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March 31, 2007

Kosovo-Metohija Concerns Shared by Legal Experts, Diplomats and Officials Around the World

Serbian precedent

D’Amato, U.S.A.: Ahtisaari’s Proposal Should be Rejected

The proposal by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari regarding Serbian Kosovo province is absolutely in violation of the United Nations (UN) Charter and international law, because the world organization simply does not have the right to take a part of Serbia’s territory and give it to someone else, international law professor Anthony D’Amato of Chicago-based Northwest University School of Law has said.

The UN Security Council does not have the right to proclaim Kosovo independent, he said. Ahtisaari’s proposal should simply be rejected, and the Security Council must adhere to its mandate, which is the preservation of peace and security in Kosovo, D’Amato told the Tanjug news agency.

The fact that Kosovo-Metohija has always been an integral part of Serbia is the best argument that the Belgrade authorities have, he said. Kosovo province itself does not have any more arguments for secession than the Confederation had in 1861 during the Civil War in the United States of America, the professor pointed out.

Kosovo-Metohija Remains Serbian Territory — Serbia Does Not Need to Prove Its Claims

UN Security Council Resolution 1244 suspended Serbia’s authority in Kosovo-Metohija province, but not its territorial integrity, he said. Regarding everything else, Kosovo-Metohija remains Serbian territory, and Serbia does not need to prove its claims, D’Amato said.

D’Amato substantiated his stand with an analysis made by Yale University in 1991, when this US university based in New Haven, Connecticut, concluded that claiming the right to a territory based on existing borders has the advantage in international law over claiming that right on the grounds of demographic indicators.

Dancer, U.K.: Ahtisaari’s Proposal Should Fail

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, British diplomat James Dancer wrote:

As a former British diplomat in the Balkans, it is my great concern that the proposals for Kosovo now before the UN are a path only to further bloodshed.

In Northern Ireland and the Middle East we proceed patiently to bring belligerent parties together, over Kosovo we seek to impose a solution. The only measure which might secure harmony for Kosovo is a long and substantive reconciliation process.

The apparent safeguards for Serbs in Kosovo offer no confidence at all to the minority communities. Nor does the EU require any such imposed solution to take on administration of Kosovo; to do so without the full range of powers now available to the UN mission will render the EU impotent to tackle the criminal gangs which make Kosovo Europe's main heroin and people smuggling centre.

The proposal overturns established policy against further border changes in the Balkans and contradicts the legal rulings of the Badinter Commission. The UN refugee agency has made contingency plans for up to 70,000 further refugees in the wake of imposed independence. These concerns are not just Russian or Slavic concerns; they are shared by diplomats, officials, and by a number of UN member states. The Security Council should let this proposal fall.

Fleiner, Switzerland: United Nations Shouldn’t Be a Union of Suicide Seekers

Director of the Swiss Institute of Federalism and President of the international Association of Constitutional Law, Thomas Fleiner, warned that UN Security Council would cause the upheaval of the entire world order and shake the very foundation of the international law in case it would back the Ahtisaari proposal for Kosovo-Metohija province.

“That would be the crucial violation in my view. For the first time an association of the sovereign states would make a decision to disintegrate one of its members. Can anyone imagine any sane human being joining the club that has the right to destroy its member, by a simple managerial decision? United Nations should not be a union of suicide seekers,” said professor Fleiner for the Belgrade daily Novosti.

World-Wide Fear From Imposing Ahtisaari’s Solution

He said that he recently visited Sri Lanka where the civil war has been raging for three decades now, and before that India, where separatist movements are continuously simmering below the surface. “My associates are working on problems in Sudan, Ivory Coast, the horn of Africa, Gruzia, Cyprus... In all those regions where our Institute is engaged, there is fear of imposing solution by which the Security Council would give legitimacy to the unilateral secession of Kosovo province,” said Fleiner.

Regarding the concept of the wide autonomy official Belgrade offered and Ahtisaari rejected as unsustainable, Fleiner said that “every solution that is a reflection of agreement of both sides involved is sustainable. On the contrary, it is unfair to say that the solution supported by one side and vehemently opposed by the other is ‘sustainable’.”

Swiss expert stressed his certainty that real negotiations would result in agreement by both sides. “This takes time. The problem with the negotiations that took place thus far is that everyone knew from the very start that Ahtisaari’s main goal is to propose a document that will offer independence to Kosovo province. This is why there were no real negotiations. There can be no consensus built on such foundations,” emphasized Fleiner.

Solution that Both Sides Agree Upon is the Only One Acceptable

According to Professor Fleiner, the mediator has to control the negotiations process, but not its content.

“I’ll give you an example: on July 24 last year we had the first meeting at the highest level, where Serbia’s Prime Minister and President were present, as well as Albanian separatist leaders. Kostunica and Tadic offered to seek a compromise. Ahtisaari responded: ‘I don’t want to hear the word compromise again, I only want the word solution.’ Instead of saying — excellent, one of the sides seeks to reach a consensus.”

Thomas Fleiner concluded that, when it comes to solutions regulating inter-ethnic conflicts, there is no one “expert solution” that is the best. “The best solution in these instances can be only the one based on the agreement of all parties involved. There are solutions and constitutions that were not offered by the experts, but they are still the best solutions, since they have been accepted by all of the communities involved, which has enabled the state to develop, while holding the disparities together,” said Fleiner.

Cartoon by Milenko Kosanovic (Serbia)

March 30, 2007

UN Security Council Accepts Russian Proposal

Kosovo Facts
Let’s look at facts: The most brutal torment of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija province began with NATO occupation, in June 1999, after a 78-day bombardment of Serbia which dared defend its territory against armed, violent separatists.

UN Backs Russian Plan for a Fact-Finding Mission

UN, March 30 (RIA Novosti) — Most UN Security Council members support Russia’s proposal to send an international Contact Group to the Serbian province on a fact-finding mission before considering Ahtisaari’s draft, a UN Security Council representative said Thursday.

Russia proposed a plan Tuesday to send UN Security Council observers to the region believing that it would help establish facts regarding the actual situation in southern Serbian province.

Council to Carry Out Review of the Implementation of Resolution 1244

“Many UN Security Council members believe Russia’s proposal to send an international contact group to Kosovo province and Belgrade would be very useful,” South Africa’s representative to the UN Security Council Dumisani Kumalo said.

He also said that Russia’s plan to send a mission to the Serbian province could help those new UN Security Council members who may be unfamiliar with the Kosovo-Metohija issue to analyze the situation on the ground.

Kumalo said that the mission trip to the region required careful planning before a date could be announced. He approved of Moscow’s initiative to carry out a review of the implementation of previous resolution (UN Security Council Resolution 1244) and check the security levels in the region.

Comprehensive Review Only Logical, Since We’re Told the Process is Being Completed

Regarding the proposal of the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, AP reported that in October 2005, the Security Council endorsed starting talks on the status of Serbian province after U.N. special envoy Kai Eide of Norway said negotiations must go ahead even though Kosovo still had grave problems, including deep ethnic divisions, a struggling economy and widespread corruption.

Churkin said Eide’s report “only emphasizes the need to do a comprehensive review of the resolution now.”

“Since a kind of review of the standards was there at the launch of the process, it would seem to be only logical to revisit the issue as we’re told the process is being completed,” he said.

The U.N. Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has been reporting regularly on implementation of the standards, so Churkin said it should not take very look to write a comprehensive report.

Rewarding Violent Separatist Tendencies a Very Sensitive Issue

South Africa’s U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, the current council president, said the Council would benefit from a trip to the region. He said South Africa has not come to a decision on backing eventual independence for Kosovo.

“We believe that the decision on Kosovo will be a very significant decision because of the possible implication that it has in terms of other parties that may want to separate and gain their independence from their countries,” he said. “In Africa, that’s one issue that is very, very real to us.”

Kosovo Albanians Attack Decani Monastery

Decani Monastery attacked
Damage caused by a rocket propelled anti-tank grenade Albanian terrorists fired at Decani Monastery this morning in Serbian Kosovo-Metohija province.

Kosovo Albanians Prove Themselves Worthy of Independence: Attack on UNESCO’s World Heritage With Mortar Grenade

DECANI, Kosovo-Metohija, Serbia, March 30, 2007 (Source: Serbian Government) — Today at 1.10 am an explosion took place near the Visoki Decani Monastery caused by a mortar grenade which was apparently fired from the hills behind the monastery.

Members of the Italian KFOR unit who are responsible for the security of the monastery and who have a military base nearby reacted immediately and began a search for the attackers. The situation around the monastery is under control and peaceful.

Prior of the monastery and Bishop of Lipljan Teodosije said that the monastery was attacked with the aim to terrorize and threaten the monks and the KFOR, adding that it is a known fact that the area is full of heavily armed extremist groups.

He stressed that it is expected that members of the KFOR issue a public statement, carry out a detailed investigation and identify those responsible for this terrorist attack on the monastery.

