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Judge Patrick Robinson immediately shut down a Western journalist on the Hague Tribunal witness stand last week, when she disclosed having seen Osama bin Laden waltz into the office of late Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in November 1994. Just as veteran British journalist Eve-Ann Prentice, who covered the Yugoslav conflicts for the Guardian and the Times told of the famous OBL, Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice objected, and the judge “…cut off the testimony immediately declaring it ‘irrelevant,’” according to the defense’s recap of a devastating day of testimony. full article

-- Giving the Kosovo region independence would encourage terrorism and jihadists inside Europe that rival al-Qaida, the bishop of Kosovo warned Saturday. Artemije Radosavljevic, who heads the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, spoke to more than 100 members of St. Sava Cathedral in Parma on Saturday afternoon. Though his visit featured typical gestures of goodwill and bonding -- traditional dances by the church's youth and a banquet of Serbian food like kielbasa and cabbage -- Bishop Artemije gave the crowd the same pleas that he is making in Pittsburgh and Chicago on his nearly two-week trip across the United States....

BELGRADE -- Monday - Serbian Radical Party senior official Tomislav Nikolic said that he and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica agreed that any eventual proclamation of independence in Kosovo would represent an occupation of Serbia. Kostunica and Nikolic met over the weekend to talk about Kosovo. After the meeting, Nikolic said that Kosovo independence would be considered an occupation of Serbian territory. “Faced with the talks of Kosovo independence which the English Diplomat (John Sawyers) has begun, we agreed that if it ever got to the point where Kosovo was declared independent, the Serbian Parliament would adopt a resolution which...

BERLIN, FEBRUARY 13: A moving drama about Bosnia's post-war trauma and the lingering impact of the systematic rape of Bosnian women by Serb soldiers won cheers at its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday. Grbavica spotlights a hushed-up topic of mass rapes in Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo with a tear-jerking story of a Muslim woman who tries to hide the grisly truth of the past to protect her daughter. The film, seen by critics as one of the Berlinale's best so far, is told against the backdrop of Sarajevo's struggle to come to terms with...

(CNN) -- The war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic enters its fifth tedious year Sunday, and though international interest in the tribunal has waned, it has proved a useful tool in educating Serbs. "Its greatest reverberation is in Serbia itself," where regional media have brought the crimes to center stage by airing and reporting on the proceedings, said Edgar Chen of the Coalition for International Justice, a group that supports war crimes tribunals. Milosevic is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in last decade's bloody Balkans conflict, and for four years, he has dragged out judicial...

BELGRADE - More than a thousand people on Friday took to the streets of Novi Pazar, southern Serbia, protesting against the blasphemous caricatures published in newspapers in Denmark and other countries, local media reported. “We have assembled today to show that we are ready to defend our Muslim faith, with our tongues and our lives,” a speechmaker said at the rally. The protesters torched a Danish flag, the Beta news agency reported. Novi Pazar is located in the Sandzak region of Serbia-Montenegro, which has a majority Muslim population. The publication of blasphemous caricatures in European newspapers has triggered massive Muslim...

Judge Patrick Robinson immediately shut down a Western journalist on the Hague Tribunal witness stand last week, when she disclosed having seen Osama bin Laden waltz into the office of late Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in November 1994. Just as veteran British journalist Eve-Ann Prentice, who covered the Yugoslav conflicts for the Guardian and the Times told of the famous OBL, Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice objected, and the judge “…cut off the testimony immediately declaring it ‘irrelevant,’” according to the defense’s recap of a devastating day of testimony. However, considering that the defendant, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was trying to...

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - A senior British diplomat has told Serbs that independence is the best solution for the disputed Serbian province of Kosovo in talks due within days, Serb negotiators said on Tuesday. "[John] Sawers told us the Contact Group had decided Kosovo should be independent. He said Kosovo would be multi-ethnic, but in the end independent," Goran Bogdanovic, a Kosovo Serb, told Belgrade radio B92, after meeting the political director of the British Foreign Office late on Monday. A second Serb negotiator in Belgrade, who attended a meeting between Sawers and the Serbian prime minister on...

By Shaban Buza PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - The United Nations-run province of Kosovo can win independence from Serbia in negotiations this year if it shows enough democratic maturity, a senior British diplomat said on Monday. "The more the leaders of Kosovo can reach out to the other communities and show that Kosovo is a mature democracy, the more fully an independence can be delivered," John Sawers, the political director of the Foreign Office, told reporters after meeting Kosovo Albanian leaders in the capital, Pristina. The comments are in line with what diplomats have been saying in private for...

By SAMIR KRILIC : Associated Press Writer Feb 6, 2006 : 4:19 am ET MOUNT JAHORINA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- In 1984, this ski resort hosted some of the world's top athletes at the Sarajevo Olympics. Just a few years later, notorious war commanders and their troops took shelter here, turning a symbol of harmony into one of ethnic hatred. Today, as another Winter Olympics begins this week in nearby Italy, Jahorina's ski slopes are slowly becoming trails to reconciliation as skiers from all countries of the former Yugoslavia come to ski -- and put the past behind. At bars and cafes,...

