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PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro, March 1, 2006 (AFP) - A guerrilla group on Wednesday warned the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to leave the province, saying it was ready to fight for a "Greater Albania". The group calling itself the Albanian National Army (ANA), which is active in Kosovo, southern Serbia and Macedonia, "demands from the UN, if they are really a peace organisation, to leave Kosovo gradually," it said in a statement received by AFP. "This organisation has no democracy within itself and still governs with (the power of) veto as in the Middle Ages. It cannot build democracy anywhere," the...

Mar 1, 2006 — By Shaban Buza PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (Reuters) - Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi resigned on Wednesday following criticism of his stewardship as the province seeks independence from Serbia in U.N.-led negotiations. Citing the need to preserve a coalition majority and the cooperation of Kosovo's Western backers, Kosumi told reporters: "I find the correct and ethical action is to resign from the post of prime minister." Kosumi, 45, handed in his resignation to President Fatmir Sejdiu after word leaked that he no longer had the confidence of his own Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) party. The...

Bosnian Serbs Sullen and Defiant Bosnian Serbs talk to the BBC News website's Neil Arun of fear, faith and football, 10 years after their army lifted its siege of the capital, Sarajevo. "You must have two sides to wage war, as you have to make love," says Slavko Jovicic, stubbing out a cigarette as a snowdrift smudges the windows of his office in Pale, on the outskirts of Sarajevo. He is on a mission to show the world a side of the war he believes it ignored - the atrocities committed against the Bosnian Serbs. Slavko says he lost...

Rather than welcoming those talks, though, Mr. Kurti wants them stopped -- and he seems to have a large following. He doesn't want an internationally negotiated road map to independence, he wants a mass popular uprising -- bloody if necessary -- that will instantly free Kosovo not just from Serbia but from the UN's clutches. Dressed fashionably and surrounded by rapt followers, Mr. Kurti calmly denounced the United Nations Mission In Kosovo. "UNMIK made sense for the first two years, the postwar recovery stage, but when it came to the development stage, they failed us," he says. "And now UNMIK's...

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Lawyers representing Slobodan Milosevic have asked the U.N. war crimes tribunal to issue a subpoena to force former U.S. President Bill Clinton to testify at his trial, documents showed on Tuesday. "In his position as former president of the United States, Mr Clinton had a continuous role and unique knowledge of events relevant to the indictment," the lawyers said in a written request filed last week but only made public on Tuesday. Lawyers Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins said his evidence was needed to make sure the trial was "informed and fair". They said Milosevic had...

The first trial of a state charged with genocide has opened in The Hague, where Bosnia-Hercegovina will accuse Serbia and Montenegro of war crimes. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing the case, which Bosnia first brought 13 years ago. It says Belgrade was responsible for crimes of genocide on its territory during the early 1990s Bosnian war. Belgrade denies its intention was to wipe out Muslims in eastern Bosnia and says there is no proof of the claims.

Why is a bombed mosque major news, while bombed churches are ignored? Mary Mostert February 26, 2006 The front page of my local paper last Thursday was taken up with color pictures and the Los Angeles Time article about the bombing of the Shiite Golden Dome Mosque of Samarra, Iraq and the repercussions of that bombing — presumably by radical Sunni Muslims. According to the media, this battle between Muslim sects may lead to civil war. I haven't written about it because I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why the bombing of one mosque in Iraq in...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Generals and politicians have been convicted of genocide, but the UN's highest court will consider Monday whether a country - in this case Serbia - can be guilty of humanity's worst crime. The stakes potentially include billions of dollars and history's judgment. Thirteen years after Bosnia filed the case with the International Court of Justice, its lawyers will lay out their lawsuit against Serbia and Montenegro - the successor state for the defunct Yugoslavia - charging it with a premeditated attempt to destroy Bosnia's Muslim population, in whole or part. "Not since the end...

In the talks about Kosovo's future, the former Yugoslavia is being treated as a carcass to be dissected by Western diplomats. by Philip Cunliffe This year promises to be a testing one for politics in the Balkans. Talks on the administrative devolution of Kosovo finished in Vienna earlier this week, between representatives of the Kosovo Albanians and the Serbian government. The talks, conducted under the aegis of the six-nation 'Contact Group' (composed of America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia), are seen as stepping-stones to resolving the 'final status' of the province, since it was left in political and legal...

Albanian cartels run Afghan drugs aimed for Europe - UNTIRANA, Albania-Organized crime is becoming more entrenched in the postwar Balkans and threatens stability across a much wider region, including Central Asia, the Caucasus and other parts of the former Soviet Union, the U.N.'s anti-drug chief said. Highlighting one key problem, Antonio Maria Costa said the Balkans has become the most important route for Afghan drugs moving to the rest of Europe. The Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, which he leads, is preparing a program to help countries in the region combat the illegal drug and weapons trades, human...