The Visoki Decani Monastery was made target of similar attacks during the March 17 violence when seven grenades were fired, as well as on two other occasions since the arrival of the KFOR. Six grenades were fired at the monastery in February 2000 and nine in June 2000. Those responsible for the attacks have still not been found.

The Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija strongly appeals to the international community, and especially to the organs of the UN and the NATO present in Kosovo-Metohija province, to effectively protect human life and Serbian religious heritage, which have once again been made a target of brutal violence in the attack carried out early this morning on the Visoki Decani Monastery.

This attack is also a warning that the terrorists are prepared to destroy the historical, spiritual and cultural heritage of Serbs with the use of weapons, in order to wipe out every sign of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija, and it is a matter of great concern that the terrorists are putting the lives of the monks in jeopardy.

The Coordinating Centre states that the monastery was attacked several times with mortar grenades thus far and no one was held accountable for those attacks.

At the same time, the Coordinating Centre appeals to the media which are informing the public on this terrorist attack not to minimize its grave proportions and implications, reads the statement.

Sarajevo-Tehran Love Connection

Sarajevo joins in

Sarajevo Opposes Sanctions Against Iran, Seeks All-Out Ties With Islamic States

SARAJEVO, Bosnian/Croat Federation — New Bosnian Foreign Minister Sven Alkalay said that “his country” was against imposing any kind of sanction on Iran as a solution to the country’s nuclear activities, IRNA reported. Thinking, of course, Republic of Srpska part of Bosnia is also “his country” and that he can speak in the name of Bosnian Serbs too.

In a meeting with Iran’s Ambassador to Sarajevo, Mohammad-Reza Morshedzadeh, he reiterated Tehran’s “inalienable right to pursue peaceful nuclear technology” and called for settlement of Iran’s nuclear case through diplomatic channels, Iranian news agency IRNA reports.

He further “praised Iran’s humanitarian support for the Bosnian people during his country’s war and reconstruction period,” but said nothing about the Iranian mujahedeen sent to Bosnia during war to join the Muslim slaughter of Serbs — for which, no doubt, he is even more grateful.

Alkalay voiced his country’s interest in boosting all-out ties with Islamic states, Iran in particular, and said “Sarajevo is ready to utilize Iran’s valuable experiences and potentials in economic, industrial and scientific fields,” IRNA says.

Underscoring the importance of exchange of visits between the two countries’ officials in promotion of bilateral ties, he announced his readiness to visit Tehran in the near future.

The Iranian envoy, for his part, briefed the Bosnian foreign minister on the latest developments in Iran’s nuclear activities. He expressed hope that Tehran-Sarajevo cooperation would further bolster in all fields. As if it could be bolstered more!

By the way, this is exactly the kind of nightmare Bosnian Serbs did not want to live out and the reason why the Izetbegovic war in Bosnia was waged in the first place: Dhimmitude never was a Serbian cup of tea and being forced to embrace as your own the country that defines its interest as “boosting all-out ties with Islamic states, Iran in particular” is more akin to a deadly grip, than to a rosy future Serbs can look forward to.

Cartoon by Blatnik (Serbia)

March 29, 2007

Forfeiting Nothing

Djakovica Cathedral
Christian Kosovo-Metohija under NATO rule: Djakovica Cathedral of Holy Trinity, click to view large.

Forfeiting Nothing: Main Argument for Kosovo’s Secession Bogus

Article by Nebojsa Malic

Despite fierce opposition from Belgrade and Moscow, the UN-designated “mediator” for Kosovo, former Finnish president and ICG board member [link to ICG available in the original article] Martti Ahtisaari submitted his proposal this week to the UN Security Council. Ahtisaari told Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that “supervised independence” was the “only viable option” for the Serbian province, occupied since June 1999 by NATO and administered by a UN mission and a “provisional” ethnic Albanian government.

Washington has declared its ironclad support to Ahtisaari’s proposal, rejecting out of hand any further negotiations. According to NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Alliance also fully supports Ahtisaari.

After a 78-day illegal war, followed by almost eight years of violent occupation, the Empire is finally making a move to separate Kosovo from Serbia. The decision is in line with its systematic violations of international law, NATO and UN charter, the U.S. Constitution, and even the very UN resolution that created a precarious legal cover for the occupation.

What is even worse, the reasoning invoked to justify this criminal act is cynical and duplicitous, bearing no relationship to truth or logic.

Simply Illegal

Jurist, a well-known publication of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, carried a guest column this week, in which Prof. Anthony D’Amato of Northwestern University claimed an independent Kosovo would be a “humanitarian disaster” for the remaining Serbs. D’Amato described Kosovo as having a “Serb-hating majority,” and wrote that “a Kosovar-dominated (sic) independent government will lose no time in confiscating the property and rights of the Serbian minority. Some 200,000 Serbs in Kosovo could lose everything they own and maybe their lives.”

Of particular interest is this observation, concerning the legality of Ahtisaari’s proposal:

If we remove the diplomatic euphemisms from Mr. Ahtisaari’s report, we find that he is essentially arguing that UNMIK has conquered Kosovo! Territory-grabbing by conquest has been illegal since the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, yet somehow the United Nations has done it, according to Mr. Ahtisaari. However, there is nothing in the UN Charter that gives the UN the power to oust an existing government by force, replace it with a United Nations mission created especially for the occasion, and then dissolve the mission and hand sovereignty over the territory to someone else. Acquisition of territory by conquest is simply illegal, whether a state does it or an international organization does it.

Sounds clear enough.

However, D’Amato continues the article by claiming that partition would be a preferred solution, and explains why; to establish at least some legitimacy for the Albanian (or “Kosovar,” as he erroneously puts it) cause, he turns to a “human rights argument.” Since, he claims, the Albanians were victims of an “unremitting campaign of suppression” by Milosevic, and “crimes against humanity” by the Yugoslav army and police, “the brutality of the Milosevic incursions into Kosovo may be argued as disqualifying Serbia from ever again governing the Kosovars.”

Argumentum Ad Atrocitas

This “victim argument” has long been used as justification for NATO’s bombing, the subsequent expulsion and persecution of Serbs (“revenge attacks”) and others by Albanians, and indeed for claiming the “right” to independence. Supporters of independence have repeatedly claimed [link available in the original article] that Serbia has somehow “forfeited” its sovereignty through actions in Kosovo in 1999 and before.

As NATO bombs began raining on Serbia and Montenegro in March of 1999, media in NATO countries began manufacturing atrocity stories from the mold perfected just a few years earlier in Bosnia. Refugees, ethnic cleansing, genocide, massacres, rape camps — everything was there. In addition to propaganda injected into the mainstream media by U.S. and other NATO governments, there was also KLA propaganda directly fed to gullible reporters.

Even today, veteran propagandists dutifully repeat the claim that Serb “ethnic cleansing” of Albanians led to the NATO attack. Nothing can be further from the truth. NATO launched the attack in March 1999 after failing to coerce Serbia into accepting an occupation force, during the false negotiations in France. The official justification for the bombing was to force Belgrade to sign the “agreement” presented by the U.S. envoys in Rambouillet. Alleged atrocities are all said to have happened subsequent to the start of the bombing. Indeed, the ICTY indictment against Slobodan Milosevic included only one alleged crime dated prior to March 23, and that was the faux massacre at Racak.

By late 1999, it was obvious that the death toll in Kosovo was much less than the alleged 100,000 — or even the more commonly used 10,000, often falsely qualified as Albanian civilians (That number was actually a wild claim by UK Foreign Minister Geoff Hoon, who sought to justify the bombing.) The total number of bodies exhumed by ICTY’s investigators was 2,108, of all ethnicities and with varying causes of death. It is unclear whether that death toll included the numerous Albanians killed by the KLA, the KLA’s own substantial casualties, or those of the Yugoslav Army. In any case, horror stories presented as facts in a State Department “report” were later proven false. For example, the “Trepca mines” story was debunked by Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl. True, several other mass graves were discovered in the province since 1999. However, the victims buried there were Serbs, so the discoveries quickly faded from memory.

Although many Kosovo Albanians suffered terribly during the KLA insurrection and the NATO bombing, their claim that “Serb atrocities” have earned them the right to independence holds very little water.

Goose and Gander

However, neither the Albanians nor their Western sponsors actually believe the “atrocity argument” on principle. For if they did, and it was universally applicable, they would have forfeited all right to Kosovo themselves!

We could start from the beginning: NATO’s war itself was illegal and illegitimate. In the course of the war, NATO pilots targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure. The Alliance naturally claims those were “unfortunate mistakes” and that bombs were dropped “in good faith,” yet Gen. Michael Short publicly stated that the campaign was designed to force Belgrade to surrender by terrorizing civilians.

Korisa, Grdelica, Aleksinac, Surdulica — these were just some of the NATO atrocities during the “humanitarian” war of 1999.

