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The statement by Yuriy Buligin, a representative of the Russian chamber of commerce, that the ratification of the natural gas and oil agreement by the Serbian Assembly does not also mean that the construction of South Stream will begin has once more raised the question of what the actual future is of that alternative gas pipeline, which is supposed to be an energy link between Russia and Europe. Buligin's position is interpreted as an effort to occupy a better starting position on the eve of the resumption of Serbia's negotiations with Gazprom concerning the construction of South Stream and the...

Thus, while Kosovo's status as part of Serbia is unquestionable, South Ossetia and Abkhazia can make a good case they were part of Soviet Georgia but never the current independent state of Georgia. (The same would apply to Transdniestria with respect to Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh with respect to Azerbaijan. When will they follow suit?) In Kosovo, Washington sowed the wind, and now Georgia has reaped the whirlwind. Only a return to the negotiating table to address comprehensively Kosovo, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and similar trouble spots elsewhere can prevent this malignant precedent from spinning further out of control with incalculable consequences...

THE HAGUE- The former leader of Bosnia's Muslim army, Rasim Delic, was jailed for three years yesterday by the Hague Tribunal for allowing the torture of Bosnian Serb soldiers by a Mujahideen unit in 1995. By majority decision, Delic, who was the chief of staff of the Bosnian Army in 1995, was found guilty of violating customs and laws of war, when he did nothing to prevent cruel treatment of Serb prisoners by a Mujahideen unit under his command. Judge Bakone Justice Moloto, citing the "appalling brutal" mistreatment meted out by Islamic foreign fighters, said that tribunal judges had decided...

28 August 2008 Belgrade _ The French Foreign Minister says Serbia has a right to seek a world court ruling on the legality of Kosovo’s independence but warned the EU would not fully accept it. In a statement to Serbia’s state news agency Tanjug in Paris, Bernard Kouchner warned that “if eventually the International Court of Justice will consider the case, something I am not certain about, it would have to take into account all relevant elements.” “Do not forget that are international agreements, the United Nations and international community stand (on the issue)… The court will take all of...

When the United States and its key European allies ignored Russia’s protests and recognized Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blithely insisted that the Kosovo situation was unique and set no international precedent whatsoever. Prominent members of the foreign policy communities in Europe and the United States echoed her argument. Moscow’s August 26 decision to recognize the independence of Georgia’s separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia demonstrates the arrogant folly of that position. In just a matter of months, the Kosovo precedent has backfired on the United States and generated dangerous tensions...

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia's foreign minister said the link is clear — U.S. and Western support for Kosovo's secession from Serbia has helped fuel tensions in Georgia's separatist province of South Ossetia. Minister Vuk Jeremic was quoted by the Vecernje Novosti daily on Thursday as saying the recognition of Kosovo's independence on Feb. 17 by the United States and its NATO allies has "destabilized" other parts of the world. "We have pointed out to the international community from the very start that the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo could present a dangerous precedent," Vuk Jeremic was quoted as...

Belgrade, 11 August (AKI) – The deadly conflict between Russia and Georgia in the breakaway province of South Ossetia is an indirect result of Kosovo's declaration of independence in February, Serbian analysts and politicians said on Monday. “If there wasn’t a ‘Kosovo precedent’, as the greatest world powers headed by the United States called the secession of a part of Serbian territory, there wouldn’t have been a war in South Ossetia,” Oliver Ivanovic, Serbian government official in charge of Kosovo told the Belgrade daily Blic. Ivanovic said that Kosovo's example was “inspiring to South Ossetia, so they wanted to strain...

National Post, April 08, 2004 We bombed the wrong side? by Lewis MacKenzie Five years ago our television screens were dominated by pictures of Kosovo-Albanian refugees escaping across Kosovo's borders to the sanctuaries of Macedonia and Albania. Shrill reports indicated that Slobodan Milosevic's security forces were conducting a campaign of genocide and that at least 100,000 Kosovo-Albanians had been exterminated and buried in mass graves throughout the Serbian province. NATO sprung into action and, in spite of the fact no member nation of the alliance was threatened, commenced bombing not only Kosovo, but the infrastructure and population of Serbia itself...

Serbia's interior minister says officials found copies of Bosnian Serb government documents in the Belgrade apartment where former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic lived prior to his arrest last week. Ivica Dacic said the documents included materials on Bosnian Serb military staff meetings during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. He said officials turned the materials over to Serbia's war crimes court. Meanwhile, court officials say the court has not yet received Karadzic's appeal against a judicial order authorizing his extradition to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic says he mailed out...

Lord Ashdown's warning about the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina � which was intended to rouse Europe's capitals from their "comfortable slumber" � certainly dampened the optimism that accompanied last week's arrest of Radovan Karadzic. However, in attributing the problems facing Bosnia and Herzegovina to the actions of Bosnia's Serbs, Lord Ashdown overlooked � intentionally or not � several broader issues that continue to undermine the state's viability. From the fiscal frailty of one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to persistent discord amongst Bosnia's Croats, the country is beset by a number of...

