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The new situation arising from the unilateral Kosovo declaration of independence shapes a new reality that will have multitude and mostly negative consequences for countless nations across the globe. It is important also to illuminate around the existence of the Kosovo issue as a demographic one, shaped by the expansion of one group of people (Albanian Muslims) versus the other one (Serbian Christians). Moreover the existence of facts on the ground as resulting from the population growth of the former, signify a real precedent for other regions in the world. In 1913 when Kosovo & Metojia became a part of...

To see photos: please go to Bernard KouchnerInvolved in Albanian Organ Market Milijana Mitrovic was one of Carla del Ponte`s sources for information on death camps in which organs were taken from people, the Kurir daily writes. She claimed Albania is not only a Serbian “blue tomb”, but organs were taken from Romanians, Greeks, Montenegrins, Russians and Arabs as well. The very Albanian political top was in on it, along with KFOR and UNMIK representatives. Among other things, Mitrovic claimed that thanks to the fact she was close to an influential Albanian businessman, she had the opportunity to see the...

There has actually been a sharp increase of planned attacks involving Balkan actors - as in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2003. The March 20 arrest of five Wahhabi Muslim radicals in Bosnia indicates the continuing threat of terrorism in, and from, the Balkans. The men were reportedly planning to carry out attacks against Catholic churches on Easter in addition to the obvious religious significance here, the event is also important as all of the aspiring terrorists were homegrown. As with a similar arrest in late 2005, also involving native Bosnian extremists, it shows that the radicalizing effect of foreign mujahedin...

Penn State's student newspaper The Daily Collegian reported on Ann Coulter's hour-long speech there this month: "For possibly the first time in her career the conservative commentator, had nothing to say about a political issue. 'I have no opinion,' she told a student who asked her about Kosovo and Ukraine. That may be the first time those words have passed my lips." "During her hour-long speech to a crowd of more than a thousand in HUB Alumni Hall last week, though, Ms. Coulter spoke candidly about her opinions on a variety of controversial subjects ranging from the war in Iraq...

(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...

GNJILANE, Kosovo, April 17, 2008 – Thronged sidewalks and cafes, jammed roads and packed store shelves suggest progress in this former war zone where National Guard troops play a key role in an international effort to keep the world’s newest country on the path of peace. Army Maj. Gen. Larry Shellito, adjutant general of the Minnesota National Guard; Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty; and Army Brig. Gen. John Davoren, commander of Kosovo Force’s Multinational Task Force East, tour Kosovo on April 12, 2008. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill, National Guard Bureau   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image...

Carla del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia, has unleashed a storm of recrimination with allegations of a trade in human body parts in Kosovo and Albania after Nato bombed Serbia in 1999. Del Ponte claims, based on what she describes as credible reports and witnesses, that Kosovan Albanian guerrillas transported hundreds of Serbian prisoners into northern Albania where they were killed, and their organs "harvested" and trafficked out of Tirana airport. The Kosovan government, now headed by the former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, dismisses the claims as untrue, while Serbia and Russia are demanding...

Serb prisoners 'were stripped of their organs in Kosovo war' Serb prisoners had their internal organs removed and sold by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war, according to allegations in a new book by the world's best known war crimes prosecutor. Carla Del Ponte, who stepped down in January as chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal for crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, said investigators found a house suspected of being a laboratory for the illegal trade. A senior adviser to Hashim Thaci, Kosovo's prime minister and a leading member of the Kosovo Liberation Army which is...

MOSCOW, April 8 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Foreign Ministry has asked the Hague to provide details on crimes described in a book by former chief criminal prosecutor Carla del Ponte, the ministry said on Tuesday. In her book called The Hunt: Me and War Criminals, Carla del Ponte described atrocities against Kosovo Serbs and other ethnic groups committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). "Batching freedom of speech concerning crimes against civilians, one may assume, is aimed at softening the reaction within international social and political circles to the facts revealing the criminal prehistory to the illegitimate sovereignty of Kosovo,"...

Moscow - Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday that NATO's willingness to enlarge eastward had 'nothing positive' about it and followed 'a Cold War logic.' Lavrov had tough words for the alliance's decision last week to keep its doors open to former Soviet states wishing to join. 'We will do everything in our power to prevent Georgia and Ukraine's acceptance into NATO,' Lavrov was quoted as saying Tuesday in an interview with radio station Ekho Moskvy. Russia views NATO's expansion eastward as a betrayal and an effort by Western states to persevere in the Cold War policy of containment....