Once the government in Belgrade agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and allow the UN to occupy the province (in practice, it was NATO occupation), Albanian separatists began terrorizing Kosovo. Violence against Serbs has been amply documented, in photographs, in print, and on film. It is important to note that Serbs were not the sole victims of Albanian attacks; Roma and other communities in Kosovo have also been exposed to violence, intimidation, extortion and murder.

Here are just some of the more gruesome incidents of anti-Serb violence:

  • July 1999: fourteen Serb farmers massacred in the fields near Staro Gracko (graphic photos);
  • October 1999: Valentin Krumov, UN official from Bulgaria, slain for “speaking Serbian”;
  • February 2000: bus carrying Serbs to a cemetery service hit by a missile;
  • February 2001: roadside bomb blows up another bus;
  • June 2003: brutal slaying of a Serb family in Obilic;
  • August 2003: Serb children swimming in the river near Gorazdevac machine-gunned down;
  • March 2004: massive pogrom throughout the province targets Serbs; 8 dead, 4500 expelled, several villages razed.

All this was accompanied by systematic destruction of Serbian Orthodox churches, chapels, monasteries and cemeteries.

Albanian separatists and NATO leaders claim that Serbia’s violent suppression of the terrorist KLA in 1998-99 merited not only an illegal aggression in response, but also forfeited Serbia’s sovereignty over Kosovo. Yet the Albanians have not “forfeited” their right to Kosovo because of systematic terrorism under NATO occupation — they are being rewarded for it by independence!

The Croatian Precedent

Further proof that the “atrocity argument” was made up for the specific purpose of fabricating a reason to separate the occupied province from Serbia and make it into an Albanian state is the absolute absence of any such argument in the case of Croatia, which once had a considerable Serb population.

No “humanitarian” interventionist has ever claimed that atrocities of the Ustasha regime between 1941-1945, in which hundreds of thousands of Serbs perished (Croat and Nazi estimates were over half a million!), somehow disqualified Croatia from sovereignty over territories with majority Serb population that rebelled in 1991? Nor have any of them claimed that Croatia “forfeited” its sovereignty after the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in 1995, following a brutal Croat military incursion that ended the Serb rebellion and “reintegrated” the disputed territories. So how is Kosovo different?

When Croatia engaged in suppression of a Serb rebellion, it was an ally of the United States and NATO, enjoying their full support — military, political, intelligence and diplomatic. When Serbia tried to suppress the Albanian rebellion three years later, the U.S./NATO support was there again — on the side of the Albanians! This is why the same logic does not apply to Krajina and Kosovo, Croatia and Serbia, or even the Serbs and the Albanians. There is no logic here, no principle, no coherent concept of right or wrong — beyond the naked argument of force: whomsoever the Empire supports is a righteous victim, and its enemy an irredeemable villain.

The Final Leap

Empire’s pattern of aggression has by now torn the fragile tapestry of international law to shreds. The UN has already lost so much credibility and respect in the world, unable to stop the abuses by the Washington-run “international community,” the Ahtisaari Show is but a final nail in its coffin. Over the past fifteen years, many lines have been crossed. Appeasement of NATO and Albanian aggression in Kosovo might just be that last step over the edge, and into the abyss from which what remains of Western civilization may never return.

March 28, 2007

Ahtisaari’s Plan Will Fail

Bush and Putin during a Kremlin media conference

Grownups Talking, Ahtisaari and Burns Should Go Play in the Sand

In what the Kremlin described as a “thorough and open” phone conversation initiated by the White House, U.S. President George W. Bush and President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin discussed their differences over the missile defense plans and the fate of the Serbian province.

President Putin reiterated long-standing Russian objections to a UN-mediated plan for “supervised independence” for Kosovo-Metohija province, which has been under UN supervision since NATO’s aggression on the then Yugoslavia in 1999.

“President Vladimir Putin voiced Russia’s opposition to imposing a resolution on Kosovo province against Serbia’s will, so that a solution is worked out that would be acceptable both to Belgrade and Pristina,” the statement said.

Russia, a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council, has repeatedly objected to the proposal for severing of Serbian province put forward by Martti Ahtisaari. Moscow has insisted that any solution must be agreeable to Serbia as well, not only to its ethnic Albanian minority concentrated in Kosovo-Metohija.

Russia strongly objected to the NATO aggression in 1999 and war against Serbs who were defending their territory from Albanian insurgents and terrorist KLA seeking to hijack Kosovo-Metohija province from Serbia.

Churkin: First, Let’s See How the Earlier Resolution Was Implemented

Ahead of a Security Council session, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin Tuesday proposed sending a fact-finding mission to Kosovo-Metohija province and Serbia proper, so the Council would have “all the information it can possibly get on the situation there before considering this proposal.”

He also called on the Council to request “a comprehensive review of implementation of [UN Security Council] Resolution 1244, from 1999, which has been and still is the foundation of all our efforts in Kosovo province.” The adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 on June 10, 1999 has ended a 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

“To us it is logical and, in fact, imperative, to see where the international community stands on implementation of Resolution 1244 before we can, with all the responsibility invested in us by the international community, consider Ahtisaari’s proposal,” Russia’s UN Ambassador said.

He suggested members of the council could visit Serbia late next week after Ahtisaari briefs the panel April 3.

Kostunica: No One Needs Enemies With Such Friends

“We have been informed that the US, EU and NATO have given support to Ahtisaari’s proposal to seize 15 percent of Serbia’s territory. At present we will refrain from commenting their explanation that the territory is being taken out of friendly feelings towards Serbia,” said Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

The Serbian Prime Minister noted that “NATO called itself ‘Merciful Angel’ when it bombarded Serbia, and today, when it is trying to seize a significant part of our territory, it is calling itself Serbia’s friend.”

“Serbia answers with yet more determination and strength that Kosovo-Metohija is an integral and unalienable part of Serbia, that it is so according to law, and it will remain so according to law,” said Prime Minister.

“Today the world is not the way it used to be in 1999 when Serbia was bombarded. The UN Security Council does have instruments to stop the use of force and legal aggression against Serbia. Ahtisaari’s plan will fail despite the loud support it has received, and this failure will lead to new — actual negotiations — on the future regulation of the province,” said Kostunica.

March 27, 2007

Butchering Ends Here

International Community

Renewed Offensive by the International Bullies

US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns is the current front man in the offensive to turn Ahtisaari’s proposal for amputation of Serbian Kosovo-Metohija province into a new UN Security Council resolution, thus legalizing the butchering of Serbian state.

Contrary to what one would expect, he doesn’t have a difficult job: the new UN Secretary General, South Korean Ban Ki-moon appears to be just another Yes-Man, hand-picked for the position by no other than the U.S. Government; NATO’s current Chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is no more than another loyal U.S. employee and NATO’s former Secretary General, Javier Solana, who is presently the EU’s Secretary General, has been awarded with multiple honorary positions for his faithful service during U.S.-led NATO aggression on Serbia.

Therein lies the beauty of the first rule of the international politics — Jobs for the Boys — and the advantages of the revolving doors principle, where the obedience gets rewarded and positions and functions are treated as different outfits for changing seasons, traded exclusively within the same circle of docile chaps.

All that is left for Burns right now is to make sure the few dissenting voices within the EU and NATO get shushed sufficiently to create an appearance of the “united front” against Serbian, Russian and Chinese “intransigence.”

Except that, this time around, Serbia and Russia refuse to be bullied into submission.

Serbian Prime Minister: Kosovo-Metohija Province Will Never Be Independent

Director of the Serbian government’s Office of Media Relations Srdjan Djuric said last night that Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told Burns in telephone talks that Serbia has rejected the proposal presented by Martti Ahtisaari for the future status of Kosovo-Metohija province. The proposal is in absolute violation of the UN Charter, the Serbian Constitution and international law, and represents solely the interests of the Albanian minority, said Kostunica.

Djuric told the news agency Tanjug that Kostunica particularly stressed that he is convinced that the UN Security Council will not uphold Ahtisaari’s plan, which envisages internationally monitored independence for the southern Serbian province, and following that new, actual negotiations will begin with a new international mediator.

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said today that the Russian pledge to veto Ahtisaari’s plan regarding the future status of Kosovo-Metohija province is of historical importance for Serbia and the Serbian nation.

In a statement to the news agency Tanjug, Kostunica stressed that the Russian veto in the UN Security Council, on Martti Ahtisaari’s plan for the status of Serbian province which implies breaking up Serbia and changing its borders at will, is in the deepest sense of historical importance for Serbia and the Serbian nation.

Today Serbia once again declares that Kosovo-Metohija province will never be independent, and that Serbia rejects in advance any attempt at seizing its southern province as an act of legislative aggression, said the Serbian Prime Minister.

NATO Already Discredited, Should Refrain From Adding More Criminal Acts To Its Shameful Record

He recalled that NATO took military action against Serbia without the approval of the UN Security Council and underlined that being responsible for such a breach is a burden large enough for NATO to carry for both the past and entire present century.

