Free Republic

A US-born man pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping to train fellow Al-Qaeda agents to carry out bombings in Europe and the United States, after a five-year global investigation, officials said. The targets included European tourist resorts frequented by Americans, as well as US military bases, embassies and consular offices in Europe. "Today's guilty plea brings an end to the long, dangerous career of Christopher Paul, an Ohio native who joined Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s, fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia and conspired with others to target Americans both at home and abroad," said Acting Assistant US Attorney General Patrick Rowan....

(Political Animal) THE KOSOVO QUANDARY....Liberal internationalist types tend to believe that non-defensive military action shouldn't be undertaken unless it's authorized by the UN. But Kosovo wasn't authorized by the UN, and most liberal internationalists seem to think it was a worthy effort anyway. Matt Yglesias, blogging about his new book over at TPMCafe, ponders this: It's a tough question for the liberal internationalist because generally speaking I would like to have my cake and eat it too here. Kosovo mostly accomplished good things, but the process — moving in without Security Council authorization — isn't something I can strictly speaking...

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has promised his country will recognize Kosovo. The King confirmed his stance during a meeting that he held with Albania's parliament speaker, Jozefina Topalli in Riad. Saudi Arabia's number one expressed his support for the cause of Albanians and congratulated the newest country of Europe. Jozefina Topalli gave special thanks to the King for his promise to recognize the Republic of Kosovo, stressing that such a move by the most powerful country of the Arab world would have a great influence on the Islamic Conference, which consists of around 56 countries. Recent developments in Albania,...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin asked ministers on Monday to draw up plans to send humanitarian aid to Serb-populated enclaves of Kosovo, Russian media reported. Moscow has joined its ally Belgrade in opposing Kosovo's independence from Serbia and has refused to recognise it as a sovereign state. The United States and most European countries have recognized Kosovo's independence. Russian television showed a meeting between Putin and his ministers at which Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Serbian government had requested the aid, citing a deterioration of the situation in Serb-populated areas of Kosovo. "We considered it important to...

WASHINGTON -- The Kosovo debate has been resurrected within the White House, says a former U.S. ambassador to the UN. “You still have a number of people in the administration that do not support the policy of automatic recognition of Kosovo independence. I think that that debate has now resurfaced within the administration itself, and, I hope, in the Foreign Ministries of European countries,” John Bolton told Voice of America. Bolton said that it was to difficult to predict the outcome of that debate, as conflicting views were being expressed, but it was no longer just the domain of the...

When government officials in Macedonia recently proposed rebuilding a church that once stood on the city’s central square, they received an abrupt warning: for the Islamic Community (IVZ), the recreation of Sveti Konstanin & Elena, destroyed in the 1963 earthquake, should guarantee them their own right to build a mosque in the prominent downtown area. According to a report from A1 Television, among its other ambitions the IVZ is most keen on rebuilding the Burmali Mosque, destroyed in 1925, a year after the official dissolution of the Ottoman Empire but 12 years after the Ottomans were finally expelled, following a...

Serbia refuses to give up Kosovo—even if it means giving up its shot at entering the European Union.There's a dark joke going around Serbia these days: "Russia finished the cold war with America—so Serbia is carrying on with it." Given the hostile stance of the two former superpowers over Kosovo, the assessment may be close to the mark. This week Washington heads to the United Nations Security Council's debate on Kosovo, with most of Europe alongside it, pressing for independence. But Serbia's Parliament has overwhelmingly rejected any future EU-imposed mission in Kosovo, and stands with the support of Russia and...

Victoria Taft on KPAM 860 from Portland, Orygun is interviewing John R. Schindler, author of "Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad". The interview will focus on the Fort Dix Six connections to the global war on terrorism. Pulled from an article By Julia Gorin: Schindler is professor of strategy at the Naval War College and a former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. In an e-mail to me, he said this book should finally blow the lid off the aggressively ignored Balkans mess. His book deals mainly with Bosnia, but that serves as a good...

The comparisons of the destruction of Yugoslavia with the destruction of Israel are chilling and instructive.