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Text of report by "E.B." entitled "Serbian drug barons are big players in Europe" published by Serbian newspaper Blic on 27 March Belgrade: Serbian drug barons, who maintain strong ties with cocaine traders in Colombia, the world's biggest producer of this narcotic, have strong business contacts also with the Albanian mafia, police information indicates. These good contacts on both sides of the Atlantic and highly functional trafficking routes, whereby tons of cocaine are smuggled from South America to Europe, have enabled them to take a place among the most powerful drugs traffickers in Europe. People have only recently become aware...

MUSLIMS in Albania's northern city of Shkoder are opposing plans to erect a statue to Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian Catholic nun in line for elevation to sainthood by the Vatican. The dispute is unusual for Albania, where religion was banned for 27 years under the dictator Enver Hoxha, and "mixed" marriages are the norm. Seventy per cent of the population are liberal Muslims, the rest are Christian Orthodox and Catholic. But Muslim groups in Shkoder rejected the local council plan for a statue, saying it "would offend the feelings of Muslims". "We do not want this statue to be...

26 March 2006 | 17:53 | FOCUS News Agency Tetovo. During operation Macedonian police found secret bunker full of illegal weapons, Makfax agency informs. According to information from Macedonian Interior Ministry the bunker is situated between villages of Brodec and Vesala in Tetovo region. In the bunker the police found automatic rifles, a few grenade guns, shells, anti-tank mines and munitions. The police are investigating the case.

28 Mar 2006 17:33:36 GMT Source: Reuters MITROVICA, Serbia and Montenegro, March 28 (Reuters) - A Serb man was stabbed in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica in Kosovo on Tuesday and hundreds of Serbs gathered at the scene to demonstrate, hospital officials and witnesses said. The 19-year-old Serbwas "seriously wounded" when he was stabbed in the stomach, hospital director Milan Ivanovic told Reuters. Witnesses said he was attacked on the main bridge by two men who had crossed from the mainly Albanian south. Mitrovica, in the north of Serbia's United Nations-run province, has been divided at the river between Serbs...

Former NY Times Reporter: '93 Pulitzer Should Be Revoked By Sherrie Gossett CNSNews.com Staff Writer March 22, 2006 Washington (CNSNews.com) - Castigating the press for "journalistic crimes" committed during its reporting on the Balkans wars of the 1990s, retired New York Times reporter David Binder claims the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting awarded to both the Times and New York's Newsday "should, in all fairness and honesty, be revoked." Binder was speaking at a press conference for the release of a new book criticizing the war reporting. Binder wrote the foreword to the book by Peter Brock, titled "Media...

Released : Mar 20, 2006 11:42 AM PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-NATO-led peacekeepers defused a bomb Monday in Kosovo's capital, police said. The device contained 800 grams (28 ounces) of TNT and was placed in the parking lot of a building that houses the Democratic Party of Kosovo, the main opposition party in the province, said police spokeswoman Sabrije Kamberi. Police and NATO-led peacekeepers cordoned off the area for several hours until they defused the device. No one was hurt and no damage was caused, Kamberi said. Police were still investigating the incident, she added. Kosovo has been run by the United Nations...

AS I SEE IT Section of The Patriot-News, As someone who has followed and written about the tragic civil war in the Balkans the March 12 headline, "Butcher" Milsoevic dies in jail,": prompted me to write yet another commentary giving the other side of the story. I am no defender of Slobodan Milsoevic, who died under questionable circumstances, but in my opinion, he was nothing more than a two-bit dictator, and compared to Saddam Hussein, he was a piker. Unlike the treatment Milosevic received at The Hague, you can bet your bottom dollar that everything will be done to make...

BELGRADE, March 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Over 50 foreign delegations will attend the funeral of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic on Saturday, a senior official with Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) said on Friday. The funeral to be held in Milosevic's hometown of Pozarevac, some 80 km east of Belgrade, will be attended by some dignitaries, said Miomir Ilic, the SPS's regional leader in Pozarevac. Ilic told the official Tanjug news agency that the dignitaries include Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Russian State Duma Vice-President Sergei Baburin, former U.S. state prosecutor Ramsey Clark, and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. Ilic...

Western peace prevention continues in former Yugoslavia* PressInfo # 234 March 9, 2006 By Jan Oberg, TFF director If you believe that Western politics should serve as a model of decency, fairness and principled policies, consider these topical news from ex-Yugoslavia: • Kofi Annan's envoy on Kosovo, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, tells Der Spiegel that Kosovo is heading for independence. In a tone that can only be characterized as arrogant, he tells the Serb side that they should know the rules of the game and know their own best interests. This simply means he is no mediator who listens...

Albania cannot guarantee inviolability of borders with Macedonia and Kosovo if the Serbian province undergoes division, Albanian Foreign Minister Besnik Mustafaj said on Tuesday. "Tirana stands ready for any contingency, and if Kosovo is divided, Albania could not guarantee inviolability of the borders", Mustafaj told Alsat TV station, as commenting the thesis of Kosovo-Albania merge upon granting province's independence. "As soon as last October, I said in front of high officials in Brussels that if division of Kosovo takes place, Albania could no longer guarantee inviolability of borders with Kosovo, but with Albanian part of Macedonia as well", Mustafaj said...