We are convinced that Ahtisaari’s proposal will not be upheld by the Security Council and that will open the doors to a new process of negotiations with a new mediator, stressed Kostunica.

As expected, while RAH-RAH-INDEPENDENCE statements by the NATO representatives (Ahtisaari, Solana, Fried, Burns, Rehn, Wisner, Scheffer, Holbrooke, etc.) are being repeated hundreds of times and amplified to a level of earsplitting noise throughout Western mainstream media, the sober, educated and rooted-in-reality statements by the actual experts on the issue are once again completely ignored.

U.S. State Department, NATO and EU are Pushing for the New Balkan Wars

...Such as the very serious warnings issued by the Berlin-based German analyst Wolf Oschlies, who says that the independence of Serbian Kosovo province is bound to bring new, “great instability to the region, even new Balkan wars.”

Immediately after the pullout of the international troops from Kosovo, the Balkans could experience a “new version of the 1912 Balkan wars, only this time they would not be fighting against a joint enemy — Turkey, but against a threat from Kosovo,” Oschlies told Berlin daily Junge Welt.

Oschlies, a 34 years associate of the German Federal Government’s Foreign Policy Institute, believes that the future of Kosovo province is marked by four wars, of which three are already being waged.

The first is the one waged by the Albanians against Albanians — these are fierce inter-party conflicts; the second is the war waged by the Albanians against Serbia — as seen in the pogrom of Serbs in March 2004; the third is the war of the Albanians against UNMIK — reflected in the February violence initiated by the Kosovo Albanian terrorist Vetëvendosje movement, Oschlies stated, adding that the fourth war would be a new version of the Balkan wars waged almost 100 years ago.

“Peaceful, stable, multicultural independent Kosovo” indeed.

March 26, 2007

Reasons Behind NATO Agression

Finishing the Job on Serbia

U.S. State Department Supports Ethnic Cleansing and Advocates Dismemberment of Democratic States

BELGRADE, Serbia, March 26, 2007 (Source: Serbian Government) — President of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija Sanda Raskovic-Ivic expressed belief that the proposal of Serbian Kosovo province’s “supervised independence,” announced by US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will not be adopted and that negotiations will resume.

Raskovic-Ivic commented Burns’ statement that the United States fully support Ahtisaari’s proposal on “supervised independence” by saying that in this way the United States support ethnic cleansing and the seizure of the territory of a sovereign, internationally recognized state, member and founder of the UN.

She pointed out that the United States backs the creation of another Albanian state in the Balkans on someone else’s territory, which would be built on the most brutal ethnic cleansing that started at the end of the 20th century and continues in the 21st century.

Raskovic-Ivic repeated that resuming the talks is the only way to find a compromise that would satisfy both sides.

UN Special Envoy Ahtisaari Seeks to Dispose of the (Inconvenient) UN Charter

Serbian Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Zoran Loncar said today that he is convinced the UN Security Council will reject the proposal of the UN Special Envoy for Kosovo-Metohija province Martti Ahtisaari since it is directly opposed to the UN Charter.

In a statement to the Tanjug news agency, Loncar said that the proposal is in fact a plan which meets the interests of separatists which are to let ethnic the Albanian minority create another Albanian state on Serbia’s territory.

According to Loncar, when the UN Security Council rejects the proposal, there will be room for a new negotiating process with a new international mediator.

He stressed that the solution to the issue of southern Serbian province must be in line with international law and the Serbian Constitution, adding his belief that new talks are the only right way leading to compromise and a lasting solution.

Cartoon by Toso Borkovic (Serbia)

March 25, 2007

NATO Aggression on Serbia, 8th Anniversary

Easter Service in Belgrade during bombardment
U.S. President Bill Clinton and other NATO officials refused to cease bombardment of Yugoslavia during the greatest Christian holiday: Easter Service in Belgrade during NATO aggression.

A Lynch Mob

On March 23, 1999, then NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana addressed the world with the following announcement:

“I have just directed the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Clark, to initiate the air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). [...] All efforts to achieve a negotiated political solution to the Kosovo crisis have failed, and no alternative is open but to take military action.”

What NATO Chief referred to as negotiations took place from February 6 to March 19, 1999, in Rambouillet near Paris and, in reality, boiled down to an ultimatum Clinton administration issued to the Serbs. Represented by Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke, United States requested that Yugoslavia allows Albanian minority in Serbian Kosovo-Metohija to hold a referendum for secession of the Serbian province in three years, but also to submit to military occupation of Yugoslavia’s entire territory: Serbia (with Kosovo province) and Montenegro.

Among the key clauses of an agreement Yugoslavia was pressured to sign under the threats of bombardment are paragraphs 6, 8 and 15 of Appendix B to Chapter 7: paragraph 8 gave NATO forces the right to travel anywhere, by any means and carry out any NATO assignments, throughout Yugoslavia; paragraph 15 gave NATO unrestricted access to all telecommunications channels throughout Yugoslavia; and paragraph 6 gave NATO and its forces complete immunity from prosecution, criminal or otherwise, throughout Yugoslavia. Also included were arbitrary arrest and detention powers for NATO personnel.

“The [Clinton] administration went to Rambouillet basically to arrange a trap for Milosevic. It was a no-win situation for him and frankly, Albright was basically trying to find a pretext for bombing,” said Dan Goure, deputy director of political and military studies at the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies, in an IPA release. “They told the Kosovo Albanians that if they signed and Milosevic didn’t, they’d bomb Serbia. Rambouillet was not a negotiation, it was a setup, a lynch party.”

Goure’s assesment was confirmed in the June 14, 1999 issue of the Nation, when George Kenney, a former State Department Yugoslavia desk officer, reported:

An unimpeachable press source who regularly travels with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told this [writer] that, swearing reporters to deep-background confidentiality at the Rambouillet talks, a senior State Department official had bragged that the United States “deliberately set the bar higher than the Serbs could accept.” The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little bombing to see reason.

Providing further confirmation of Kenney’s account, Jim Jatras, a foreign policy aide to Senate Republicans, reported in a May 18 speech at the Cato Institute in Washington that a “senior Administration official told media at Rambouillet, under embargo” the following:

“We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and that’s what they are going to get.”

Nuremberg Tribunal: War of Aggression, the Supreme International Crime

The aggression conducted without United Nations authority and in violation of the UN Charter and international law began on March 24, 1999, little before 8 p.m. local time and lasted until June 10, 1999.

Walter J. Rockler, one of the prosecutors in the Nuremberg trial of German Nazi leaders wrote on May 23, 1999:

We have engaged in flagrant military aggression, ceaselessly attacking a small country primarily to demonstrate that we run the world. [...] As a primary source of international law, the judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal in the case of the major Nazi war criminals is plain and clear [...] “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime deferring only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

During the first night of bombardment, more than 50 military objects were hit on the whole territory of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), including cities of Pristina, Kursumlija, Uzice, Danilovgrad, Novi Sad, Pancevo, Podgorica, Kraljevo, Kragujevac... According to the statement issued by the Yugoslav Army Headquarters, during the first night of bombardment 10 conscripts were killed and 38 wounded. As the bombing progressed, the attacks became more indiscriminate, with NATO quickly moving to include civilian targets and objects along with the military ones.

The 78 days of areal bombardment caused an estimated 10,000 civilian casualties. The material damage has been estimated between 29,6—100 billion dollars. NATO aggression lasted continuously throughout 11 weeks, destroying or damaging the entire infrastructure of the Serbian state, schools, factories, business objects, hotels, hospitals, media centers, cultural monuments...

Media Pogrom

Meanwhile, led by the U.S. State Department and U.K's Number 10 Downing Street, Western mainstream media orchestrated ferocious demonization of the Serbs in order to sustain broad public support for the massive aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia.

A renowned Balkan expert, Diana Johnstone, wrote about the first shots fired in this war, citing the political editor of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, who “celebrated the start of the bombing of Yugoslavia with a notorious article announcing frankly that ‘the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist’ and that ‘for globalism to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is’.”

CNN kept borrowing from the Hollywood bag of tricks throughout the aggression to affect the widest public by instantaneously effective visual messages, among other means. Static pictures of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright, along with all the other NATO representatives were retouched in graphic programs to perfection, beautifully lit, with soft sfumato smiles and glowing halos on vibrant blue backgrounds of the liberators and “Merciful Angels.” Images of Milosevic and other Serbs were crude and sharpened, often shown while grimacing and inevitably pasted over flaming red or dirty orange smoky backgrounds invoking the immediate associations of mayhem and hell.

Quasi-experts and military spokesmen were brought to studios throughout West, presenting exclusively NATO’s views, justifications and version of events. No Serbs were invited or allowed to take part in any of the hundreds and thousands of “Kosovo war specials”, townhall meetings, round tables or other programs covering various aspects of the war.

