Belgrade The whole episode shows just how problematic the north of Kosovo remains....

Kosovska Devojka The Kosovo Maiden ***** Today, June 28, 2011, marks the anniversary of perhaps the most sacred day in Serbian history. It can be said, too, that it is a sacred day in Christian history. On this day, in 1389 on Kosovo field, 70,000 Serbian men, the entire Serbian Army, gave its life to defend Christianity against the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks and Islam. They chose the "Heavenly Kingdom" over the earthly one. For them, Christianity was worth fighting for.Sincerely, Aleksandra Rebic *****

It sure is a good thing we bombed those Serbs. And bought ourselves all that Bosnian and Albanian good will.

BEIJING, May 23 (Xinhua) -- The latest moves by Western allies against Libya have shown marked similarities to "strategies" they adopted in Kosovo in the 1990s. Catherine Ashton, EU's foreign policy chief, opened the bloc's office on Sunday in Benghazi,the Libyan opposition's base camp when he visited the city on Sunday. Earlier last Monday, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) requested arrest warrants for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and his brother-in-law Abdullah Al-Sanousi who is Libya's head of intelligence. In retrospective, NATO adopted a three-step strategy in Kosovo War back in 1999. NATO first...

PRIŠTINA -- Kosovo's Priština-based authorities opened embassies in a number of European countries, but are reportedly unable to provide appropriate salaries for the staff. European states are obligated to ensure payment of social welfare to a certain number of employees at the embassies opened by the Kosovo Albanian authorities, since their salaries are lower than the allowed minimum. This is according to the Priština-based Albanian language daily Zeri. These employees are classified as social cases, due to the low salaries they receive from the budget of the Kosovo government. This prompted Germany and Switzerland "to react", according to the report....

Did you know that the EU has ensured that there has been no war between its members for last 60 years?

(AKI) – Former Kosovo president Bedzet Pacoli said on Friday his successor Atifete Jahjaga, who was elected by parliament, was in fact handpicked by the US ambassador to Pristina Christopher Dell. Pacoli spent only one month in office and resigned last month after the constitutional court ruled the there had been irregularities in his election. To break the political deadlock, the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo, its coalition partner Alliance for new Kosovo and the opposition Democratic Alliance of Kosovo had agreed to field Jahjaga as a joint candidate. But Pacoli told Pristina channel “TV Clan”, Jahjaga actually wasn’t a...

In my December 2010 essay "Amorality of US Kosovo Policy: Friends with the Snake", I published reactions to the Council of Europe’s (CoE) 27-page report authored by the Swiss-Italian politician, senator and prosecuting lawyer Dick Marty. The report, which is the culmination of his two-year investigation, claimed that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) thugs headed by the current Kosovo prime minister Hashim Thaci, known as “the Snake”, abducted mostly Kosovo Serbs and also some Albanian so-called “collaborators,” transported them to northern Albania, murdered them, extracted their kidneys and other organs, and sold them on the black market. These macabre Nazi/Croatian...

The large military base in southern Kosovo faces reduction or closure as strategic attention shifts from the Balkans, US ambassador Christopher Dell tells Jane's.

A 3 part investigation by the Global Post into Kosovo's endemic corruption and what the US, NATO and Western governments knew before we went in, after we went in, and even before we supported Kosovo "independence". Kosovo's Mafia: Assassinations and intimidation (CIA inspired), Part 2 Kosovo's Mafia: A hotbed of human trafficking (sex slaving), Part 3

March 27, 2011 Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci sees echoes of his country's own history in the unfolding events in Libya. In an exclusive interview with RFE/RL's Balkan Service correspondent Albana Isufi, Thaci likens NATO's involvement in Libya to its 1999 bombing of Serbia. RFE/RL: Mr. Prime Minister, 12 years ago, freedom was the most important thing for Kosovo. Today, Kosovo is free, but what are its challenges? Hashim Thaci: Today, Kosovo is a free, independent, and sovereign state, proud of its powerful, legitimate, democratic, and multiethnic institutions. With a certain Euro-Atlantic perspective it wants to be part of NATO...

Belgrade - Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Serbia on Wednesday and pledged his continued support to Serbia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in view of Kosovo's three-year-old declaration of independence. After talks with Serbian president Boris Tadic and prime minister Mirko Cvetkovic, Putin said his visit was a confirmation of “traditional friendship between Russia and Serbia and closeness of Russian and Serbian people”. Russia blocked declaration of Kosovo independence by majority Albanians in the United Nations Security Council three years ago and Putin vowed Moscow’s policy in relation to Kosovo would not change.

In the eyes of his family and friends, Arid Uka was a model youth... The young man, who was from Kosovo, helped his mother at home, cleaned floors, took out the trash and even gave her half his salary for the pilgrimage to Mecca. Mr. Uka, 21, was a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day, but also liked to play video games on a PlayStation and watch “The Simpsons” with his brothers, 27 and 12... But last Wednesday, that vision of normal life vanished, after Mr. Uka was arrested in connection with an attack on an American military...

In 1999, when we launched the NATO air campaign against Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, President Bill Clinton had to state publicly that he didn't intend to use ground troops. He did so in an effort to limit the costs of an initiative that the public and Congress did not consider to be in our nation's vital interest. The administration and I, as the NATO commander in Europe, were in a difficult position, and Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic knew it. But what Milosevic didn't understand was that once we began the strikes - with NATO troops deployed in neighboring countries...