Belgrade, Feb 6, IRNA The leader of the Islamic community in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mustafa Ceric, has said that the publishing of cartoons with offensive contents for Muslims in some European countries shows that Europe should be treated for an illness called 'Islamophobia', reported the Croatian news agency HINA. According to the agency, the Bosnian media on Saturday quoted the Islamic dignitary as saying in Sarajevo that 'it is really ugly what kind of messages are being sent these days to Muslims in Europe'. Europe's attitude towards the highest values of Muslims, expressed through a minor newspaper in Denmark, would hardly be...

The trial of Slobodan Milosevic resumed on Friday with the testimony of Ms. Eva Prentice. Ms. Prentice is a British journalist who has covered the Balkans for both The Guardian and the London Times newspapers since the 1980s. Over the course of her career she visited the former Yugoslavia at least forty times. Ms. Prentice testified that she was concerned by non-objective reporting in the Western media. She said that Western politicians and journalists presented the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in terms of good vs. evil. She said that Serbs were demonized and portrayed as evil while Kosovo-Albanians, Croats,...

International pressure on Serbia over the future of Kosovo and the surrender of war criminals is counter-productive and could lead to instability, Vuk Draskovic, Serbia’s foreign minister, warned on Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT “The humiliation of the people of Serbia must be stopped,” Mr Draskovic told the Financial Times while visiting Washington for the annual convention in the US of the National Prayer Breakfast to be hosted by President George W. Bush. Mr Draskovic echoed a warning delivered hours earlier by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, that independence for Kosovo would fuel demands for independence elsewhere, naming Georgia’s provinces of Abkhazia and South...

GRACANICA -- Wednesday – Telekom Serbia has reported that Serbian enclaves in Central Kosovo have lost their stationary and mobile phone services as well. Many of these Serbian communities have already been without electricity for several days. According to Telekom, equipment has been damaged in Gracanica, stating that cables have been severed in the region and expert teams are doing everything they can in order to rectify the telecommunications situation as soon as possible. Kosovo Serb leader Randjel Nojkic said that workers of the Kosovo Transport and Telecommunications Ministry cut down all the cables connecting the village Susica, near Gracanica....

Despite frequent promises by Kosovo authorities that the Serbian Orthodox Church will be fairly treated local municipal authorities continue with attempts to seize the Church property. In Djakovica, the municipal authorities with assistance of local UNMIK administrator simply falsified the cadastral records and turned the church owned land in the center of the town into a municipal land on which a monument to "KLA heroes" was erected. Just several meters from the monument which was unveiled by KLA War Veterans one can see the remains of the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity which was mined by Kosovo Albanian...

Austrian soldiers which are part of KFOR received threats recently because a Kosovo Albanian was arrested in Vienna. This information was published by Austrian agency APA. Threats were sent by the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which demands release of the arrested Albanian. Rudolf Golija, spokesperson of Austrian police, confirmed that a 49 year old Albanian was arrested. He did not want to say anything about the threats against the Austrian soldiers which are part of KFOR. Kosovo Albanian which last Saturday came to Vienna airport “Schwechat” on a plane flying from Tirana, was arrested because during passport control police...

MOSCOW, Russia (UPI) -- Several leaders of conflict-ridden regions have left the political scene recently, with each man`s departure emphasizing how important or relative the influence of the individual on history can be. The demise of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat removed a big obstacle from the path to settlement, but it was only one of many. Disease has disabled Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose will and influence allowed peacekeepers to make a few more difficult steps on this road. But his departure from the political scene will not change the situation a great deal. Sharon has done the...

Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, president of the Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohija, asked Søren Jessen Petersen, chief of UNMIK, that he prevents the building of a KLA memorial complex on the lot of the destroyed temple of the Holy Trinity. In her letter to Petersen, Raskovic-Ivic categorically demands “stopping of this uncivilized act, protection of the interests of the Serbian Orthodox Church and help for it to rebuild the temple of the Holy Trinity”. “Djakovica municipal authorities and society of war veterans of KLA built a monument to the “heroes of the war” on the lot of temple of Holy Trinity...

Former Croatian General Ante Gotovina stands accused of war crimes in connection with a 1995 military offensive. Some 150 civilians were killed in the advance. Now, it looks like he may have had help from the United States. His trial may not get started before the end of 2006 or the spring of 2007, but already the case against former Croatian general Ante Gotovina promises some surprises. Gotovina, who is accused of being responsible for the murder of at least 150 Serbian civilians and the eviction of some 150,000 Serbs from the Krajina region in August 1995, may have had...

The Association of Kosovo Liberation Army War Veterans, in cooperation with the Djakovica municipal assembly, has built a monument to "war heroes" on church property in immediate proximity to the Serbian Orthodox church of the Holy Trinity in Djakovica, which was destroyed after the war in 1999. This most recent attack on the property of the Serbian Orthodox Church, in direct cooperation with official municipal institutions, confirms that in addition to individual criminal acts in Kosovo illegal activities are being carried out also under the official auspices of institutions formed during the UN protectorate ... The Church is seriously concerned...