Among an army of dedicated supporters of the aggression, CNN’s Larry King also invited Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel who publicly endorsed the carnage, repeating U.S. allegations and giving the intervention a moral justification by making comparisons to the Holocaust. He condemned the West’s failure to take action against the Nazi death camps during World War II, and expressed his satisfaction that unlike in the case of the Jews in the 1930s and 40s, the West was responding to the “plight of the Kosovars” with military intervention.

Another Larry King’s guest at the time, Dalai Lama, who was touring the West in order to garner support for separating Tibet from China, also voiced his support for the military intervention. Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader was saying that, even though Buddhists generally abhor violence, he perfectly understands NATO’s actions, since the bombardment was “the only available option.”

Larry King’s special was a soapbox from which U.S. Senator Joseph Biden labeled Serbian nation as “...a bunch of illiterates, degenerates, baby killers, butchers and rapists.” Richard Holbrooke, a “US Special Envoy” at the time, has demonstrated an equal measure of impartiality and level-headedness, saying that Serbs are “murderous assholes.”

Big Lie and Many Smaller Ones

In the first week of bombardment State Department took mass hysteria to a new level, claiming that 100,000 Albanian men were being rounded up on a football stadium in Pristina, executed by the Serbs and dumped in a mass grave there. AFP reporter who was on the ground went straight to the stadium the very next day. “A football stadium in the Kosovo capital Pristina stood empty Wednesday, one day after reports that Serbian forces were herding ethnic Albanians there in an apparent prelude to a massacre. An AFP reporter who visited the site said the stadium, whose galleries can host some 25,000 spectators, was completely empty and there were no signs of any mass groupings,” Agence France-Presse reported on March 31.

NATO/State Department daily briefings included a number of similar grainy satellite photos and doctored images used as “evidence” that Serbs are conducting a “genocide” in Kosovo province. During the conflict, the NATO powers asserted that somewhere between 100,000 (according to US Defence Secretary William Cohen) and 500,000 (according to an April 1999 statement of the US State Department) Kosovo Albanians had been killed by Serb forces. Labeling the Serbs as “mass killers,” Cohen argued that Serb complaints about NATO’s civilian bombing casualties were comparable to Holocaust architect Adolph Eichmann complaining about the crematoriums being bombed.

The Trepca mining complex, supposedly the hub of Serbian ethnic cleansing operations, was compared in the British press with the Nazi death camps. NATO and the KLA claimed that as many as 1,000 bodies a day had been dropped down the shafts, incinerated or dissolved in hydrochloric acid. In the aftermath of the war, however, investigators surveying the mine complex have found no evidence of executions.

Around the same time, Guardian columnist Frances Wheen coined the term “Kosovo revisionists”, equating those who dispute NATO claims of genocide with right-wing historians who deny the Nazi holocaust against the Jews.

David North commented: “For the public to accept the destruction wrought by US/NATO bombs, it had to be convinced that the war was undertaken to prevent another Holocaust. The fabrication of the death toll was an essential component of a propaganda campaign which sought to disorient public opinion, distort the background of the war, and conceal the real political aims and material interests underlying the decision to go to war against Yugoslavia.”

Still, according to Richard Holbrooke, one of the masterminds of US policy in the Balkans, “The kind of coverage we’re seeing from The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and the newsmagazines lately in Kosovo has been extraordinary and exemplary" (as quoted by Znet, 27 May).

No Genocide, No Mass Murder, No Mass Graves

In October 1999, the Texas-based publication Stratfor noted that “evidence of mass murder has not yet materialized on the scale used to justify the war,” despite the fact that teams from 15 nations conducted investigations.

In two trips to Kosovo since the war’s end, the American FBI has found a total of 30 sites containing some 200 bodies. A Spanish team investigating one zone in Kosovo found no mass graves and only 187 bodies, all buried in individual graves. One team member, Emilio Perez Pujol, said, “There never was a genocide in Kosovo. It was dishonest and wrong for Western leaders to adopt the term in the beginning to give moral authority to the operation.”

Of the civilian dead, these Western investigative teams established that a number died as a result of fighting between Serb forces and the NATO-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), while some were killed by NATO bombs. According to Reuters report on November 10, 1999, ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said that UN investigators have exhumed 2,108 corpses in Kosovo, of both Serbian and Albanian ethnicity.

Staging the “Humanitarian Catastrophe”

Three days after bombardment begun, on March 27, 1999, tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians surged towards borders with FYR of Macedonia and Albania, with Western mainstream reporters eager and ready to report about “Serbian atrocities” and “humanitarian catastrophe”. Serbian government and army were blamed for another bout of “ethnic cleansing” and the reports went along the lines: Thank God We Started Bombing Them in Time!

Contrary to the mainstream spins, political magazine Panorama of the German state television station ARD first program has presented documents from the German Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defense, shedding an entirely different light on the situation in Kosovo and Metohija just a couple of days before the bombardment started.

The report by the Ministry of Defense dated March 1999, only a day before the aggression started said that Serbs “are only performing local and time-limited actions against the KLA.” A document by the Foreign Ministry dated March 19 the same year, contained this assessment: “Serbs warn civilian ethnic Albanian population before their military actions. After the retreat of the Serb security forces the population in refuge returns to their homes. There is no mass flight to the woods, no supply catastrophe.”

After reading these documents, professor Duter Luc from the Institute for Research of Peace and Security says: “One must be worried when reading these reports, particularly the parts saying the KLA commanders forced their people to the places which were the targets of the NATO attacks.”

Non-Albanian Kosovo-Metohija residents, like Cedomir Prlincevic, President of the Jewish Community in Pristina, also contradicted the NATO officials’ reports, claiming that it was not the Serbian army, but KLA forcing other Albanians to leave Kosovo, in order to help justify NATO’s aggression in the eyes of public and allow themselves to be “rescued” by the U.S.-led NATO “liberators.”

In addition, few of the journalists who were stationed in Kosovo-Metohija province at the time, have reported seeing “the leaflet by which Ibrahim Rugova and KLA called on the Albanians to evacuate Kosovo in order to stage the phony ‘humanitarian catastrophe,’ and then return under the wings of NATO.”

General Obrad Stevanovic testified at the ICTY, during the “trial” of former Serbian President Milosevic of seeing the same leaflet Milosevic has shown during his “trial” at the Hague. Distributed by the KLA to Kosovo-Albanians during the war, the leaflet instructed the Albanian population to leave Kosovo and travel in large groups towards FYR of Macedonia and Albania.

Apart from this sort of evidence Western mainstream media and officials collectively chose to ignore, some of the Albanian refugees openly denied Western claims that they are the victims of Serbian campaign of “ethnic cleansing.” According to the Parenti’s “The Media and their Atrocities,” the San Francisco Guardian reported during the bombing that “an Albanian woman crossing into Macedonia was eagerly asked by a news crew if she had been forced out by Serb police. She responded: ‘There were no Serbs. We were frightened of the [NATO] bombs.’” Besides the surprisingly well-dressed and provisioned Albanians, Serbs also fled during the bombing. Parenti asks in jocular fashion, “were the Serbs ethnically cleansing themselves?”

Subsequent ethnic cleansing of over 250,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians from the Serbian province, and destruction of more than 150 churches and monasteries since NATO marched in has been greeted with eight years of deafening silence by the Western mainstream.

KLA: From Terrorists, to Freedom Fighters, to NATO’s Ground Troops

A May 4, 1999 Washington Times article by Jerry Seper described the narco-terrorist characteristics of the KLA:

Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden — who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.

Brendan Stone explains:

Led by Agim Ceku, the KLA imported into Kosovo “mujahadeen” from throughout Eastern Europe. Seper referred to official U.S. State Department reports labeling the KLA as an “insurgency” organization, while State Department officials themselves labeled the KLA as a “terrorist” organization for attacking both Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians in its war for Kosovo’s independence. Seper also quoted the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s statement that gangs of Kosovar Albanians were “second only to Turkish gangs as the predominant heroin smugglers along the Balkan Route.”

Mainstream media was fairly ambiguous on the question of the NATO-KLA ties. For example, Slate magazine claimed, “The Department of Defense acknowledges that the KLA reports to NATO on the situation inside Kosovo, but the extent of KLA/NATO cooperation is not known.” After the NATO Operation, however, the truth began to seep out. The Times reported that U.S. intelligence admitted its linkages to the KLA. The CIA had provided the KLA with arms and training. Co-operation between the U.S. state and the KLA was so close that some KLA soldiers were given OSCE telephones and GPS equipment, and had NATO commander General Wesley Clark’s personal phone number. During the NATO bombardment, according to pro-U.S. historian David Fromkin, the KLA acted as a ground force for NATO, drawing out Serbian forces so that NATO air command could target them.

[...] These actions by the KLA served to trigger conflicts in Kosovo that were painted in the Western media as ethnic repression by the Serbs (...). In 2001, the British newspaper The Observer conducted a series of interviews in its investigation of the KLA. The Observer revealed,

The CIA encouraged former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to launch a rebellion in southern Serbia in an effort to undermine the then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, according to senior European officers who served with the international peace-keeping force in Kosovo (K-For), as well as leading Macedonian and US sources.