MOSCOW, April 8 (Itar-Tass) - Russia does not see any sense in sending troops to Kosovo, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an exclusive interview with the Echo of Moscow radio. He indicated that the situation around the UN mission in the breakaway Serbian province has not witnessed any dramatic changes compared with the period several years ago when Russia decided to pull its military contingent out of there. "We took this decision because we were unwilling to get associated with the policies conducted by KFOR, which could be described as 'the reverted ethnic cleansing'," Lavrov said.

Within this year, Kosovo expects to launch its own army, to be called the Kosovo Security Force (KSF). Compared to other military forces in Europe, the KSF will be small and lightly equipped; its size will be limited to 2,500 active troops and 800 reserves. It will be primarily responsible for crisis response, explosive ordinance disposal and civil protection. The plans are to develop the force out of a current emergency response organisation, the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). Established eight years ago under UNMIK and KFOR supervision, it is involved in activities such as firefighting, search and rescue and medical...

A St. Louis truck driving school owner who sent his students to Sikeston, Mo., for testing was convicted in federal court in Cape Girardeau in a bribery and fraud scheme to make the tests easy to pass. Mustafa Redzic, a Bosnian-born owner of Bosna Truck Driving School, was prosecuted personally by federal prosecutor Catherine Hanaway in federal court in Cape Girardeau. Investigators began looking at the operation in 2004, Hanaway said, as rumors spread through the growing Bosnian community in St. Louis that Redzic could obtain commercial driver's licenses easily and after the Missouri State Highway Patrol began investigating some...

BELGRADE -- PM Vojislav Koštunica says Serbia needs a stable government that will have a unanimous policy on Kosovo. The Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) leader told the public broadcaster RTS last night that parliamentary elections had been called for this reason, following the unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independence. Koštunica did not directly answer the question whether he would cooperate with the Radicals after the vote, or whether he would participate in a government with the same partners. He said he would cooperate with the parties that support his party's key principles - "Kosovo Is Serbia," membership in the EU...

Serbia has formally proposed partitioning Kosovo along ethnic lines for the first time, asking the United Nations to ensure that Belgrade can control key institutions and functions in areas of the newly independent country where Serbs form a majority. In a document sent to the UN in New York, proposed to the UN in Kosovo last week and published in the Belgrade press yesterday, the government in Belgrade insists that Serbia be allowed to control the police, the courts, the judiciary and customs in the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo and in the northern strip around the tense Serb-controlled town of...

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...

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Sunday accused NATO peacekeepers and United Nations police of using "snipers and banned ammunition" to quell a Serb riot against Kosovo's independence. "It was the international forces," he told the daily Vecernje Novosti in an interview, referring to a riot in the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Mitrovica last Monday in which a Ukrainian U.N. policeman was killed and a Serb badly wounded in the head. "Obviously, the situation in Kosovo is very difficult and there are reasonable and unreasonable people. The battle is on for the whole of Kosovo," Kostunica said....

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President George W. Bush authorized Wednesday supplying Kosovo with weapons, signaling the establishment of government-to-government relations after recognizing its independence, the White House said. In a memo to the State Department made public by the White House, Bush said: "I hereby find that the furnishing of defense articles and defense services to Kosovo will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace." A senior official said the authorization followed US recognition of Kosovo's independence and was part of the normal process of establishing relations with a new government. In a comment apparently meant to...

PRISTINA, Kosovo - The United Nations accused Serbian officials Tuesday of complicity in the violence in northern Kosovo that left a U.N. policeman from Ukraine dead and dozens of people hurt. Larry Rossin, the deputy U.N. administrator for Kosovo, told reporters in Pristina that "it is clear to us that the violence ... was orchestrated." At the very least, Rossin said, Serbia's government failed to use its influence to prevent ethnic Serbs in Kosovo from launching the attacks, which left more than 60 U.N. and NATO forces and 70 Kosovo Serb protesters wounded. The U.N. pulled out of the Serb-dominated...

Over 1,300 Kosovo Serbs, in addition to those for whom we know they have been killed and whose remains were handed over to their families by the UNMIK during the past 8 years, are still listed as missing. In some cases the entire families were kidnapped by the KLA/UCK at some point during the 1998-1999 war and after UN/NATO took over the administration and security of the southern Serbian province. These people were taken away in an unknown direction and, for all we know, disappeared from the face of the earth. Over the years, we have learned that a number...