Belgrade - Serb nationalists protesting the arrest of Bosnian war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic trashed businesses and clashed with police Tuesday in downtown Belgrade, news reports said. After several hundred demonstrators gathered at Republic Square, a group of about 50 broke chairs and windows in several bars and attacked police. They fled when riot police appeared. Three young men were arrested, Serb media said. No injuries were reported. The protesters, who sang patriotic songs and wore shirts with Karadzic's face, began dispersing after a speech by the secretary- general of the ultranationalist Radical Party, Aleksandar Vucic. Vucic said the Radicals...

24 July 2008 Pristina _ The Islamic Community of Kosovo says that many Muslim states are to recognise Pristina’s independence from Serbia in the very near future. Naim Ternava, the head of Kosovo’s Islamic Community, said Thursday that this organisation is lobbying for the further recognition of Kosovo’s independence. “We are working hard, together with Kosovo’s institutions, to make sure many Islamic countries recognise Kosovo,” Ternava said. He made the comment after meeting Kosovo’s Parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on February 17, an act that has been recognised by 43 countries so far. However recognitions have...

8 July 2008 | 16:36 | Source: Beta PRIŠTINA -- Representatives of civil society in Kosovo will start lobbying for Kosovo's recognition, write Priština media. Daily Koha Ditore claims that there is financial support from George Soros and the Kosovo Fund for Open Society: “The lobbying group will include Veton Suroi and Blerim Shala, the coordinator of the former Kosovo negotiating team, Luan Shllaku, the director of the Kosovo Fund for Open Society, and Muhamet Mustafa, the dean of the Reinvest University.” The group‘s work will be based on the plan and recommendations of former international envoy to Kosovo Martti...

S ixty prominent leaders from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Qatar, and Iraq have supported development of closer ties with Kosovo and fast recognition of Kosovo independence by the Arab states. The conclusion came from the conference “Kosova and the Arab world” organized in Amman, Jordan, by the Al Quds Center for Political Studies and Forum 2015 from Prishtina. Speakers at the conference were Kosovo intellectuals like Veton Surroi, Muhamet Mustafa and Qemalj Morina, and influential intellectuals and civil society leaders from the Arab world. “Kosovo topic arose interest among the Arab participants at the conference, who saw it important to...

16 July 2008 Gjakova _ The UN authorities in Kosovo have pledged to hold talks with council officials in Gjakova after it emerged a park is being built over the remains of a Serbian Orthodox Church. Local Serb radio KIM found that the construction of the park in Gjakova (known in Serbian as Djakovica), an overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian town in western Kosovo, is now in its final stages. A metre of soil was placed on top of the church’s foundations and trees and flowers planted over it. Some 20 workers from the Bala construction company were finishing work at the...

Last update: 3:22 p.m. EDT July 17, 2008 GRACANICA, Serbia, July 17, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The following statement was issued today by His Grace ARTEMIJE, Bishop of Ras and Prizren, and pastor of Orthodox Christians in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija: "On July 21, President George W. Bush is scheduled to meet with Hashim Thaci, styled by some 'Prime Minister' of the separatist Albanian Muslim administration in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. As pastor of the Orthodox Christian people of Kosovo, I protest to the fullest possible degree the fact that President Bush would...

BELGRADE - They sit like open sores at the heart of this turbulent eastern European nation. Long before international fugitive Miladin Kovacevic revived tensions between the U.S. and Serbia, NATO bombs reduced a row of once formidable government buildings here to hulking shells. The ravaged red-brick and concrete buildings are still standing nearly 10 years after the American-led aerial assault. They represent a wound that, many Serbians say, still runs deep. "Our people look at America like it's an enemy," said Niko Percovic, 30, a reporter based in the northern city of Novi Sad. That is one of the reasons,...

The travel section of the paper featured a story on Kosovo the other day with a recommendation that readers visit this latest "must see" spot on the globe. It made me laugh. Almost forty years ago--1971 to be exact -- I traveled in what was then called Yugoslavia and is now called Kosovo. The memories of that trip remain so vivid and so utterly at odds with this report.

American Deputy Secretary of State John Bolton believes the United States committed a serious mistake when it recognized the independence of Kosovo. He fears such policy may escalate tensions in the Balkans. In an interview for the Russian news agency Interfax, Mr. Bolton remarked that Washington’s policy was on autopilot since the regime of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. But the situation has changed considerably after the democratic government took over, which, in Mr. Bolton’s opinion, makes support for Kosovo’s independence a pointless atavism.

[JURIST] The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) [official website] announced Wednesday that it will prepare a report [press release] on allegations of organ trafficking in Kosovo. Former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Carla Del Ponte [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] has alleged in a new book [JURIST report] that about 300 Serbian and other non-Albanian prisoners were victims of organ trafficking during the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo, but that a 2003 probe by her ICTY team failed to obtain sufficient evidence to prosecute. In response, parliamentarians submitted a motion [text] in...