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WASHINGTON - Catholics in Bosnia-Herzegovina feel pressure, threats and discrimination from an unfair political system and from Muslims financially backed by Islamic countries, said the head of the Bosnian bishops' conference. Successful dialogue between Catholics and Muslims, which is solely "about coexistence," depends on the political situation, Cardinal Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo told Catholic News Service in a May 2 interview. During the 1992-1995 war for independence and up to today, radical influences from Eastern Islamic countries infiltrated into Bosnia, the cardinal said through a translator during a visit to Washington. Bosnian Muslims have access to funding and permits to...

Vocabulary of Denial By Boba Borojevic May 4, 2006 -- According to news reports, officials in Brussels have been working on producing new politically correct terminology in order to ban words and phrases that could cause offense. The Saudi based Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) and its 56 member states, for their part, are pressing ahead and requesting from the United Nations and European Union to take steps, including legal ones to ensure that the freedom of speech and expression does not interfere with the "respect for cultural diversity, religious beliefs and religious symbols." The aim is to "...

Exactly twenty years ago the Soviet leadership was in deep denial about the catastrophe that had struck Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. It pretended that life could go on as before, that nothing of great importance had happened. The Comrades hoped, absurdly, that Chernobyl’s awful consequences could be concealed from all those untold millions of people doomed to suffer its short and long-term consequences. Two decades later, Western elites are behaving in exactly the same manner on the subject of Islam. It is ironic that the misnamed National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and various lesser...

May 3 2006 AN ALBANIAN mum and daughter will face charges relating to the murder of a 24-year-old man at a hostel for the homeless. Renata Mitre, 22, of Queen's Road, New Cross, pleaded not guilty to the murder of Aaron Stokes at the Old Bailey on Tuesday last week. Mitre and her mother, Dezdemona Balla, 48, of no fixed address, both denied destroying evidence relating to the murder of Mr Stokes. Police were called to a communal room at Centrepoint Hostel, Queen's Road, New Cross, at 12.45am on January 2. Mr Stokes had suffered a knife wound and was...

The bloody collapse of Yugoslavia shamed Europe. But those of us who live in the Balkans know particularly well that dismantling that artificial state involved a series of murderous ethnic and religious wars and cost at least 100,000 lives, while hundreds of thousands had to flee their homes. This is not to mention the physical devastation. Such appalling and widespread massacres and ethnic cleansing Europe had not seen since the defeat of Nazism. There is, however, one positive story from those dreadful years. It involves my own small but fiercely proud multi-ethnic country, Montenegro, which was wiped off the map...

Pristina. The debatable issues in connection to the border with Macedonia will be discussed after Kosovo’s status is determined, Kosovo’s Parliament Speaker Kol Berisa stated today cited by Macedonian agency Makfax.Kol Berisa pointed out it is also extremely important for Kosovo to have good relations with neighboring Macedonia because a lot of Albanians live there. He added the issue of the border with Macedonia will be discussed after Kosovo’s status is determined and that for Kosovo the contract between Belgrade and Skopje signed in 2001 is debatable.

Standing on the side of justice, as he said, and always with the victims, Austrian writer Peter Handke visited Kosovo several days ago. Standing at burnt homes of the Nikolices, Kostices, Bozanices and Bandices in the villages of Retimlje and Opterusa near Orahovac, Handke said: 'These are universes of pain. I do not have the right to speak. I shall keep silent, I have to keep silent. Thank you for making it possible for me to see this horror personally. This is not the 21st century'. Together with a group of domestic and foreign writers, Handke visited the most jeopardized...

"Since 1999, we saw the departure of the last remaining Jewish family out of Kosovo. Why is Washington shy at actually doing something to protect the minorities in Kosovo? Back in February, we spoke with Julia Gorin, a contributing commentator for the Jewish World Report and Front Page Magazine, about Kosovo and its links with the Islamic terror. The conversation eventually lended a front page cover for the Belgrade independent Weekly Telegraph, abut here we are transmitting it in its original, long format. Why does the US have an ambiguous position on the Kosovo status: it publicly supports a negotiated...

Kosovo: The emerging terror state By M. Bozinovich Back in February, we spoke with Julia Gorin, a contributing commentator for the Jewish World Report and Front Page Magazine, about Kosovo and its links with the Islamic terror. The conversation eventually lended a front page cover for the Belgrade independent Weekly Telegraph, abut here we are transmitting it in its original, long format. Why does the US have an ambiguous position on the Kosovo status: it publicly supports a negotiated solution, while privately numerous individuals involved in those negotiations support independence? What does that mean? Bush does want a negotiated solution,...

…Khalid fought in Afghanistan for two years...Afghanistan represented the birth of the global struggle... In 1993, after Khalid had returned home from Afghanistan,...he went to join the fighting in Bosnia... The combat was much more intense than the action he had seen in Afghanistan...In Bosnia, the enemy was right in front of you, and you had to kill or be killed each day. Khalid fought alongside a group called the Green Berets, named not after the American Special Forces but after the colour of Islam. One day, after a year at war in Bosnia, Khalid was on the front line...

