Posted on 11/08/2002 10:34:38 AM PST by Destro
Progress in Kosovo 'Slow-Going,' Security Council Told
Thursday, November 07 2002 @ 04:05 PM GMT
NEW YORK - More emphasis needs to be placed on reconciliation efforts in Kosovo, where developments of the last four months illustrate the difficulties faced in making consistent progress in the province, the top United Nations peacekeeping official told the Security Council today in an open briefing.
"It is, inevitably, slow-going," the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, said in his briefing on the latest developments as well as Secretary-General Kofi Annan's recent report on the work of the UN Interim Administration Mission (UNMIK). The ensuing discussion saw the participation of representatives of some 20 countries, including the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Mr. Guéhenno noted that while progress has been made on a number of fronts, there still have been some negative developments, most notably the continued existence of parallel government structures.
The consolidation of sustainable institutions depends on an effective public administration, but recruitment remains slow, the UN official said. Also, obstacles such as security concerns, inter-ethnic tensions in the workplace and the limited pool of minority community applicants still hamper the multi-ethnic character of the civil service.
As for the security situation, there has been a regrettable continuation of attacks targeting the Kosovo Serb community, including an assault last month against 50 elderly people registering for their pensions, Mr. Guéhenno said. UNMIK’s fight against crime, meanwhile, had yielded an increase in the amount of contraband seized and a subsequent rise in the number of arrests on charges of economic crime and corruption.
Nevertheless, although the elections on 26 October and the prior campaign passed largely free of violence, the day after the polls saw the killing of the President of the Kosovo Albanian Municipal Assembly and two others.
While the Kosovo Serb community has expressed a desire to see faster progress in many areas, Mr. Guéhenno said, its low turnout for those elections was to its own detriment, diminishing its ability to participate in decision-making processes throughout the province.
Meanwhile, Kosovo's leaders had a responsibility to create conditions conducive to improving "inter-communal" relations and promoting reconciliation, Mr. Guéhenno stressed. In that regard, he welcomed the statement made by political leaders last Friday.
"But more needs to be done, including turning words into actions and speaking out more clearly against violence," he said. "The brunt of the effort lies with the majority community."
-United Nations News Center. Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
If we're going to take bigoted idiots to task, we can find much better candidates then myself, can't we?
And if anyone here deserves to be writing in bigger letters, it's me, since I've answered every point you've brought up, whereas you've picked and chosen which ones of mine you think you're able to answer. And if at any point you should decide to go back and answer any of those points, here's another one to ponder:
What would you make of a poster who a) is virtually the only one on an entire forum who's pushing a particular interpretation of events, and b) throws an insult in every post, no matter who he's talking to?
As you well know since Clinton's UN pals unleashed the KLA upon the civilian population ( ie June 1999) over 1,000 Albanian civilians have been murdered. The US Military and GWB agree for they have arested virtually the entire KLA leadership cadre.
Your premise seems to be that prior to June 1999, the KLA never hurt a Albanian, but somehow mysteriously after June 1999 the KLA suddenly started murdering Albanians.........
When was this?
MajorGeneral (sic) Remi
MajorGeneral Ramush
Daut Haradanji (sp)
Head of KLA Pristina death squads Commander Gashi
and a host of others
Why the hell am I going to waste my time executing this same fruitless exercise on any other of the points you raise when you refuse to admit the obvious on this matter?
All the proof is on the table, so quit looking down at the floor and mumbling about new and improved ways of misapplying the principles of statistics to turn bad data into good.
And the reason I'm so popular around here is because of people like you who refuse to smell this crap for what it is when I shove your nose in it.
So your options are to either to face the obvious on this matter so we can pursue other relevant points, or join the ranks of the fools and liars who mindlessly spout counterfactual and illogical arguments in favor of Milosevic's war against the Kosovar Albanians civilians in Kosovo.
Please - according to the autopsy, after shooting his neighbors, the last man nibbled his own head off.
It could have happened - really!
By the way, don't let any of this stop you from seeing if you can come up with a more interesting insult. It does seem to be your only strong suit.
1. Read
2. Weep, or do whatever.
3. Good bye, and good luck with finding those KLA on the grassy knoll.
As a consolation gift, realize that I cannot insult you in any appreciable way - only you are capable of making yourself look a fool here and then only through your posts.
Try to use this knowledge in future, ok?
First of all, it's highly doubtful that the test would have survived for well over two decades, in a period when smoking was widespread, if the error rate was that high, if it even would have made it out of the testing phase at all. I also doubt that it would still be used in a country as modern and developed as Italy, where again, smoking is nearly universal, if the chances of a false positive were that high.
The only further anecdote I've found was from an (alleged) incident in Kosovo on July 19, 1998. Serbian forces, so the allegation went, swept into a the town of Rahovec and surrounding areas wreaking havoc on the local population. "In the suburb Bellacerke/Bela Crkva all houses were destroyed. Survivors told a correspondent from the Neue Zuercher Zeitung about a paraffin test which the men were subjected to, that was done to establish the existence of traces of gunpowder in order to find out who had fired a gun and who not. The Serbs threatened one group that men with a positive test would be shot on the spot; all test results were negative." Source (see page 18).
All test results were negative. Pretty amazing for an 80% false-positive rate, I'd say. So, either the story told by the Albanian witnesses was just a little bit... refined for consumption - which would cast doubt on other tales from Albanian "witnesses" - or, the incident provides good evidence that the capacity for false-positives from diphenylamine testing doesn't quite reach the 80% mark.
I blame President Bush for not pulling the plug on this nonsense. He should apologize to Slobo, pay reparation to Serbia, and stop supporting these Moslem terrorists and drug dealers.
Really? I provided them to you in the last post.
What's your major malfunction?
Diphenylamine tests, on a group of 17 individuals, gave true results 47% of the time and false results 53% of the time, and have been recognized (how many times am I going to have to repeat this, Inquest?) as being nonspecific and scientifically useless.
The paraffin test is used for psychological reasons - i.e., to fool individuals not familiar with it's limitations, as Milosevic's minions are doing to you, the willing, hell, eager even, dupe.
The sad thing, inquest, is not that you cannot prove your point, but that you lack the simple logical skills that anyone interested in intellectual pursuits is required to cultivate. This particular point was decided a couple of days ago when diphenylamine was shown to be non-specific, i.e., shows positive results for things other than gunpowder.
Yours is now an exercise in folly.
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