Free Republic

The Bosnian government is bringing to a close five months of work reviewing how some 1,500 people - most of them fighters who came to Bosnia from Muslim countries during the 1992-1995 war - gained Bosnian citizenship. ... The 1,500 naturalized Bosnian citizens were given until last week to provide all documents used to gain Bosnian citizenship between 1992-1996. ... The Syrian-born Abu Hamza is also among those who are facing deportation. He arrived in Croatia in the early 1990s as a student and moved to Bosnia at the beginning of the war. Investigators say he lied on his citizenship...

Depriving a democratic country of a part of its territory simply because one ethnic group that has aspirations for that territory threatens violence is impermissible, not only morally but also from the perspective of historical experience. Indeed, tragic occurrences have taught mankind that a policy of appeasement toward those who threaten force only opens the way to more and even greater violence.

By Mark John BRUSSELS, July 7 (Reuters) - NATO is looking at ways to allay a growing sense of isolation in Serbia, possibly with an offer of closer ties short of a full partnership, alliance diplomats said on Friday. The alliance has denied Serbia and its neighbour Bosnia entry to its Partnership for Peace programme, the first rung on the ladder to possible membership, until fugitive Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects General Ratko Mladic and wartime leader Radovan Karadzic are brought to international justice. But now Montenegro has ended its union with Serbia and Kosovo is set to go its...

Agencies in Belgrade Friday June 3, 2005 The Guardian They are the images that have finally, 10 years later, shocked a nation. A man, several men, are unloaded from a truck, marched to a wooded hillside and shot, one by one, in the back. Two prisoners are ordered to carry the bodies to a barn. They too are then executed. The murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 is well documented. But a video that emerged this week during the trial of the former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, has provoked a bout of soul-searching...

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia • A majority of Bosnian Serbs support secession from Bosnia if Serbia's UN-run province of Kosovo was granted independence, a poll published in a Bosnian Serb newspaper yesterday showed. Forty percent of 850 people polled in Bosnia's Serb Republic fully agree and 22.3 per cent mostly agree with the idea of breaking away and joining Serbia, showed the Partner Marketing poll published in the independent weekly magazine Reporter. Twenty-eight per cent fully or mostly reject the idea. The Bosnian Serbs' lingering secession sentiment was revived after the Montenegrin vote in May to end a union with Serbia,...

Belgrade, 2 July 06. (Tanjug) – The Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohija announced that UNMIK Chief Soren Jesen-Petersen “leaving Kosovo in an armored vehicle”, showed that the international community did not fulfill its basic task for seven years, such as the creation of elementary security conditions of free living and freedom of movement. “Petersen’s earlier statement, stated that he is leaving Kosovo for private reasons. Before his departure he clearly stated slogans on behalf of Albanian lobbyists who use all means in the fight for independence of the Serbian southern province”, states the Center at the Sunday announcement. Coordination...

Serbia must accept a "different vision" for the future make-up of south-east Europe or face increasing isolation and diminishing prospects of closer relations with the European Union, Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, will tell Vojislav Kostunica, his Serbian counterpart, tomorrow --- Belgrade is under pressure from the UK, US and the UN administration in Kosovo to accept independence as the "least problematic solution". However, Mr Kostunica faces formidable domestic pressure not to abandon Serbia's historical claims to the province, now dominated by ethnic Albanians. Belgrade continues to offer "the widest possible autonomy" without conceding sovereignty. --- Serbian state-run newspapers...

Peter Handke has once again shocked the German public but this time in such a way that not even the most extreme do not dare criticize him for it. He has given up the alternative Heinrich Heine award that the actors and intellectuals of Berlin wished to bestow upon him in favor of the Serbs of Kosovo, who live "surrounded by barbed wire and tanks". www.novosti.co.yu Vecernje Novosti daily, Belgrade June 24, 2006 By D. Sekulic, June 23, 2006 Peter Handke has once again shocked the German public but this time in such a way that not even the most...

A picturesque valley in the western province of Kosovo is home to the largest and most urgently preserved monastery in Serbia. The 14th century Visoki Decani monastery has not only survived the passage of time but also the ravages of war. Even though around half the Serb population fled a wave of revenge attacks after the war, the 100,000 who stayed are still targeted by sporadic violence. Stoning of police and attacks on individuals are not uncommon. In 1998, Slobodan Milosevic, who was president at the time, led troops against Albanian forces in an effort to reclaim parts of Kosovo....

PRISTINA, Serbia - Kosovo's top leaders travel to Washington next week to hold talks with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the president's office said Friday. President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku are to meet Rice on Monday, said Muhamet Hamiti, the president's adviser. Sejdiu will visit the United States for the first time since he was elected in February, succeeding Kosovo's late President Ibrahim Rugova, who died of lung cancer earlier this year. During his trip, Sejdiu will meet other officials in the State Department and the White House, the statement said. Ceku is also scheduled to...