Tucep. Home of Danilo Dzolic (75) was attacked by armed group at about 1 a.m. this morning in Kosovo village of Tucep, RTS reports. No one was injured during the attack but the house in which Dzolic and his wife were at that moment is damaged. The attackers most probably wanted to steal Dzolic’s tractor because so far four tractors had been stolen in the village. Tucep residents chased away the attackers by firing their hunting guns, which Kosovo police and KFOR confiscated today. The Serbs living in the village expressed their concerns the attacks might happen again.

Released : Apr 22, 2006 9:27 AM PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-Two ethnic Albanians were killed and seven were wounded Saturday in a shootout between two families allegedly over a property dispute, police said. The exchange of gunfire occurred in the town of Stimlje, 25 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of Kosovo's capital Pristina following an argument, said Violeta Elezaj, a police spokeswoman. Among the dead was the town's deputy mayor, Vezir Bajrami, an official from the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, the party's spokeswoman said. Most of the injured were being treated at a hospital. Several suspects were arrested, Elezaj said, adding that...

BRUSSELS, April 20 (UPI) -- A new report by U.S. and Croatian intelligence warns that Bosnia risks becoming a hot spot for Islamist recruiters plotting terrorist attacks in Europe. The young Balkan state is rapidly becoming a breeding ground for Muslim terrorists -- a development fueled by high unemployment rates among the young Muslim population, the report states. This group is particular interesting to terrorist recruiters because of their Slavic blood, which makes it hard to distinguish from their fellow Europeans, according to Brussels-based news site EUObserver.com. "People who are born here and live here have an advantage which would...

By WILLIAM J. KOLE Associated Press Writer SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — His code name was Maximus, and he held secret meetings in a shabby room at the Banana City Hotel on the outskirts of Sarajevo. Bosnian police put him under surveillance, and in a raid last fall on his apartment on Poligonska Street, authorities seized explosives, a suicide bomber belt and a videotape of masked men begging Allah's forgiveness for what they were about to do. What they planned, investigators believe, was to blow up a European embassy. But compounding their concern, they say, was the ringleader's background: Maximus turned out...

SARAJEVO, April 19 (Reuters) - The most wanted man in the Balkans is being portrayed on the big screen this month as a vindictive army captain obsessed with gardening in a tragicomic film set during the dying days of Yugoslavia. Fugitive Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, indicted for war crimes by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, has been caricatured as Captain Rade Orchid in the film "Karaula" ("Border Post") by Croat director Rajko Grlic. The film has attracted attention across the Balkans as the first co-production by republics of the former socialist federation since its collapse in the...

‘Al Qaeda men have been transiting Balkans for years’ * Report claims militants took advantage of Balkans’ porous borders to meet, train and possibly plot attacks in Europe SARAJEVO: Islamic militants with ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations have been crisscrossing the Balkans for more than 15 years, according to an intelligence report focusing on their activities in Bosnia. The 252-page analysis, compiled jointly by US and Croatian intelligence and obtained by The Associated Press, said extremists financed in part with cash from narcotics smuggling operations were trying to infiltrate Western Europe from Afghanistan and points further east...

KOSOVO, the former Yugoslav province, is falling into the grip of Albanian organised crime gangs, casting a shadow over attempts by the international community to turn it into a fully fledged independent state by the end of this year. Participants in talks in Vienna, sponsored by the United Nations, on the “final status” of Kosovo, are concerned that the mafia networks that smuggled guns into the disputed province from Albania in 1997 and 1998 are using the same channels for a burgeoning trade in illicit petrol, cigarettes and cement. Prostitution and drugs are also popular staples of the black economy....

The roughly 5000 unspeakable acts of murder and mayhem committed by Islamofascist terrorists on innocent people just since 9/11 have got me wondering – did we come in on the wrong side in the conflict between the Serbians (Christians) and the Bosnians (Muslims) in the former Yugoslavia, and have we and the western world gone after the wrong group of war criminals? I am well aware of the horrendous barbarities committed by the Serbians against the Bosnians and others, but do we really know what transpired to drive them to these acts before the conflict aroused our interest? I admit...

United Press International Front Page > UPI Page Corrupt Kosovo cannot be independent state Apr. 14, 2006 at 8:54AM A U.N. mediator says Serbia's southern Kosovo province has to eliminate corruption before it gains independence. Albert Rohan, U.N. negotiator in ongoing talks between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, said: "Corruption endangers the independence of Kosovo," Albanian-language media in Kosovo's major town of Pristina reported Friday. "There will be no independence unless corruption is contained. We do not want a state which has shortcomings from the very beginning," the Beta news agency quoted Rohan as saying. Kosovo Albanians, who make up 90...

Demonstrations in Decani - Threats against UNMIK for protecting Visoki Decani Monastery continue The leader of the ultraradical and nationalistic organization VETEVENDOSJE (Self-determination) Albin Kurti has begun to carry out in practice the threats he recently published in a ultimatum addressed to UNMIK chief Soren Jessen-Petersen. Six days ago Albin Kurti, together with several extremist organizations from the Decani area (Balli Kombetar, Kosovo Liberation Army veterans, etc.) threatened that if Petersen extended his executive order on the protection of the safety area around Visoki Decani Monastery, he would block the work of UNMIK and the protection of the monastery. On...