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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...

BELGRADE (AP)--Serbia's prime minister pledged at a military parade Saturday that his country will never give up Kosovo, describing the province as "the heart" of Serbia and vowing to prevent its possible secession. Vojislav Kostunica spoke as fighter jets flew low over downtown Belgrade, where virtually the entire state leadership attended a grandiose graduation ceremony for about 200 cadets from Serbia's Military Academy. Kostunica didn't threaten the use of force, but said that "Kosovo has always been and forever will remain within Serbia." Kosovo has been an international protectorate since 1999 when NATO bombing forced Serbia to stop its crackdown...

BELGRADE, Serbia-The United States on Friday purchased a plot of land for its new embassy in Belgrade that was flattened by NATO bombs in 1999. A US$15 million (euro11.83 million) deal for the complex of buildings that included former Yugoslav Marshall Josip Broz Tito's residences and barracks that later housed elite military guard units, was signed between U.S. Ambassador Michael Polt and the Serbian government. The area in Belgrade's plush Dedinje district was flattened in May 1999 when the Western alliance intervened to stop former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown against separatist Kosovo Albanians. It neighbors the late Milosevic's headquarters....

MUMBAI (ICNS) -- Muslim leaders in India have criticized a recent speech by Pope Benedict XII in which he made references to Islam. Some of them have demanded an unconditional apology from the Pope, saying his “blasphemous statement against Prophet Mohammad” has offended Islam. Shia Muslim leaders in the northern Indian city of Lucknow on Friday held a press conference condemning the Pope, and demanding an unconditional apology from him for issuing “a blasphemous statement against Prophet Mohammad.” Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Jawaad said that the Pope must tender an apology for running down the Prophet and thereby hurting the...

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...

By M. Bozinovich "It's not true there were mujahideen in Kosovo. That is a figment of your imagination." Sabit Kadriu, Albanian ‘human rights’ activist in Kosovo while testifying against Milosevic at the Hague At the April's international police conference held in Sofia, Bulgaria reiterated that Islamic terrorism is creeping up in the Balkans. Speaking at a regional police anti-crime conference, Bulgarian General Boiko Borisov urged for "joint efforts to fight the global terrorism network" calling on the participants from the likes of Germany, Albania and Turkey to join efforts in limiting militants' access to financing and to enhance security of...

Summary The United States appears to be attempting to strike a deal with the Serbs over the future of Kosovo and the Serbian government. The ultimate success of the deal is a long shot, but it is the best middle-ground option presented yet. Analysis Serbian President Boris Tadic visited the United States on Sept. 5-6. Serbian newspaper Blic reported Sept. 13 that, during his visit, Tadic was told that if Serbia can turn wanted war criminal Ratko Mladic over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague by November, the U.N. decision on Kosovo's independence from Serbia would be postponed...

BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia toughened its stand on Kosovo Tuesday as parliament decided that a planned new constitution would refer to the disputed province as an "integral" part of Serbia, regardless of U.N.-led negotiations on whether to grant it independence. The parliamentary vote effectively ruled out Belgrade's consent if the international talks decide in favor of the majority ethnic Albanians who want the province to be independent. The talks began this year to try to resolve the future of Kosovo _ a province about the size of Connecticut that has been run by the United Nations since NATO launched a...

Since World War Two you have had three major conflicts in the Balkans involving Orthodox Christian communities and Islamic communities; this applies to Cyprus, Bosnia and Kosovo respectively. On all three occasions the United States supported the followers of Islam and maybe one day the same will happen to Orthodox Christians in Macedonia? Yet unlike the large Christian communities of Bosnia and Cyprus, it is the land of Kosovo which is being Islamized and Albanianized under NATO, the UN, and other international institutions who are meant to be neutral. The media in the West is once more turning a 'blind...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the possibility his country may veto a United Nations Security Council decision on the status of Serbia's southern province of Kosovo Mr. Putin told the Financial Times in an interview published Monday that if the solution is not acceptable to Moscow, Russia will not hold back from using its veto. President Putin said his government wants the rules of international relations to be applied to all regions equally. He said it would be wrong to apply one rule for Kosovo and others for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two breakaway regions of Georgia. Russia...