PRISTINA, Serbia-Two British tourists were shot at Thursday in western Kosovo, officials said. No one was injured. The shooting occurred near the western village of Babaloc, an ethnic Albanian area, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) from the province's capital, Pristina, Kosovo police spokesman Veton Elshani said. The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately clear. Security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident, said the tourists' vehicle bore registration plates from Serbia's capital, Belgrade.

But Kerry may have some competition. On Memorial Day, another former Democratic presidential candidate, retired General Wesley Clark, tried to rewrite the history of the war in Kosovo in order to make himself into a great military hero. "Last week," he said, "I returned to Kosovo for the first time since I retired from military service. For me, this trip was very personal. In 1999, I commanded the NATO forces that stopped the genocide against ethnic Albanians by Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian forces." That sounds pretty impressive-commanding the forces that stopped genocide. Too bad it's not true. Genocide is...

Sarajevo, 8 June (AKI) - Bosnian Muslim religious leader Reiss ul-Ulema Mustafa Ceric has accused the country's Catholic and Orthodox Christians of undermining the country and advocating the partitioning of Bosnia. Ceric was quoted by the Sarajevo daily, Dnevni Avaz, as saying that former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia's Franjo Tudjman deal, allegedly made in the early nineties to divide Bosnia, had been taken over by the Serbian Orthodox and Croatian Catholic Church. As a proof of an alleged conspiracy, Ceric said that the bishops of the two churches have been meeting without Muslim representatives. "It is well known...

So let's talk about Yugoslavia! Finally, after more than a decade of one-way journalistic language that in no way made sense, an opening seems to have been created in France in the press (1), and perhaps not only in France, to speak about things differently? or simply to start speaking about Yugoslavia. A debate, a discussion, a discourse, a fruitful discussion seems to have become possible, a general questioning, of reports that speak for themselves... Previously: nothing, and still more nothing? defamations instead of a debate, expressed by exclusively prefabricated words, repeated ad infinitum, used like an automatic weapon. So...

(Translation from Serbian) " ...Negotiations between Tudjman and Milosevic to devide Bosnia are nowdays held in different manner. Catolic and Ortodox bishops are holding series of meetings without inviting us. That is something problem, that is call to war." Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric said to gratuates uf Islamic school in Sarajevo that attacks on Islamic community in Bosnia must stop, also he attacked local TV station for accusing Islamic community in Bosnia that it "Builds Teheran out of Sarajevo" "

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP)--Bosnian authorities, responding to media reports that they gave Canada information leading to the arrest of 17 militant suspects there, said Wednesday only that they had cooperated with intelligence services in many countries. Leader of Bosnian Muslim Wahabis, Enes Mujkanovic, calls for destruction of the West. Canada arrested the suspects Friday and Saturday and said it had foiled plans for attacks in southeast Canada. Officials said the arrests were ordered after the group acquired three tons of ammonium nitrate, which can be mixed with fuel oil to make a powerful explosive. The Bosnian daily newspaper Nezavisne Novine from...

NATO said on Thursday it planned to reopen a base in the mainly Serb north of Kosovo, as a decision nears on ethnic Albanian demands for independence for the province and fears grow of an angry Serb reaction. "For operational reasons we see the need to reuse this installation," spokesman Col. Pio Sabetta told Reuters, without elaborating. Diplomats say there may be a risk of a unilateral Serb move to partition the United Nations-run province if independence is granted. The United Nations has contingency plans for an exodus of Serbs if Albanians are granted a state of their own. Sabetta...

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Granting independence to Serbia's southern province of Kosovo against the will of Serbia would destabilize the Balkans, Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic warned on Tuesday. The United Nations is mediating talks on Kosovo's future status, which Western diplomats say are likely to conclude with a form of independence by the end of the year. Serbia is adamantly opposed to such an outcome. "I am very afraid of the possible imposed solution against the will of Belgrade of turning Kosovo into a state," Draskovic told a news conference. "The whole region, I think, would inevitably face turbulence." The...

Who Will Protect Kosovo’s Christians? by John Couretas, Director of Communications This week, Montenegro voted to end its union with Serbia, the last remaining alliance of the former Yugoslav federation. News accounts of the vote frequently add matter-of-factly that Kosovo, the Serb province placed under the administration of the United Nations in 1999, is next in line to gain its independence and probably by the end of the year. But anyone who cares about religious freedom, the rights of minorities, and the rule of law should be highly skeptical of an independent Kosovo. Since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign...

The former US general who commanded NATO's 1999 air war against Serbia predicted its southern province of Kosovo would become independent within months. Wesley Clark told Kosovo Albanian leaders in Pristina he had confidence in their "strong, positive and visionary proposals" to find a solution for Kosovo, which has been run by the United Nations and NATO since 1999. "I am confident that this issue will be solved very soon, and probably in few months, Kosovo will become independent and will respect the rights of all citizens," said Clark. "I believe that Kosovo will be welcomed into the family of...