Posted on 06/01/2006 3:34:31 AM PDT by Doctor13
BELGRADE (Reuters) - The U.N. has contingency plans for an exodus of thousands of Serbs from Kosovo in the event that the majority Albanian province wins independence from Serbia in talks this year.
According to the Belgrade daily Politika, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is braced for up to 70,000 leaving the province if Serbia loses sovereignty.
Despite Belgrade's strong opposition, Kosovo is widely expected to win independence in U.N.-mediated talks that began in February and could finish within the year.
A UNHCR spokeswoman told Reuters an internal document did exist, in order to "be ready to help a certain number of people who may be affected by a decision." But she declined to divulge details of the plan.
"Extending assistance is a logistical operation and the aim of such plans is for the organization to be ready to provide protection if it proves to be necessary. It is possible that nothing happens at all," the UNHCR's Vesna Petkovic said.
Politika quoted the plan as saying Kosovo's independence "could provoke further political instability and civil disturbance and result in fresh movements of minorities from Kosovo toward the Serbia and Montenegro interior."
Even if Kosovo gets independence without large-scale violence "it is expected that 57,000 people would change their place of residence, of which around 33,000 would come to Serbia," Politika quoted the contingency plan as saying.
But if Albanians attacked Serbs, as many as 70,000 could seek safety in Serbia, it forecasts.
VERY LITTLE LEFT
On Tuesday, Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic warned major Western powers not to force Kosovo's independence on Belgrade, predicting "turbulence" across the Balkans if it was amputated from a sovereign Serbia.
There are around 100,000 Serbs left in Kosovo. An exodus on the scale foreseen would leave only pockets of Serb land.
Outnumbered 20-1 by two million ethnic Albanians, many Serbs say they would simply leave Kosovo, the territory considered Serbia's religious heartland dating back 1,000 years.
NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 to drive out Serb forces and halt the killings and ethnic cleansing employed by Belgrade in a two-year war with Albanian separatist rebels. An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians died and 800,000 fled.
As Western alliance forces deployed, about half of the Serb population in turn fled a wave of Albanian revenge attacks.
Those who stayed on have become increasingly marginalized. They fear for the future and point to NATO's failure in March 2004 to prevent Albanian mobs from overrunning Serb enclaves, torching homes and churches. Nineteen people died in the riots.
The United Nations and a 17,000-strong NATO peace force stationed in Kosovo say a repeat is impossible.
Politika said the UN plans three contingencies: independence within current borders, autonomy within Serbia, and independence for Kosovo below the River Ibar, partitioning the Serb-dominated north.
Major powers have ruled out partitioning Kosovo but there are indications that contingency plans exist for a breakaway attempt by Serbs in the divided city of Mitrovica.
What are we gonna do with all the anglo residents of California when we "lose sovereignty" there?
Actually, there wasn't any ethnic cleansing or "killings" of anything other than narco-terrorists who needed killing going on in Kosovo in 1999; what we heard was basically just KKKlintonista/NATO/Slammite propaganda.
The genesis of the modern problems in Kosovo was Milosevic rescinding the autonomy of the region in 89. Basically, he had to; every other ethnic group in the province was being brutalized by the Albanians
****NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 to drive out Serb forces and halt the killings and ethnic cleansing employed by Belgrade in a two-year war with Albanian separatist rebels. An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians died and 800,000 fled.***
Should read: Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia to get the papers off the Monica Story.
What ever hapened to Bill's exit plan?
Why doesnt Bill ever mention Kosovo when he travels around giving advice that isnt wanted?
The only two groups of people I ever saw try to stand up to the KKKlintons were the Mormons in Utah and the Serbs, and I don't understand why Serbs are still being treated like a bunch of a$$holes for that, six years into a republican administration.
Which later was confirmed to be total B.S. No mass graves, or any signs of a genocide were found. It was all MSM propaganda. Funny that, in Sudan, the UN just said- although over 100,000 people have been killed- that it isn't a genocide, nor was Rwanda.
I guess it's only "genocide" if they are muslims being chased out af a country that they are trying to destroy and erase 10 centuries old churches and monastaries.
Can you say "Batajnica"?
I guess not.
Gullible but agendized idiots like you will believe anything bought and paid for by the Soros sponsored LIE machine.
It's all part of a plot by George Soros.
Whatev.
Again you post a carload of BS from the Institute for war and peace - a Soros operative. You seem addicted to the stuff.
When genocide charges are brought against Weasely Clark and Albright and Clinton and their islamo fascist Muslm thug buds I'll feel better about the trumped up charges being brought against Serbians.
Whatev...you dummy.
And you seem content to just declare it false because it isn't what you want to hear and it's from a source which has reported all kinds of things which you'd rather hadn't been reported.
Tell me eleni, do Serbia's prosecutors work for Soros as well?
No, of course not - at least not in the real world. Unless all the other news outlets reporting the same thing as IWPR are controlled by Soros as well.
You just go on believing whatever it is you want to believe, and I'll just keep chuckling at your naivete, and how bad it continually sucks to be you as far as Balkan topics.
You get your news contrived and filtered by the cabal of left wing agendized sources. The same ones that have turned the Balkans over to the islamofascists you support.
I get mine from those who report the truth...
http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/4610_0_2_0_C/
And declaring IWPR "left wing agendized" while supporting TENC's repetition of Living Marxism's Trnopolje story is, well... the irony is probably lost on you completely, isn't it.
Become Muslim and be done with it already! Your posts here disgust me.
Then don't read 'em.
How complicated is that?
Face it, Hoplite's an idiot, that fact can not be changed.
You don't trust the news from acuuracy in media? yet you trust CNN and Soros outlets? You still evaluate world politics through the period of the Cold War? Hmmm. I suspect another underlying condition...or you are just plain dumb.
Check your background hoppie: you may have been kidnapped as a kid and raised by Turks---not a hoplite but rather a janissary...or worse, a harem boy.
Do not tarnish the honored ancient Greek term "hoplite" with your naive and stupid comments any more.
You don't trust the news from acuuracy in media? yet you trust CNN and Soros outlets? You still evaluate world politics through the period of the Cold War? Hmmm. I suspect another underlying condition...or you are just plain dumb.
Check your background hoppie: you may have been kidnapped as a kid and raised by Turks---not a hoplite but rather a janissary...or worse, a harem boy.
Do not tarnish the honored ancient Greek term "hoplite" with your naive and stupid comments any more.
If your criteria for heroes is standing up to the Clinton Administration, then you must love Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. And that makes sense, since besides both being anti-American dictators, Slobo & Saddam were allies, and the Serbs were high on the list of nations helping Iraq re-build their military right up through 2002.
But tomzz, you needn't feel lonely in your attraction to anti-American despots--Noam Chomsky, George Galloway, Harold Pinter, and Ramsey Clark all agree with you that both Slobo and Saddam weren't such bad fellows.
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