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11.2.2007 16:34 DECANI, (Tanjug) - The Serbian Orthodox Church has condemned in the strongest terms ''barbaric'' messages of Self-Determination movement leader Albin Kurti and other participants of the Saturday demonstrations in Pristina who shouted that ''Serbs occupied Albanian churches and monasteries'' in Kosovo and that they should ''be destroyed.'' Several thousand Kosovo Albanian members of the Self-Determination movement and supporters of the so-called Kosovo liberation army protested against UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan for the status of Kosovo in Pristina on Saturday.

United Nations (UN) police in Kosovo have fired tear gas and rubber bullets during clashes with ethnic Albanians protesting against a UN plan they say falls short of full independence from Serbia. Hospital officials say they have treated 70 people, including four who were seriously wounded. Fourteen people were arrested as Kosovo and UN riot police advanced on hundreds of demonstrators who were hurling stones and bottles. The clashes, a repeat of riots in November, underscored Western fears of what the United States described last week as a possible "breakdown in order" if a decision on the Albanian majority's demand...

from Christopher Walker, Jerusalem About 40 Israeli volunteers have been fighting alongside the Serbs as a gesture of gratitude for Serb support for Yugoslav Jews against the Nazis in the Second World War. The existence of the Israeli fighters - they do not like the term mercenaries - was revealed by Ron Ben Yishai, an Israeli war correspondent who was injured by Kosovo Liberation Army sniper fire this week while reporting from the province for the Tel Aviv daily Yediot Aharonot. The paper said that all the Israeli fighters had emigrated to the Jewish state from the former Soviet Union...

The United Nations emissary of Finnish and Common Market origins has yesterday reported back. He has in effect made Kosovo an independent state and separated it forever from Serbia. From now on it will be a crime to be a Serb, a Jew, or a Romany in Kosovo. Kosovo will be ruled by a Fascist, Islamist and brutal regime and the future for Muslim Kosovons will be more destitution, more brutality and the complete imprisonment of the mind by the “ideas” of Islamofascism. What a future the US cum EU Empiricists have managed to map out for this once beautiful...

The comparisons of the destruction of Yugoslavia with the destruction of Israel are chilling and instructive.

“The independence of Kosovo is a reality, so we demand recognition of Kosovo’s international subjectivity without any delays,” said Agim Ceku, its Prime Minister. The main parties in the elections are opposed to independence for Kosovo, regarded as the cradle of Serb history and culture. Russia, Serbia’s traditional Orthodox Christian ally, has made it clear that it would not support any plan for Kosovo that went against Belgrade’s wishes. “Russia believes it is unacceptable that a decision on the status of Kosovo be imposed from the outside,” said President Putin on Sunday. As a permanent member of the UN Security...

... Now that plan is in chaos. Milorad Dodik, the premier of the Republika Srpska, the Serb part of Bosnia, wants the same right to self-determination as that exercised by Montenegro last year, and possibly by Kosovo soon. The latter analogy is a powerful one. If a province of Serbia can decide its own future, he argues, why not his fief? ...

WASHINGTON -- Russia and the United States may be heading for another clash of wills as a United Nations mediator prepares to issue his recommendation today in Brussels over whether the province of Kosovo should break free from Serbia, a close ally of Moscow. U.S. and NATO peacekeepers are on heightened alert in Kosovo as U.N. Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari gives a closed-door briefing on Kosovo in Vienna, Austria, to the six-nation "Contact Group" trying to broker a diplomatic deal. Serbia has vowed to keep control of the province, whose overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian majority is demanding independence. Kosovo has been...

4 Bosnian Muslims convicted of plotting terror attacks in Europe4 Bosnian Muslims convicted of plotting terror attacks in Europe January 14, 2007 10:32 AM SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina-Four men were convicted Wednesday of plotting to blow up an unidentified European target and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, court officials said. Prosecutors said the four men, two Bosnians, a Swede and a Turkish citizen, were preparing to launch a terror attack a European country to force to pull foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. The exact target of the plot remains unclear. Police found a "suicide belt" rigged with a powerful homemade explosive...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- A U.S. diplomat in Washington said a solution to the future status of Serbia's mainly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo province could be decided by April. U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told Voice of America that U.N. special envoy to Kosovo Martti Ahtisaari will begin a series of talks with Kosovo ethnic-Albanian leaders in Pristina and Serbian authorities in Belgrade soon after Serbia's parliamentary elections set for Jan. 21. Burns said he hoped the Kosovo solution could be found "one to two months" after the Serbian elections. He said Washington does not support any option nor...

