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Belgrade, 11 August (AKI) – The deadly conflict between Russia and Georgia in the breakaway province of South Ossetia is an indirect result of Kosovo's declaration of independence in February, Serbian analysts and politicians said on Monday. “If there wasn’t a ‘Kosovo precedent’, as the greatest world powers headed by the United States called the secession of a part of Serbian territory, there wouldn’t have been a war in South Ossetia,� Oliver Ivanovic, Serbian government official in charge of Kosovo told the Belgrade daily Blic. Ivanovic said that Kosovo's example was “inspiring to South Ossetia, so they wanted to strain...

24 July 2008 Pristina _ The Islamic Community of Kosovo says that many Muslim states are to recognise Pristina’s independence from Serbia in the very near future. Naim Ternava, the head of Kosovo’s Islamic Community, said Thursday that this organisation is lobbying for the further recognition of Kosovo’s independence. “We are working hard, together with Kosovo’s institutions, to make sure many Islamic countries recognise Kosovo,� Ternava said. He made the comment after meeting Kosovo’s Parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on February 17, an act that has been recognised by 43 countries so far. However recognitions have...

American Deputy Secretary of State John Bolton believes the United States committed a serious mistake when it recognized the independence of Kosovo. He fears such policy may escalate tensions in the Balkans. In an interview for the Russian news agency Interfax, Mr. Bolton remarked that Washington’s policy was on autopilot since the regime of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. But the situation has changed considerably after the democratic government took over, which, in Mr. Bolton’s opinion, makes support for Kosovo’s independence a pointless atavism.

Kosovo Muslims arrest Serbs over t'shirts SERBIANNA June 3, 2008 Brothers Miomir and Milos Stojanovic from Gnjilane have been arrested on the regional road from Gnjilane to Bujanovac for wearing t-shirts saying Kosovo is Serbia, stated official of the Kosovo Ministry Milorad Todorovic. He told the Serbian news agency Beta that two youths were arrested and brought before the municipal prosecutor in Gnjilane. The Islamic judge decided that the brothers, who are Christian, must either pay 250 Euros each or to spend 60 days in jail.

Note From Ravnagora: Though written over 60 years ago, this essay resonates today. Like so much of what was happening at that time, particularly with regards to the Serbs, the fate of General Draza Mihailovich should have served as a harbinger to those who would be in charge of world events and their consequences in the future. ******************** THE MYSTERY OF MIHAILOVICH By Donovan Touche “TRUTH” London December 27, 1946 Was General Mihailovich a great patriot, foully done to death, or was he a collaborator? That is the mystery of Mihailovich. I would not have presumed to intervene in this...

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...

After my article exposing the farce of our Kosovo mission ran in American Legion Magazine last month, I heard from a soldier in Kosovo who was incredulous that someone was actually and finally talking about the region. I proceeded to publish two letters from him in this space, about his experiences and observations there, some of which confirm the free run that jihadists have in Kosovo, the fact that Albanians are being radicalized, and the notion that we should not have intervened in Kosovo as we did. Only there since November, the National Guard soldier stopped short of confirming the...

And though he now stands accused of murdering Serb civilians nine years ago, as prime minister he aided U.N. efforts to protect the remaining Serbian minority in Kosovo. In a 37-count indictment, Haradinaj and his Kosovo Liberation Army unit are accused of a "widespread and systematic" campaign to intimidate, abduct, rape and murder Serb civilians and Albanians who refused to cooperate. His "Black Eagles" killed at least 40 people between March and September 1998 and expelled thousands more, the indictment says. One of Haradinaj's lieutenants and co-defendants, Idriz Balaj, is accused of some of the more grisly deeds, including slicing...

BELGRADE – Serbs will never forgive the United States if it helps ensure Kosovo's Albanians win independence for the Serbian province, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Monday. In a bitter response to President George W. Bush's promise to Albanians that Kosovo would soon be independent, Kostunica said Serbia was 'justifiably disgusted' by U.S. policy, the official Serbian news agency Tanjug reported. The row over Kosovo's future deepened as the province marked the eve of the 8th anniversary of the June 12 deployment of 60,000 NATO troops who entered the territory from Macedonia as Serb forces withdrew to the north....