Service on the 8th anniversary of NATO bombardment
Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and other members of the Serbian government attending Commemoration Service on the 8th anniversary of NATO bombardment in Belgrade Church of St. Mark.

NATO War Crimes

Despite constant reassurances that NATO is conducting “surgical bombardment” aimed at “the military infrastructure that President Milosevic and his forces are using to repress and kill innocent people” (March 25, 1999, CNN appearance of William Cohen, U.S. Secretary of Defense), and despite mainstream media chorus hailing NATO for its “altruism” rained on Serbia (Max Boot wrote in the Wall Street Journal on April 1, 1999, that “Though it may seem odd to link foreign policy to altruism, it seems clear that NATO’s purposes in Kosovo are primarily humanitarian”), it turned out that Serbian army was largely unscathed: while NATO armada was very effective in destroying immovable targets, bridges, water plants, power plants, schools and hospitals and has committed a number of atrocious war crimes against civilian population, it has been almost entirely ineffective against its professed target, Serbian army.

Although NATO was “exonerated” by the ICTY for its killing of civilians in Yugoslavia, Amnesty International on June 7, 2000, published “a blistering attack on the Alliance, accusing it of committing serious violations of the rules of war, unlawful killings and — in the case of the bombing of Serbia’s television headquarters — a war crime.“ (Robert Fisk)

The 65-page Amnesty report details a number of mass killings of civilians in NATO raids and states that “civilian deaths could have been significantly reduced if NATO forces had fully adhered to the rules of war.”

Among the most obvious war crimes was the attack on Grdelica Bridge, bombardment of the column of Albanian refugees, destruction of Serbian Radio Television building, attack on Chinese Embassy and the attacks on hospitals.

Grdelica Bridge was bombed on April 12 at the very moment a passenger train was crossing the bridge: 14 passengers were killed and more than 20 sustained serious injuries. Amnesty International assessed that “NATO forces failed to suspend their attack after it was evident that they had struck civilians.” The truth of the matter is that the pilot not only failed to suspend the attack on civilians, but kept coming back to rain more death, including the last round, when the clearly marked emergency vehicles and staff arrived to offer help to the injured.

On April 14 NATO planes bombed two columns of Albanian refugees on the road from Djakovica to Prizren, killing 75 and wounding more than 100 civilians. American pilot who conducted the attack said that he was “confused” and thought he was attacking a military column. Part of the problem was that he ended up being “confused” for no less than 35 minutes, as long as the attack lasted. NATO’s — by then already customary — first reaction was to blame the Serbs, suggesting it was the Serbian aircraft that attacked Albanian refugee column. Only when U.S. military markings were found amidst the debris and clearly shown on Serbian television was NATO forced to admit it was their aircrafts that committed the carnage after all.

William Cohen called it simply an “error” and used the opportunity to lash out on President Milosevic once again: “For him to talk in terms of atrocities when in fact he has caused the displacement and the refugee status of in excess of a million people, where he has sent in 40,000 of his military, paramilitary, police, hooded thugs to savagely kill and slaughter at random and on a wholesale basis these innocent people, for him to talk about atrocities when an error occurred on the part of someone trying to carry out a mission to save their lives, I think is one of the most grotesque statements that I could conceive of.”

On April 23 at 2:00 a.m. the Radio Television Serbia building in Aberdareva Street in Belgrade was hit. On that occasion 16 workers died and four were seriously wounded. Apparently unaware of their own morbid hypocrisy, NATO propagandists didn’t skip a beat in claiming Serbian television was a “legitimate target” because it was “spreading propaganda.” Foreign journalists who were in Belgrade at the time, like Independent’s Robert Fisk, were no less outraged than Serbs. On the same day, Fisk expressed his shock by admitting “We had not believed NATO capable of such ferocity,” and wrote: “Once you kill people because you don’t like what they say, you change the rules of war.”

Reporting from the scene, Fisk described some of devastation:

Hanging upside-down from the wreckage was a dead man, in his fifties perhaps, although a benevolent grey dust had covered his face. Not far away, also upside-down — his legs trapped between tons of concrete and steel — was a younger man in a pullover, face grey, blood dribbling from his head on to the rubble beneath.

Deep inside the tangle of cement and plastic and iron, in what had once been the make-up room next to the broadcasting studio of Serb Television, was all that was left of a young woman, burnt alive when Nato’s missile exploded in the radio control room. Within six hours, the Secretary of State for International Development, Clare Short, declared the place a “legitimate target.”

It wasn’t an argument worth debating with the wounded — one of them a young technician who could only be extracted from the hundreds of tons of concrete in which he was encased by amputating both his legs. Nor with the silent hundreds who gathered in front of the still-smoking ruin at dawn yesterday, lost for words as they stood in the little glade of trees beside St Marko’s Cathedral, where Belgrade’s red and cream trams turn round.

A Belgrade fireman pulled at one of the bodies for all of 30 seconds before he realised that the man, swinging back and forth amid the wreckage, was dead. By dusk last night, 10 crushed bodies — two of them women — had been tugged from beneath the concrete, another man had died in hospital and 15 other technicians and secretaries still lay buried. A fireman reported hearing a voice from the depths as the heavens opened, turning into mud the muck and dust of a building that Ms. Short had declared to be a “propaganda machine.”

[...] Serbia’s “propaganda machine” had been prolonging the war.

I wonder. I seem to recall Croatian television spreading hatred a-plenty when it was ethnically cleansing 170,000 Serbs from Croatia in 1995. But we didn’t bomb Zagreb. And when President Franjo Tudjman’s lads were massacring Serbs and Muslims alike in Bosnia, we didn’t bomb his residence.

Was Serbian television’s real sin its broadcast of film of the Nato massacre of Kosovo Albanian refugees last week, killings that Nato was forced to admit had been a mistake?

On May 7 NATO bombed the embassy of the People’s Republic of China in New Belgrade “by mistake”, it later explained. Three Chinese citizens were killed and seven seriously wounded. Clearly marked, the Embassy where over 30 people were sleeping at the time believing they are safe on the Embassy grounds, was hit during night, with three Tomahawk missiles flown straight from the U.S. Texas base. NATO officials blamed CIA for giving them “old maps.” No one was forced to resign over the dreadful “mistake” since.

Another column of Albanian refugees was bombed on May 15 near the village of Koris near Prizren. Eighty-one people were killed and more than 70 wounded in this attack on Albanians. On May 20 Belgrade hospital — the Clinical Medical Center Dr. Dragisa Misovic in Dedinje was hit: three patients and a guard were killed, and a large number of patients and personnel were wounded. Surdulica was bombed again on May 31 and on that occasion the Health Center for Lung Diseases and the Home for the Elderly were hit.

Surprisingly, Amnesty International accepted an unconfirmed information by the Western mainstream media, quoting articles from The Independent in several investigations of civilian deaths, including an investigation into the bombing of a hospital at Surdulica on 31 May. The Independent alleged in November that “Serb soldiers were sheltering on the ground floor of the hospital when it was bombed,” even though all the casualties of the attack were civilian refugees and hospital patients.

Amnesty says: “If NATO intentionally bombed the hospital complex because it believed it was housing soldiers, it may well have violated the laws of war. According to Article 50(3) of Protocol 1, [of the Geneva Conventions] ‘the presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character’. The hospital complex was clearly a civilian object with a large civilian population, the presence of soldiers would not have deprived the civilians or the hospital compound of their protected status.”

On May 24, while NATO aggression was still in full swing, as a peak and the sum of preceeding concerted efforts to take all the blame off NATO and Western powers and pin it on the Serbian political and military leadership, and the nation, NATO’s own rogue court with rigged rules — ICTY — issued indictments against Yugoslavia’s acting President Slobodan Milosevic, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, deputy Yugoslav Prime minister Nikola Sainovic, Yugoslav military Chief of Staff Dragoljub Ojdanic and Serbian Internal Affairs Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic. ICTY’s chief prosecutor at the time, (Del Ponte’s predecessor) Louise Arbour said she “did not want to discuss the specific offenses alleged in the indictment until the accused are in custody. We haven’t had access to Kosovo for a long time,” she said. “We have a lot of information about what we will discover if and when we go, but I don’t know what will be there. So I think to substantiate charges of genocide, it is prudent to have a fuller picture.”

Back to the Original Plan

The bombing of Yugoslavia ended on June 10 with the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which specifies that Kosovo-Metohija is to remain an integral part of Serbia. The previous day representatives of the Yugoslav Army and NATO signed the Military-Technical Agreement in Kosovo province detailing the withdrawal of Yugoslav Army forces from Kosovo and Metohija and the deployment of international military troops in the province.

We are now back at square one, facing another U.S.-led NATO offensive to hijack Serbian Kosovo province from Serbia, that is equally ferocious and equally blindly advertised in prominent political circles and throughout incredibly obedient, sheepish and propagandistic Western mainstream media.