11 September 2006 | 12:09 | FOCUS News Agency Belgrade. The acknowledgement of the Chief Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal Carla Del Ponte that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) kills its potential witnesses against accused in war crimes is raising the question for the responsibility of all who have performed war crimes in Kosovo and will no be tried, Vecerne Novosti reports. The Hague Tribunal admits that is a sensitive topic and they are not apt to talk about that. But they acknowledge that without good witnesses protection there is no way to reach the truth. KLA and its ex...

A new videotape aired on Aljazeera television has shown Osama bin Laden and senior al-Qaeda members meeting some of the men who carried out the September 11 attacks against the US in 2001. The 90-minute video apparently shows bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, taking part in the planning and preparation of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people... The footage, first aired on Thursday, also shows Abu Hafsa al-Masri, al-Qaeda's then military leader, and Ramzi bin al-Shaiba, co-ordinator of the 9/11 attacks, meeting in al-Qaeda's training camps in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. The tape also says that a previous unknown...

The AFP reported last month that there was an explosion at the grave of Bosnia's wartime president and Muslim hero Alija Izetbegovic. Izetbegovic, who was finally, reluctantly, being investigated by the Hague for war crimes against Serbs and others at the time of his death, is buried in a "martyrs'" cemetery, as he requested. Naturally, we are meant to think that the grave bombing was committed by a Serb or Serbs, especially with AFP adding this tidbit: "Tensions have risen in Bosnia in recent days after the broadcast of footage showing a former Muslim general, Atif Dudakovic, ordering his troops...

8 September 2006 | 13:31 | FOCUS News Agency Washington. Serbia’s President Boris Tadic stated yesterday evening that during all his conversations with US officials, including with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he felt there was an overall opinion that Kosovo should receive some kind of independence, Serbian online edition Mondo informs. “Such an opinion is felt in all Washington conversations and Serbia should know this. On the other hand Serbia is defending its position – of opposing Kosovo’s independence and of preserving the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country - with legal means,” Mr. Tadic told RTS....

"The main goal of the symposium is to shed light on how Islam spread in these territories based on undisputed historic facts," professor Morina told IOL. PRISHTINA — The Islamic Community of Kosova (ICK) and the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Prishtina (FIS) will co-organize on September 16-17 an international symposium celebrating 600 years of Islam among Albanians. "The main goal of the symposium is to shed light on how Islam spread in these territories based on undisputed historic facts," professor Qemajl Morina, one of the organizers, told IslamOnline.net. Debates about this issue and the role of Islam among Albanians...

BANJA LUKA -- Banja Luka’s ATV station broadcasted footage of Hamdija Delalić ordering murders and the destruction of villages.Hamdija Delalić, commander of the V corps’ 502 brigades of the Muslim military, can be clearly seen and heard in the video calling for an attack on Fikret Abdić and the Republic of Srpska Military. “A breach must be made. Kill all that stands in front of you. I am permitting and ordering that the enemies be killed using all necessary means, knives, bombs, hunting knives, teeth.” Delalić said to his soldiers in the video. “Can we rape?”Commanders of the 505 and...

BELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- Serbia's foreign minister Tuesday said his country would not accept an independent Kosovo either as "punishment or reward." Vuk Draskovic told reporters in Belgrade the province could become independent of the Belgrade government only through an imposed solution by the international community, Belgrade's RTS radio/TV reported. An imposed solution would not bring happiness to the ethnic-Albanians, Draskovic said. "Serbia won't recognize independence of Kosovo under any punishment or reward," Draskovic said. "It might delay Serbia's (European Union entry) bid, however, it will also turn off the European lights on Kosovo forever." The Serbian government...

Serbian President Boris Tadic says that during his visit to Washington this week, he will seek to explain to U.S. officials his country's opposition to independence for Kosovo. Mr. Tadic told reporters Tuesday he will tell American officials that granting the Serbian province independence would threaten the security and stability of the entire Balkans. He called the current Kosovo situation the result of the Serbian government's disastrous policies in the 1990s. The Serbian leader spoke at a Belgrade news conference shortly before departing for the United States. Mr. Tadic is to meet in Washington with top U.S. officials, including Secretary...