28.3.2007 16:10 SREBRENICA, (Tanjug) - Advisor in the Belgrade Documents Center for Investigating Crimes Against Serbs, Strahinja Zivak, has said that the Center has processed documents and gathered data proving that a total of 3,262 Serbs were killed by Muslims in the region of Srebrenica, Bratunac and the neighborhood from 1992 - 93.

CERSKA, Bosnia (Reuters) -- The 18-year-old gunman who shot five people to death in a Salt Lake City, Utah, shopping mall was a survivor of the siege that ended in the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, a cousin said on Wednesday. Sulejman Talovic, who was killed by police after Monday's shooting spree in which he also wounded four people, fled his village with his family during the Bosnia war to Srebrenica, a U.N.-protected enclave, Redzo Talovic said. They spent two years in the town, during which Bosnian Serb forces besieged the enclave and Talovic's grandfather was...

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...

Belgrade, Feb 7, 2007 – President of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija Sanda Raskovic-Ivic stated last night that Kosovo independence is unacceptable to the Serbian side as the solution of the province's status, adding that there are realistic reasons for postponing the talks until after new Serbian parliament is formed. Raskovic-Ivic told RTS television last night that the government lost its legitimacy after the elections of January 21 and the Serbian President was the only legitimate representative who could meet with UN Special Envoy for Kosovo-Metohija Martti Ahtisaari when he presented his plan for the province's future status to Serbia....

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...

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...

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...

It took years of hatred-propaganda by NATO, the US and the EU to have a puppet regime installed in Serbia. It was also facilitated by the months long bombing of Serbia by NATO planes. And during this bombing they managed, by riding roughshod over the Serbian Constitution, to arrest Milosevic and bring him to The Hague. When I saw the picture of this not young man, shuffling across the tarmac in handcuffs, I felt that he would not emerge alive. Too much hatred had been spilled from the pens of the enemy, from the pens of people like Michael Ignatieff....

Novi Pazar, 23 Oct. (AKI) - Encouraged by Serbia’s breakaway southern province of Kosovo's drive for independence, Muslims in the neighboring Sandzak region have taken steps towards regional autonomy. On the initiative of Sandzak mufti Muamer Zukorlic, five Sandzak Muslim political parties at the weekend signed a declaration demanding from Belgrade authorities to "start a dialogue to solve the status of Bosniacs (Muslims) in Serbia and the status of Sandzak region. " Kosovo Muslims, who call themselves Bosniacs since neighboring Bosnia, with majority Muslim population, gained independence in 1992, complain they were neither consulted about nor participated in the drafting...

PRISTINA, Serbia More than two dozen Serb civilians, including women and children found in a mass grave in Kosovo, were laid to rest in Belgrade on Saturday after their remains were handed over to relatives. The 29 bodies — including an 11-member Serb family allegedly executed by ethnic Albanian separatists during the 1998-99 Kosovo war — were identified through DNA analysis and handed over Friday by U.N. authorities from the southern province. A few hundred people attended the funeral at the cemetery on the outskirts of the Serbian capital — mostly the victims' relatives, but also families of some of...

Guy Dinmore, of the Financial Times, reports on the new mission shared by US evangelicals and Serbia's Christian Orthodox Church: quashing US support for an independent Kosovo. Leading evangelicals, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, have called on their supporters to pressure the United States to not permit independence for this Muslim-majority province. Along with Bishop Artemije, Kosovo's most senior Orthodox cleric, Robertson and Falwell are concerned that an independent Kosovo will become a new haven for Islamic terrorism. For those of you in need of a refresher on US-involvement in Kosovo, Jurist gives a brief and useful overview...

SERBIA remains firmly stuck in the past, paying little attention to the changes taking place all around it. The country has presented a serious challenge to the UN and world community by adopting a new constitution that claims Kosovo as its own. Now Kosovo is currently being administered by the United Nations. The UN was forced to enter Kosovo in the 1990s when the marauding Serb army (then Yugoslavian army) unleashed what has come to be known as the ethnic cleansing against the ethnic Albanian people of Kosovo. Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians were hunted and killed like animals....