Morton Abramowitz
The hand that rocks the cradle: Morton Abramowitz, KLA/UCK champion, the eminence grise behind the U.S. support to the Albanian seccessionists in Serbian Kosovo province and Holbrooke’s, Albright’s et al. personal guru.

Javier Solana who was NATO Secretary-General during the aggression on Serbia is today the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Secretary-General of both the Council of the European Union (EU) and the Western European Union (WEU).

Martti Ahtisaari, who was a president of Finland at the time and, together with Russian Envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, persuaded Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to accept the agreement under the UN auspices to end the bombardment, is today a UN Special Envoy for Kosovo-Metohija and has drafted a proposal — unsurprisingly hailed by the U.S. State Department, Solana and NATO in general — to amputate Kosovo-Metohija from Serbia, after all.

Bill Clinton hopes to have his wife, Hilary Clinton, a U.S. Senator, elected to the White House in 2008. Richard Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright are nothing, save for being loyal followers of Morton Abramowitz, a former US ambassador to Thailand who has specialized in intelligence matters, and who went on to be a champion of the UCK/KLA and an advisor to the Kosovo Albanian delegation at Rambouillet.

According to Diana Johnstone, Abramowitz has since become president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations. Together with Martti Ahtisaari, he is also on the board of the International Crisis Group, the Brussels-based think-tank that formulates policy options for the “international community” in Bosnia and Kosovo, and is financed by both Western governments and private foundations, notably the Soros foundation. “Abramowitz may be considered the eminence grise behind the US policy of support to the Albanian secessionists in Kosovo,” says Diana Johnstone.

Both Holbrooke and Albright are lined up and waiting for the Democratic win, in hopes of getting back the highest positions in the new United States administration. Wesley Clark is also preparing to be a Democratic nominee in the upcoming elections. All of them, along with the current State Department officials still firmly support further destruction of Serbia and secession of Kosovo-Metohija province, and are very much responsible for the devastation caused in the Balkans during the last 15 years.

Additional information about NATO aggression.

March 24, 2007

NATO Aggression on Serbia, 8th Anniversary

Postcards from Belgrade under bombs

Collision Course: Empire, Russia Disagree on Kosovo

Article by Nebojsa Malic

Eight years ago this week, NATO launched an aerial attack against then-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, on the pretext of halting the “conflict” raging in the Serbian province of Kosovo between the Albanian separatists and the Yugoslav military and police. The attack followed an ultimatum presented to Belgrade at Rambouillet, in the form of a peace proposal that would have put Kosovo under NATO occupation and given the Albanian separatists the right to secede within three years.

For 78 days, NATO bombers rained destruction on Serbia and Montenegro, hitting Kosovo the hardest. Parallel to the bombing, NATO unleashed a propaganda campaign of unprecedented proportions, feeding the Western public outrageous fabrications on a daily basis. Psychological warfare walked hand in hand with physical destruction of Serbia's infrastructure, consciously calculated to terrorize the people into submitting to NATO demands.

Authors of the war in the Clinton administration had predicted the government of Slobodan Milosevic would fold after a couple of days. Instead, Serbia resisted for over two months, as bombing grew in intensity and the desperate Alliance started issuing empty threats of ground assault. In the end, it was Moscow's promise to Belgrade that Russian troops would join NATO in Kosovo as part of a UN mission that persuaded Milosevic to sign an armistice in June 1999.

Most of the UN Security Council resolution 1244, which legitimized NATO presence in the province as part of a UN peacekeeping mission, was never implemented; instead, the Alliance treated it as the ex post facto legitimization of the invasion, which by itself represented a criminal act.

‘Finishing the Job’

Although much has happened over the past eight years — the September 11, 2001 attacks supposedly “changed everything,” but not really — the policy of Western powers in Kosovo has remained constant. The shocking display of hatred and violence in March of 2004, when Albanians engaged in a three-day, Kristallnacht-style pogrom against Serbs, was twisted by Albanian supporters into an argument for accelerated appeasement. Although the Bush administration had been content to leave the Clinton policy on Kosovo in place during its first mandate, in May 2005 it adopted the Balkans program championed by the recently defeated Democrats. One of its main points was independence for Kosovo.

As things became more grim in Iraq and Afghanistan, the determination and zeal of American diplomats to “win” in Kosovo became greater. In late 2005, the UN (under influence of Washington and London) launched “status talks” under the leadership of Martti Ahtisaari. The former president of Finland had been NATO’s errand-boy in 1999, and had worked with the rabidly pro-Albanian International Crisis Group since; his choice as the head negotiator should have been a clear indicator the process was a farce.

On February 2 this year, Ahtisaari presented his proposal for the status of Kosovo, which amounted to an independent Albanian state under semi-colonial EU patronage. As with Rambouillet, it was designed to be grudgingly accepted by the Albanians, and rejected out of hand by Serbia; this is precisely what happened. On March 11, Ahtisaari declared the “talks” over, claiming they were pointless.

Moscow and Belgrade

While the American and British policy in Kosovo has remained constant, changes have taken place in both Moscow and Belgrade since 1999. In Russia, the pro-American regime of Boris Yeltsin has been replaced by an assertive government led by Vladimir Putin. While Yeltsin had ruled Russia primarily with American assistance, Putin enjoys genuine popular support and has chosen to confront American belligerence.

Meanwhile, copious amounts of money, CIA training, propaganda and threats had resulted in the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic’s government in October 2000, and the successor governments had for several years fulfilled every demand from Washington and Brussels, and then some. Over the years, however, incessant abuse by the Empire had produced an opposite reaction in Serbia, and in 2006 the leading Imperial daily furiously assailed the leaders they once called “democratic” and “reformers” as “intransigent” nationalists — all because Belgrade would not accept to treat the 1999 rape as consensual.

As Empire‘s frustrations mounted, the veneer of lies and obfuscations that had been wrapped around the Kosovo policy fell off, exposing a dangerously belligerent idea that had very little to do with the Albanians of Kosovo, or even the Serbs, but everything to do with the Cold War rivalry between the West and Russia.

A ‘New Battle’

Richard Holbrooke, Clinton’s hatchet-man in Bosnia who tried to do the same thing in Kosovo (and failed), resurfaced from political obscurity last year and became one of the most vocal advocates of independent Kosovo. His eyes are reportedly set on becoming the next Secretary of State, if the Democrats win the 2008 presidential election.

On March 12, Holbrooke published his regular monthly column in the Washington Post, claiming that if Kosovo were not given independence, there could be a new war in the Balkans. But rather than the Albanians who would start it, the responsibility would be on Moscow, which “sent the wrong signals” to Belgrade and obstructed Washington and London’s “peace” efforts.

Tim Judah, a pro-Albanian British commentator, described Holbrooke’s op-ed as “the first shot” in the new “battle of Kosovo,” pitting the U.S. and (most of) the EU against Russia. According to Judah, the remaining dissidents within the EU — Spain, Slovakia, and Romania are mentioned — are being “brought into line” and their opposition to the proposed solution will be irrelevant. However, Imperial policymakers still cannot decide “whether the Russians mean what they say, or whether they are ratcheting up the tension as part of an eventual bargaining process by which they will extract concessions from the U.S. elsewhere.”

Confrontation on the East River

It appears, however, that Moscow is actually serious. AFP reported that Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin stormed out of a Security Council session on Monday, accusing the current Kosovo viceroy Joachim Rucker of “giving a sermon” and “preaching independence” instead of a report on implementing his UN mandate. Meanwhile, an influential Russian lawmaker told Itar-Tass on Monday that “Russia has enough reasons for using… its right of veto” in the Security Council.

Nor is Moscow unaware of Holbrooke’s attack. On Sunday, Belgrade’s Vecernje Novosti daily quoted the Russian ambassador, Alexander Alexeev:

Holbrooke’s words were in fact an incitement of violence and a malicious dig at Russia. Moscow doesn’t control anything in Kosovo, and is absolutely not responsible for the wrong way things have gone there since 1999. It has never promised anything to anyone, or given guarantees, or sent ‘personal messages.’ Nor does it have anything to do with half a million guns the Albanians have kept under the very noses of UNMIK and NATO's military mission…

On the other hand, AKI reports that the US envoy in the Security Council, Alejandro Wolf, “praised Rucker’s report as ‘objective and balanced’ and reiterated their support for Ahtisaari’s plan.” And Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement on March 16 that virtually echoes one of the independence advocates’ talking points: “After almost eight years of United Nations interim administration, Kosovo and its people need clarity on their future.”

If it weren’t so dangerous, the situation would be almost comical. Moscow is protesting the farcical “talks” and blatantly one-sided “compromises” that clearly violate the UN charter and the current UN resolution in place, while the UN — dominated by the Washington/Brussels axis — is alternating between “that’s just not true, everything is wonderful” and “la-la-la, we’re not listening.”

True Colors

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, as illegal and illegitimate as the assault on Yugoslavia four years prior, may have caused the unraveling of the American imperial project. It seems, however, that it will be Kosovo — the “success” so beloved by liberal interventionists — where the Empire’s power will truly be tested.