Claims of up to 100,000 ethnic Albanians massacred in Kosovo revised to under 3,000 as exhumations near end Special report: Kosovo The final toll of civilians confirmed massacred by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo is likely to be under 3,000, far short of the numbers claimed by Nato governments during last year's controversial air strikes on Yugoslavia. As war crimes experts from Britain and other countries prepare to wind down the exhumation of hundreds of graves in Kosovo on behalf of the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, officials concede they have not borne out the...

Albania : Muslims Torch Churches , Hate Christ J. Grant Swank, Jr.      "East Timor remained largely unreported throughout the 80's and most of the 90's. A Christian land ravaged by Muslims - nobody cared. Untold crimes have been committed in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh against the Chakmas, and yet how often is the conflict reported? - never!," a believer noted in despair.Over 150 churches and monasteries in Albania have been destroyed or seriously damaged over the last 6 years. Now authorities project to turn the hull of one sanctuary into a nightclub. The Church of Christ the...

07 March 2006, 11:46 Serbian hierarch: The problem of Kosovo could become a boomerang on a European scale Moscow, March 7, Interfax - Metropolitan Amfilohy of Montenegro and Primorje thinks that independence of Kosovo would entail negative consequences for the whole Europe. ‘The problem of Kosovo could become a boomerang on an European scale’, Serbian hierarch said in an interview published by Kommersant daily on Tuesday. First, ‘new problems would arise in the Balkans because of the incorrect solution of the problem of Kosovo’ (separation of Kosovo - IF). ‘A precedent would be created, and many people in Europe and...

Released : Mar 02, 2006 2:03 PM PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-The president of Kosovo's assembly accused U.S. diplomats on Thursday of orchestrating a political reshuffle in the province which led to his dismissal. Nexhat Daci, who was also part of the team negotiating Kosovo's final status with Serbia, was replaced by his party, the governing Democratic League of Kosovo, on Wednesday. Parliament will have to choose a new leader for his dismissal to take effect. Daci was dismissed as part of a broader reshuffle within the governing coalition, which also included the resignation of Kosovo's Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi. But the parliament...

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Lawyers representing Slobodan Milosevic have asked the U.N. war crimes tribunal to issue a subpoena to force former U.S. President Bill Clinton to testify at his trial, documents showed on Tuesday. "In his position as former president of the United States, Mr Clinton had a continuous role and unique knowledge of events relevant to the indictment," the lawyers said in a written request filed last week but only made public on Tuesday. Lawyers Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins said his evidence was needed to make sure the trial was "informed and fair". They said Milosevic had...

The first trial of a state charged with genocide has opened in The Hague, where Bosnia-Hercegovina will accuse Serbia and Montenegro of war crimes. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing the case, which Bosnia first brought 13 years ago. It says Belgrade was responsible for crimes of genocide on its territory during the early 1990s Bosnian war. Belgrade denies its intention was to wipe out Muslims in eastern Bosnia and says there is no proof of the claims.

In the talks about Kosovo's future, the former Yugoslavia is being treated as a carcass to be dissected by Western diplomats. by Philip Cunliffe This year promises to be a testing one for politics in the Balkans. Talks on the administrative devolution of Kosovo finished in Vienna earlier this week, between representatives of the Kosovo Albanians and the Serbian government. The talks, conducted under the aegis of the six-nation 'Contact Group' (composed of America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia), are seen as stepping-stones to resolving the 'final status' of the province, since it was left in political and legal...

Albanian cartels run Afghan drugs aimed for Europe - UNTIRANA, Albania-Organized crime is becoming more entrenched in the postwar Balkans and threatens stability across a much wider region, including Central Asia, the Caucasus and other parts of the former Soviet Union, the U.N.'s anti-drug chief said. Highlighting one key problem, Antonio Maria Costa said the Balkans has become the most important route for Afghan drugs moving to the rest of Europe. The Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, which he leads, is preparing a program to help countries in the region combat the illegal drug and weapons trades, human...

The dissatisfaction of the Albanians living in the three towns of Southern Serbia, Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja does not date from yesterday. A 1946 decision by the Yugoslav government to separate these three municipalities from Kosovo and place them under direct Serbian Republic jurisdiction was the beginning of the ethnic tension. In 1974 when Kosovo had been granted autonomy the status of these three towns did not change. In March 1992, during the period of the nationalist fire igniting the former Yugoslavia, the Albanians held an unofficial referendum in which they voted nearly unanimously to re-attach the Presevo Valley to...

As someone who has been following and writing about the events in the Balkans for over a decade, the announced death in myriads of newspapers throughout the world of President Ibrahim Rugova of Kosovo, was of deep interest to me. Virtually nothing is mentioned in the media nor in Congress anymore of the dire situation for the remaining Christian Serbian population in Kosovo. It is as though the Balkan war never happened, nor the consequences of that war. While Rugova's method of achieving independence for Kosovo is described as nonviolent he often found himself allied with Hashim Thaci, the leader...