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And a good Saturday to you :-)

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Kosovo Albanians (aka muslims) seek Balkan border redrawing conference
Saturday, July 7, 2007

An unnamed source from the Kosovo Albanian regime in Pristina was quoted by a separatist newspaper Koha Ditore that if the the Ahtisaari plan is trashed in the new round of talks on the status of Kosovo the regime will demand a European conference that will redraw borders in the Balkans.

"If Ahtisaari’s plan failed, or if any change of the document is called for, we will demand an international conference for redefining state borders in the Balkans," Koha quoted an official from the regime that spoke on the condition of anonymity.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried are due to arrive in Pristina as well as EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana. Solana is likely to officially present the Kosovo Albanian regime with the outline for new round of talks with Belgrade that would likely take place in Brussels.

http://www.serbianna.com/news/2007/01958.shtml

The Policy Implications of Kosovo’s Growing Tendency Towards Extremism(opinion piece)
Friday, July 6, 2007
by Erik Resly, Senior Balkans Associate, Institute on Religion and Public Policy

While fires blaze in Baghdad and Washington-housed politicians devise security strategies for the Middle East, the impending status of Kosovo’s independence looms among the rafters of the international community’s multi-pronged War on Terror.

Geographically and ethnically kin to a nation recently heralded by US President Bush as “a model of religious tolerance,” the UN-monitored province of Kosovo, demographically composed of a sobering 92% ethnic Albanian majority (as opposed to a less than 10% minority prior to the Great Serb Migrations, remains far from utopian.

Rather, the territory presents a fertile ground for the long-since documented rise of extremism. With an explosion of Saudi-funded petro-dollar-mosques and Madrasas now dotting the agrarian landscape, while the newly formed hard-line Serbian nationalist “Guard of Tsar Lazar” anxiously waits on the northeastern sideline “with bullets,” the fate of Kosovo’s future could very well determine long-term stability (or lack thereof) in Europe’s forgotten and neglected backyard.

The Islamization of Kosovo, dating back to the conquest of Islamic Ottoman Turks in 1459 and the subsequent centuries-long conversion and “dhimmitude” techniques, has experienced a surge in potency over the last ten years.

Excerpted

http://religion-and-policy.blogspot.com/2007/07/policy-implications-of-kosovos-growing.html