In March 2007 it will be eight years since the Kosovo war and the US-led NATO intervention in gross violation of a host of international laws including the UN Charter. The Western part of the international community was determined to resolve the Kosovo status issue by the end of 2006. However, the UN Kosovo mediator, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, has delayed his proposal until after the Serbian parliamentary elections on January 21, 2007 in order to reinforce the democratic camp within Serbia. The Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, Kosmet in Serbian but for brevity reduced to Kosovo in...

January 2, 2007 -- A Kosovo Serb, Vladimir Radosavljevic and his wife Bosiljka were shot at in the Kosovo Muslim Albanian stronghold of Klina after Radosavljevic filed papers with the Kosovo Housing and Property Directorate to have his illegally confiscated home returned. Radosavljevic's were asleep when unidentified gunmen fired a round from an automatic weapon at their temporary shelter in Kosovo town of Klina where they were awaiting the authorities to evict the illegal Muslim Albanian occupiers of their property. Police found 23 bullets among the broken glass and empty chargers in the street. The evidence, according to the police,...

Reaching a decision on the final status of the disputed Serbian province of Kosovo is becoming more difficult, because of Russian objections and a lack of consensus within the 25-nation European Union. VOA's Barry Wood has this report. A decision by the European Union on Kosovo's future has been in limbo sincethe end of NATO's bombing campaign in 1999. Coupled with a lack of Russian support, it seems a quick solution for the region is further out of reach, according to Kosovo expert Daniel Serwer. "I don't see the possibility of a peaceful, negotiated solution," he said. "Rather [I see]...

It's not so pristine in Pristina. That's still our problem. REMEMBER KOSOVO? The little statelet of 2 million, still technically an "integral part" of Serbia, was the inspiration for an unprecedented NATO campaign, the first of its kind: bombing, in those less sensitive times, Christian troops on Easter. The prevention of genocide and the resulting stability of the whole Balkan region were secured, peacekeepers took up their positions in and around the capital, Pristina, and no one lived happily ever after. Serbia threw out its mad leadership--that has to count for something--but the old wounds burn even for democratic Prime...

New York, 18 Dec. (AKI) - Serbs living in the United States are reported to be deeply disturbed and worried by recent arrests of fellow Serbs in connection with the 1990s Balkan wars, community leaders have said. In a six-state swoop, American agents arrested 13 Serb immigrants last week and are looking for another three who are still at large. One of those arrested, Nedjo Ikonic, is being investigated for allegedly having taken part in the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica when it was overrun by Serb forces in...

Associated Press Balkan expert Tim Judah stated: "There is a real potential for renewed violence in Kosovo. If there is a delay or if the resolution is unclear, (Kosovo) Albanian hard-liners will start to lose patience." Since the United Nations and NATO began the international administration of Kosovo in 1999, similar Muslim Albanian violence has resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of non-Albanians, the destruction and desecration of hundreds of Serbian Orthodox churches and the deaths of thousands of non-Albanians. AntiWar.com columnist Christopher Deliso also reported on the rise of jihad terrorism in the Serbian province and the...

<p>"No general had the authority to command us, former Quaida activist Ali Hamad reports about his time as commander of a Mujaheddin unit in the war in Bosnia. In the Interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE the former terrorist warns of a sleeper network in the Balkan.</p>

Pristina, 21 Nov. (AKI) - An explosive device went off early on Tuesday morning in a Serbian elementary school in the central Kosovo village of Ropotovo, but there were no casualties, police said. Kosovo police spokesman Veton Elsani said the device was placed in a storage cupboard. Fortunately, the classroom, which can hold up to 200 pupils, was empty, because the teacher didn’t show up for the classes and, apart from material damage, there were no injuries, he said. “By chance, due to the teacher’s absence, the fifth grade classroom in which the explosion took place was empty and the...

Are the cases of missing persons in Kosovo science fiction or consciously closed files? Unexpectedly for many Kosovo crisis observers, proliferation of terrorism and violence resulted with huge number of cases of missing and kidnapped civilians, mostly non-Albanians (especially Serbs): in the summer of 1998, spring 1999 and during 2000. Actually, last reported kidnappings occurred in 2004. Although such acts of terror were well known to local population and local authorities, eccentric doubts could be summarized with only one question: If victims were held in hidden prisons and if after some time they were executed, where are the bodies? Searches,...

A decision to make the Serb province independent is near. Will Serbia and Russia obstruct it? THE SERBIAN parliament formally adopted a new national constitution on Wednesday, following its narrow approval by voters in a referendum last month. The document was a necessary replacement of the previous charter, which was adopted during the rule of nationalist warlord Slobodan Milosevic. But it may have won acceptance only because it included a preamble that would have warmed Mr. Milosevic's heart: a declaration that the province of Kosovo, which Serbia in effect lost seven years ago, is an "integral" and "inalienable" part of...