President Bill Clinton lost control of not only his temper during his interview with FOX News’ Chris Wallace, but also some facts about American national security. The former President was right to criticize the Bush Administration for paying considerable attention to Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan and the war against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups. Yet, Mr. Clinton was wrong to claim that he gave the struggle against al Qaeda and the Taliban sufficient priority during his own tenure. One of Mr. Clinton’s most striking claims was only indirectly related to the war on terror, in...

I first visited Kosovo in 1988 with a group of Serbian-American students who toured some of the many historic monasteries and churches of Serbia and Montenegro. Even then, it was obvious to me that there were ethnic tensions in the Serbian province as ancient Churches were desecrated with Albanian graffiti, a car with Belgrade license plates was overturned, and we had to always walk with a guard during our stay at the Patriarchate of Pec. For me, this visit was critical in solidifying my cultural awareness and pride as a Serbian-American. In that spirit, I strongly encourage the government of...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina-The top international administrator in Bosnia said he will fire the Bosnian Serb prime minister if he continues to speak of a secession referendum in the Serb-run half of the country. As part of his campaign for the Oct. 1 general election, Milorad Dodik has repeatedly called for a referendum that would enable the Serb-run ministate, Republika Srpska, to secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina. "If he continues to talk about the referendum, I will have to remove him from office," Christian Schwarz-Schilling, the international administrator, told Austrian radio in an interview Monday. The post of international administrator was established to oversee...

Kosovo: Mission Accomplished? Condi shakes hands with yet another unsavory ally. Any visitor to the Balkans knows that to sit down for coffee or throat-rasping rakia with a person from any ethnicity in the region is to risk a not so quick, uninterruptible, vitriolic five-hundred-year history lesson so skewed that it doesn’t deserve the name of history . . . real history just about ceased to exist within Albanian and Serbian discourse. It has largely been replaced by monologues of myth and prejudice. It is now a weapon of survival. So wrote Matthew McAllester in Beyond the Mountains of the...

A U.S. Congressional adviser is turning up the volume on his long-standing warnings that terrorists who have set up camps in the Balkans now easily can reach into Europe, telling reporters in Serbia that the idea now has a name – "Balkans 2020." Congressional adviser Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare since 1988, told Slovenian Finance that the goal of the campaign is to set up terrorist camps in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sandzak and Croatia. He said at least five intelligence agencies now are working to track people and arms arriving...

December 03, 2002 As-Salaam ah-laikum. Dr. Rexhep Boja, members of the Islamic Community of Kosovo, esteemed Hoxhas, students of the Madressa, and political party representatives. Thank you for joining us tonight at this Iftar dinner -- you honor us greatly by your presence in these closing days of Ramadan before we all come together to celebrate the high holy day of Eid al-Fitr. It is gratifying to me to look around this table and see representatives of so many of Kosovo's ethnic communities, as well as the different faith communities that make up today's Kosovo and today's world. As an...

BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia toughened its stand on Kosovo Tuesday as parliament decided that a planned new constitution would refer to the disputed province as an "integral" part of Serbia, regardless of U.N.-led negotiations on whether to grant it independence. The parliamentary vote effectively ruled out Belgrade's consent if the international talks decide in favor of the majority ethnic Albanians who want the province to be independent. The talks began this year to try to resolve the future of Kosovo _ a province about the size of Connecticut that has been run by the United Nations since NATO launched a...

Since World War Two you have had three major conflicts in the Balkans involving Orthodox Christian communities and Islamic communities; this applies to Cyprus, Bosnia and Kosovo respectively. On all three occasions the United States supported the followers of Islam and maybe one day the same will happen to Orthodox Christians in Macedonia? Yet unlike the large Christian communities of Bosnia and Cyprus, it is the land of Kosovo which is being Islamized and Albanianized under NATO, the UN, and other international institutions who are meant to be neutral. The media in the West is once more turning a 'blind...

