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BELGRADE -- Aleksandar Popovi? says Ahtisaari’s postponement of Kosovo status due to Serbia’s elections is an excuse. “Ahtisaari’s plan to secretly, working behind our backs, draft a paper on Kosovo’s independence fell through. The real reason why it fell through is Russia’s firm and principled position that UN Charter cannot be breached, and it would appear Ahtisaari understood the Russian ‘no’ quite clearly”, science minister Aleksandar Popovi? says. Popovi?, of prime minister Koštunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), believes that the best option Martti Ahtisaari has at this time is to step down and let an impartial and objective international...

In a statement for FoNet news agency, Serbian president Boris Tadic assessed the decision by United Nations special envoy for Kosovo status Martti Ahtisaari to publish his proposal for resolving the status of Kosovo after parliamentary elections in Serbia as useful. "This whole time I have supported the position that artificial deadlines are something that does not contribute to either a solution for Kosovo and Metohija or the stabilization of the situation in Serbia," said Tadic. According to Tadic, Ahtisaari was influenced by the fact that Serbia is to hold parliamentary elections but also the fact that there are different...

A decision to make the Serb province independent is near. Will Serbia and Russia obstruct it? THE SERBIAN parliament formally adopted a new national constitution on Wednesday, following its narrow approval by voters in a referendum last month. The document was a necessary replacement of the previous charter, which was adopted during the rule of nationalist warlord Slobodan Milosevic. But it may have won acceptance only because it included a preamble that would have warmed Mr. Milosevic's heart: a declaration that the province of Kosovo, which Serbia in effect lost seven years ago, is an "integral" and "inalienable" part of...

Pristina, 9 Nov. (AKI) - Ethnic Albanian leaders in the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo have said they are ready to unilaterally declare independence if the United Nations Security Council postpones a decision on the future status of the province, which has been under UN control since 1999. Most of Kosovo's overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian majority want independence, which is opposed by Belgrade and by the tiny minority of Serbs remaining in the province. Members of the ethnic Albanian negotiating team on the status issue told Kosovo television Wednesday night that they were ready to activate the so called 'Plan B'...

It took years of hatred-propaganda by NATO, the US and the EU to have a puppet regime installed in Serbia. It was also facilitated by the months long bombing of Serbia by NATO planes. And during this bombing they managed, by riding roughshod over the Serbian Constitution, to arrest Milosevic and bring him to The Hague. When I saw the picture of this not young man, shuffling across the tarmac in handcuffs, I felt that he would not emerge alive. Too much hatred had been spilled from the pens of the enemy, from the pens of people like Michael Ignatieff....

PRISTINA, Kosovo All expectations are that, in the next few months, Kosovo will claim an internationally sanctioned independence, concluding a titanic struggle by the United Nations and Western governments to close a chapter that began with its bloody ethnic war. But it is unlikely to be the conclusion the United Nations hoped for, after having invested seven years supervising the enclave at a cost of about $1.3 billion a year. That is because it seems increasingly evident that the West will need to retain far greater responsibilities than it wanted. "I think the EU is going to be in for...

The Belgrade-based Center for Free Elections and Democracy said their sample count after polls closed in the two-day vote indicated the draft charter secured a 51.6 percent of voters' support. Related news Serbia votes to keep breakaway Kosovo Serbian voters narrowly approved a new constitution reasserting Serbia's claim over the breakaway Kosovo province, according to independent observers. The Belgrade-based Center for Free Elections and Democracy said their sample count after polls closed in the two-day vote indicated the draft charter secured a 51.6 percent of voters' support. The group estimated the turnout among Serbia's 6.6 million electorate was 53.5 -...

Diplomats and politicians on all sides expect a messy and inconclusive outcome, and fear further ethnic violence in Kosovo with peacekeepers from Nato caught in the middle. Few believe that Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president acting as UN mediator, can broker a compromise. This weekend Serbian voters are likely to approve by referendum a new constitution reaffirming Kosovo as part of Serbia, while the province’s ethnic Albanian majority overwhelmingly aspires to, and expects, full independence. As Russia reasserts itself on the world stage, the US and Europe are wondering what price President Vladimir Putin will exact at the UN...

Arrogantly strutting around the opulent OSCE restaurant, on an upper floor of its Pristina headquarters, Richard Holbrooke cut an imposing figure. The “Balkan peace negotiator” whose bloody legacy stretched from Vietnam and Indonesia to Belgrade minced no words about US policy for the region. In front of the five heads of UNMIK he bellowed: “Forget multi-ethnic Kosovo. Forget Resolution 1244. We only signed that to get rid of the Serbs.”

Novi Pazar, 23 Oct. (AKI) - Encouraged by Serbia’s breakaway southern province of Kosovo's drive for independence, Muslims in the neighboring Sandzak region have taken steps towards regional autonomy. On the initiative of Sandzak mufti Muamer Zukorlic, five Sandzak Muslim political parties at the weekend signed a declaration demanding from Belgrade authorities to "start a dialogue to solve the status of Bosniacs (Muslims) in Serbia and the status of Sandzak region. " Kosovo Muslims, who call themselves Bosniacs since neighboring Bosnia, with majority Muslim population, gained independence in 1992, complain they were neither consulted about nor participated in the drafting...