The dissatisfaction of the Albanians living in the three towns of Southern Serbia, Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja does not date from yesterday. A 1946 decision by the Yugoslav government to separate these three municipalities from Kosovo and place them under direct Serbian Republic jurisdiction was the beginning of the ethnic tension. In 1974 when Kosovo had been granted autonomy the status of these three towns did not change. In March 1992, during the period of the nationalist fire igniting the former Yugoslavia, the Albanians held an unofficial referendum in which they voted nearly unanimously to re-attach the Presevo Valley to...

As someone who has been following and writing about the events in the Balkans for over a decade, the announced death in myriads of newspapers throughout the world of President Ibrahim Rugova of Kosovo, was of deep interest to me. Virtually nothing is mentioned in the media nor in Congress anymore of the dire situation for the remaining Christian Serbian population in Kosovo. It is as though the Balkan war never happened, nor the consequences of that war. While Rugova's method of achieving independence for Kosovo is described as nonviolent he often found himself allied with Hashim Thaci, the leader...

REGNUM: What parallels can be set between Kosovo and South Ossetia deriving from a possibility that Kosovo independence can be recognized? Of course, analogies can be set between the Kosovo variant and our situation, if we put Georgia on the place of Serbia and South Ossetians instead of Albanians. Each conflict is backed by forces of more powerful states. Well, it is clear that the US stands behind Kosovo, and Russia stands behind us. But in our case it is more comprehendible and grounded, as we used to live in a single country. It is natural that Russia has its...

(Brussels, DTT-NET.COM)- A prestigious think-tank said that Kosovo’s independence must be imposed on Serbia, because of impossibility of reaching any agreement between Kosovan Ethnic Albanians and Serbian authorities on the future of UN administrated province. “To create a stable Kosovo, the international community must dare to impose independence rather than attempt finessing Pristina and Belgrade’s differences with an ambiguous and unstable settlement,“ International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report published on Friday. ICG says that agreement between all parties remains desirable in theory, “it is extremely unlikely that any Serbian government will voluntarily acquiesce to the kind of independence,...

The defence lawyers assigned to ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic have asked for the former NATO commander General Wesley Clark to be recalled to the witness stand for further questioning. Clark testified in December 2003, during the prosecution stage of the Milosevic trial. He told the court that he spoke with the accused following the massacre of Muslim prisoners from the town of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb troops in 1995, and was led to believe that Milosevic had known in advance what would happen. He also gave evidence about Milosevic’s relationship with Serbs in Bosnia in the early Nineties and spoke...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Authorities are monitoring up to 250 Arab Muslims who fought in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, including some who are suspected of having links to international terrorism, a top police official said Thursday. Zlatko Miletic, director of police for the Muslim-Croat part of Bosnia, told reporters that the Muslims under surveillance all live in or around the northeastern village of Gornja Maoca, where they settled after the war. Miletic said the Muslims were among 740 who obtained Bosnian passports during or just after the war, and that the names of nine men appeared on Egypt's list of most-wanted terror...

Macedonia's Muslims are likely to elect a moderate leader soon, but extremism persists. By Christopher Deliso | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor SKOPJE, MACEDONIA – For Muslims in this small Balkan country, the Ottoman Empire's Islamic legacy still endures. However, some say Arab rivals are seeking to undermine it. "When my cousin entered university in Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabis offered him 200 euros a month and an apartment if he would spread their customs back in Macedonia," says Blerim, a young ethnic Albanian and Muslim who didn't want to give his last name for security reasons. "He accepted, and...

The Srebrenica operation was planned so that Bosnian Serb forces were positioned in a shape of a horseshoe, thus intentionally leaving space for the Muslim army and civilians to retreat North, North-West towards Tuzla. The distance of 36km and the configuration of the terrain are such that any man in average physical condition can cross it on foot. The military operation was conducted in this manner with the intention of minimizing the number of casualties, since the Muslims had brought in substantial military forces. If the Muslim forces had been hermetically enclosed, a violent fight would have ensued in which...

When various Balkan potentates come to Washington, you can guess their ethnicity by the kind of treatment they receive. Albanian terrorists like the KLA leader Hashim Thaci do rather well. They are received at the State Department, which but a decade ago would have deemed them untouchable. They have full access to the mainstream media and publically-funded think-tanks to propagate independence for their mono-ethnic criminal fiefdom. When Bishop Artemije of Rashka and Prizren, the spiritual leader of Kosovo’s beleaguered Serbs, comes to Washington, he stays with friends in suburban Maryland who drive him hundreds of miles to meetings in Chicago,...

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Serbia's president proposed on Tuesday a 20-year grace period before deciding Kosovo's final status, a suggestion quickly dismissed by Kosovo's prime minister and Europeans. The dispute at a Security Council meeting on Kosovo illustrated the chasm between the two sides just days before long-awaited U.N.-organized talks begin in Vienna on Monday on the future of the Serbian province. Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since NATO bombs drove out Serb forces in 1999 during a campaign of ethnic cleansing under former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Serbian President Boris Tadic offered Kosovo wide...