The AFP reported last month that there was an explosion at the grave of Bosnia's wartime president and Muslim hero Alija Izetbegovic. Izetbegovic, who was finally, reluctantly, being investigated by the Hague for war crimes against Serbs and others at the time of his death, is buried in a "martyrs'" cemetery, as he requested. Naturally, we are meant to think that the grave bombing was committed by a Serb or Serbs, especially with AFP adding this tidbit: "Tensions have risen in Bosnia in recent days after the broadcast of footage showing a former Muslim general, Atif Dudakovic, ordering his troops...

"The main goal of the symposium is to shed light on how Islam spread in these territories based on undisputed historic facts," professor Morina told IOL. PRISHTINA — The Islamic Community of Kosova (ICK) and the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Prishtina (FIS) will co-organize on September 16-17 an international symposium celebrating 600 years of Islam among Albanians. "The main goal of the symposium is to shed light on how Islam spread in these territories based on undisputed historic facts," professor Qemajl Morina, one of the organizers, told IslamOnline.net. Debates about this issue and the role of Islam among Albanians...

BANJA LUKA -- Banja Luka’s ATV station broadcasted footage of Hamdija Delalić ordering murders and the destruction of villages.Hamdija Delalić, commander of the V corps’ 502 brigades of the Muslim military, can be clearly seen and heard in the video calling for an attack on Fikret Abdić and the Republic of Srpska Military. “A breach must be made. Kill all that stands in front of you. I am permitting and ordering that the enemies be killed using all necessary means, knives, bombs, hunting knives, teeth.” Delalić said to his soldiers in the video. “Can we rape?”Commanders of the 505 and...

Ahtisaari said that a group of experts will visit Belgrade shortly and he hopes that they in Belgrade will show a positive attitude to these proposals. During the press conference, Ahtisaari dismissed the charges of the Serbian delegation that during his Aug 8 with them he told them that the Serbs are guilty as a nation.� Particularly, Ahtisaari said that the Belgrade authorities should understand that the Milosevic policy (historical legacy) should be taken into consideration during the determination of Kosovo status and that “each nation in the world has its guilt and must pay for it.� The Serbian side...

2 September 2006 | 15:23 | FOCUS News Agency Belgrade. The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Serbian President Boris Tadic will sign Thursday a Status of Forces Agreement /SOFA/ in Washington between the government of the Republic of Serbia and the USA. The Agreement is connected to the protection of the status, the access and the use of the military infrastructure in the Republic of Serbia, RTS reported. It will deepen the cooperation in the sphere of defense between Serbia and the USA based on an absolute respect of the two countries’ sovereignty and the UN regulations. Besides,...

30 August 2006 | 14:52 | FOCUS News Agency Banja Luka. USA military forces started preparing for their pullout of the Eagle base near Tuzla, Serbian agency TANJUG informs citing Bosnian newspaper Oslobojdenje. The news of the pullout of the American troops has caused concern among Sarajevo political circles. Citing reliable sources the Bosnian newspaper announced the Americans will leave the base by the end of the year as they will be replaced by a Dutch battalion. The chair of the Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Presidency Sulejman Tihic could not confirm definitely the news of the pullout of the US troops...

Sarajevo, 24 August (AKI) - Bosnian Muslim leader Sulejman Tihic has told local Serbs to stop talking about a possible referendum on independence, because Bosnia was indivisible and those who don’t like it should leave the country. Tihic, who currently chairs Bosnia’s three-man rotating state presidency, has been an outspoken advocate of Muslim demands for the abolition of Bosnia’s Serb entity, Republika Srpska (RS). Local Serbs for their part have threatened to hold a referendum on independence. The quarrel prompted the high representative of the international community in Bosnia, Christian Schwarz Schilling, to intervene last week demanding that politicians on...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Aug. 23 — For a month usually devoid of political activity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, August has been unusually fraught, as several incidents have raised ethnic tensions to a level not seen in years. On Aug. 11, a bomb severely damaged the tomb of Alija Izetbegovic, the former Bosnian president. Last week in eastern Bosnia, a group of Muslims forced their way into a Serbian church built on the former site of a mosque. And the broadcast of a videotape showing the wartime killing of an unarmed Bosnian Serb by Muslims prompted calls for a senior...

Forensic experts have excavated over 1,000 bodies from a mass grave in the village of Kamenica in eastern Bosnia.