But Kosovo -- a Serbian province of 2 million people that experienced a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 -- is on the brink of bursting onto the world stage once again. With the United States and the European Union pressing for resolution of Kosovo's final status this year, it once looked like independence was assured. But now Serbia is trying to put that decision off, which could reawaken Balkan unrest. After seven years of United Nations control, the majority Albanian and Muslim population is clamoring for independence. But the Serbian, largely Christian, minority is campaigning to remain attached to Serbia....

PRISTINA, Serbia More than two dozen Serb civilians, including women and children found in a mass grave in Kosovo, were laid to rest in Belgrade on Saturday after their remains were handed over to relatives. The 29 bodies — including an 11-member Serb family allegedly executed by ethnic Albanian separatists during the 1998-99 Kosovo war — were identified through DNA analysis and handed over Friday by U.N. authorities from the southern province. A few hundred people attended the funeral at the cemetery on the outskirts of the Serbian capital — mostly the victims' relatives, but also families of some of...

Guy Dinmore, of the Financial Times, reports on the new mission shared by US evangelicals and Serbia's Christian Orthodox Church: quashing US support for an independent Kosovo. Leading evangelicals, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, have called on their supporters to pressure the United States to not permit independence for this Muslim-majority province. Along with Bishop Artemije, Kosovo's most senior Orthodox cleric, Robertson and Falwell are concerned that an independent Kosovo will become a new haven for Islamic terrorism. For those of you in need of a refresher on US-involvement in Kosovo, Jurist gives a brief and useful overview...

SERBIA remains firmly stuck in the past, paying little attention to the changes taking place all around it. The country has presented a serious challenge to the UN and world community by adopting a new constitution that claims Kosovo as its own. Now Kosovo is currently being administered by the United Nations. The UN was forced to enter Kosovo in the 1990s when the marauding Serb army (then Yugoslavian army) unleashed what has come to be known as the ethnic cleansing against the ethnic Albanian people of Kosovo. Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians were hunted and killed like animals....

President Bill Clinton lost control of not only his temper during his interview with FOX News’ Chris Wallace, but also some facts about American national security. The former President was right to criticize the Bush Administration for paying considerable attention to Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan and the war against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups. Yet, Mr. Clinton was wrong to claim that he gave the struggle against al Qaeda and the Taliban sufficient priority during his own tenure. One of Mr. Clinton’s most striking claims was only indirectly related to the war on terror, in...

I first visited Kosovo in 1988 with a group of Serbian-American students who toured some of the many historic monasteries and churches of Serbia and Montenegro. Even then, it was obvious to me that there were ethnic tensions in the Serbian province as ancient Churches were desecrated with Albanian graffiti, a car with Belgrade license plates was overturned, and we had to always walk with a guard during our stay at the Patriarchate of Pec. For me, this visit was critical in solidifying my cultural awareness and pride as a Serbian-American. In that spirit, I strongly encourage the government of...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina-The top international administrator in Bosnia said he will fire the Bosnian Serb prime minister if he continues to speak of a secession referendum in the Serb-run half of the country. As part of his campaign for the Oct. 1 general election, Milorad Dodik has repeatedly called for a referendum that would enable the Serb-run ministate, Republika Srpska, to secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina. "If he continues to talk about the referendum, I will have to remove him from office," Christian Schwarz-Schilling, the international administrator, told Austrian radio in an interview Monday. The post of international administrator was established to oversee...

Kosovo: Mission Accomplished? Condi shakes hands with yet another unsavory ally. Any visitor to the Balkans knows that to sit down for coffee or throat-rasping rakia with a person from any ethnicity in the region is to risk a not so quick, uninterruptible, vitriolic five-hundred-year history lesson so skewed that it doesn’t deserve the name of history . . . real history just about ceased to exist within Albanian and Serbian discourse. It has largely been replaced by monologues of myth and prejudice. It is now a weapon of survival. So wrote Matthew McAllester in Beyond the Mountains of the...

A U.S. Congressional adviser is turning up the volume on his long-standing warnings that terrorists who have set up camps in the Balkans now easily can reach into Europe, telling reporters in Serbia that the idea now has a name – "Balkans 2020." Congressional adviser Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare since 1988, told Slovenian Finance that the goal of the campaign is to set up terrorist camps in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sandzak and Croatia. He said at least five intelligence agencies now are working to track people and arms arriving...

December 03, 2002 As-Salaam ah-laikum. Dr. Rexhep Boja, members of the Islamic Community of Kosovo, esteemed Hoxhas, students of the Madressa, and political party representatives. Thank you for joining us tonight at this Iftar dinner -- you honor us greatly by your presence in these closing days of Ramadan before we all come together to celebrate the high holy day of Eid al-Fitr. It is gratifying to me to look around this table and see representatives of so many of Kosovo's ethnic communities, as well as the different faith communities that make up today's Kosovo and today's world. As an...