NATO itself claims the bombing campaign was fought for “the establishment of a political agreement for Kosovo in conformity with international law and the Charter of the United Nations.” Yet the invasion itself violated both, and the proposed “solution” does the same. For pointing this out, Russia is accused of “fomenting violence” — while its actual perpetrators, the separatist Albanians, are given a free pass.

Looked at from whichever angle, the policy of Washington, London and Brussels in Kosovo just doesn’t make any sense. Once one discards the official rhetoric about Albanian suffering, Serb repression, Milosevic’s legacy, self-determination and other such propagandistic drivel, it appears the only thing that remains is a thirst for power, and some unrequited aggression left over from the Cold War.

Perhaps the self-proclaimed “analysts” that parrot the official proclamations of the State Department, Foreign Office and whichever pompous bureaucracy in Brussels is their equivalent, should instead pay attention to the words of Nelson Strobridge Talbott III, former Deputy Secretary of State, who wrote the following in the introduction to the book by his former communications director, John Norris:

It was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform — not the plight of Kosovo Albanians — that best explains NATO’s war. (pp. xxii-xxiii)

The end of the Cold War offered the American policymakers the temptation of asserting the U.S. as the ultimate power in the world, and expanding its influence all over the former Soviet bloc. It is the temptation they have been both unwilling and unable to resist. Yugoslavia — or, rather, what ended up being Serbia — was one of the few countries reluctant to submit to, let alone enthusiastically accept, this turn of events. The other one is Putin’s Russia.

The newly created Empire has thus set itself on a collision course with Russia over a patch of land in the southeast of Europe where many empires have clashed before. The arrogance, intransigence and belligerence of the American Empire have now produced a realistic threat that Bismarck’s prediction of a European war caused by “some damned foolish thing in the Balkans” could be fulfilled once again.

March 23, 2007

Eighth Anniversary of the U.S.-led NATO Aggression on Serbia

NATO aggression on Serbia
NATO aggression on Serbia started on March 24, 1999 and lasted for 78 days.

Why NATO Really Smote the Serbs

Globe & Mail article by James Bisset

This weekend marks the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The implications of that action are still with us.

The Onslaught

The onslaught that began March 24, 1999, continued for 78 days, causing an estimated 10,000 civilian casualties and inflicting widespread damage on the country’s infrastructure. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s unprecedented attack against a sovereign state was done without United Nations authority and in violation of the UN Charter and international law.

It also set a dangerous precedent: It transformed NATO from a purely defensive organization into a powerful alliance prepared to intervene militarily wherever it chose to do so. And it paved the way for the unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq.

NATO used cluster bombs
NATO regularly used cluster bombs in cities and towns, designed to inflict most damage to humans. April 28, 1999, city of Nis, Serbia.

Humanitarian Bombing

Bill Clinton and other NATO leaders justified the bombing on humanitarian grounds. It was alleged that genocide was taking place in Kosovo and that Serbian security forces were driving out the Albanian population. Later, it was disclosed there was no genocide in Kosovo. (Of course, the outcome appears to be an independent quasi-state of Kosovo, as shall be recommended next week to the UN Security Council.) Before the bombing, several thousand Albanians had been displaced within Kosovo as a result of the fighting between Serbian security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. But nearly all of the Albanians who fled Kosovo did so after the bombing began.

Real Ethnic Cleansing Took Place a Bit Later

The real ethnic cleansing came after Serbian forces withdrew and more than 200,000 Serbs, Roma, Jews and other non-Albanians were forced to flee; more than 150 Christian churches and monasteries have since been burned by Albanian mobs.

Chinese Embassy in Belgrade destroyed by NATO
The bombing of Chinese Embassy in Belgrade (May 7, 1999) was justified as a “mistake” — NATO didn’t have proper maps.

The bombing had little, if anything, to do with humanitarian concerns. It had everything to do with the determination of the United States to maintain NATO as an essential military organization. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of Warsaw Pact armies had called into question NATO’s reason for existence. Why was such a powerful and expensive military organization needed to defend Western Europe when there was no longer any threat from Soviet communism?

Compliant “Journalists” Conduct Massive Media Pogrom of Serbs

The armed rebellion by the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army provided Washington with the opportunity needed to demonstrate to Western Europe that NATO was still needed. So, it was essential to convince the news media and the public that atrocities and ethnic cleansing were taking place in Kosovo.

This was done with relative ease by a campaign of misinformation aimed at demonizing the Serbs and by assertions by Mr. Clinton, Tony Blair and other NATO spokesmen that hundreds of young Albanian men were “missing” and that mass executions and genocide were taking place in Kosovo. Compliant journalists and a credulous public accepted these lies.

Clinton Changes NATO’s Role With a Personal Dictum

In April, 1999, at the peak of the bombing, Mr. Clinton gathered NATO’s political leaders in Washington to celebrate the alliance’s 50th birthday. The party was used as a platform for Mr. Clinton to announce a new “strategic concept” — NATO was to be modernized and made ready for the new century. There was no reference to defence or the settling of international disputes by peaceful means or of complying with the principles of the UN Charter. The new emphasis would be on “conflict prevention,” “crisis management” and “crisis response operation.”

Usually when a treaty is to be amended or changed, it must be approved and ratified by the legislatures of the contracting states. This was not done with the North Atlantic Treaty. It was changed by an announcement from the U.S. president, with little or no debate by the legislatures of member countries. It may well be that NATO should be in a position to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of another country, but it surely is essential that the ground rules for such intervention be in accordance with the UN Charter and only after concurrence of member states. NATO should not become a convenient political “cover” to justify the use of military power by the United States.

March 22, 2007

Neither Russia, Nor International Law Will Cave In Under Pressure

Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister

Moscow Will Not Step Aside

MOSCOW, Russian Federation, March 21, 2007 (Source: Tanjug, AP) — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday warned that Moscow would oppose the UN plan for Kosovo-Metohija province if it ignored Serbian interests.

“If there are attempts to enforce on the Serbs something which is unacceptable to them, this will be unacceptable for us as well,” Lavrov said and added that the Kosovo issue was of principled importance and that Moscow would not stand aside. “We are not going to stand aside. That is a matter of principle,” Lavrov told lawmakers in the lower house of Russian parliament, suggesting Russia would not abstain if an unsatisfactory proposal is put to a council vote. “It strikes too many chords — political, historic and spiritual.”

“When we talk about the U.N. Security Council vote, we must not view it as something already predetermined,” Lavrov said, adding that “despite the constant Western claims that the solution of the Kosovo problem is a unique case, this will set a precedent.”

Amputation of the Sovereign State’s Region Bound to Set a Very Bad Precedent

“Any outcome in the Kosovo resolution will create a precedent,” Lavrov said and added that in case of independence this would be the first time that it would not be a federal unit, like in the former Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and former Soviet Union, to be detached, but a region, and this would also happen on the unilateral basis, without the agreement of all sides,” Russian media reported.

Asked by Russian deputies whether Moscow would recognize the independence of Georgian republics of South Ossetia or Abkhasia, Lavrov said that the fact that Russia believed that the solution to the issue of Serbian Kosovo-Metohija province would create a precedent did not mean that it would draw hasty conclusions regarding unrecognized former Soviet territories.

“We are not waiting eagerly for Kosovo province to be separated from Serbia so that we can do the same ourselves regarding these regions,” Lavrov said and voiced his belief that this position was wrong.

Ariel Cohen: U.S. Should Stop Undermining Democracy for the Sake of Criminal Elements in Kosovo Province

That Russian position on the issue of Serbian Kosovo province is the only valid one in terms of international law, democratic values and the world order has been confirmed by a number of Western-based analysts and experts, many of whom are often critical of President Putin’s policies. Most recently, Ariel Cohen, a Senior Research Fellow of the Davis Institute for International Studies at the Heritage Foundation, has also warned that “implications of Kosovo’s independence can be dangerous if not catastrophic across the world,” advising that “U.S. should be on the side of democracy and not radical and quasi criminal elements that have predetermined political objectives.”

Commenting on the recent propaganda attack by the Western mainstream media in an effort to force Russia to step aside while Serbia is being dismembered, Dr. Cohen said:

“It is interesting that Holbrooke blames Russia,” for any violence Kosovo Albanians are threatening to initiate if their independence drive is thwarted but “while I do not support President Putin and frequently in my texts I have been critical of Russia, I must say that when Russia stands on the side of the international law and warns that support for separatism in Kosovo would have ramifications not only in Europe but across the world, I think we need to pay attention.”

“We have to be very careful as to the degree and locations of our support for independence movements that can destroy not only sovereign states but also democracy.”

Russian Office in Pristina: Kosovo Albanians Thrilled With Ahtisaari’s Package

Claims that Kosovo Albanians have accepted Martti Ahtisaari’s proposal on Serbian Kosovo-Metohija status with difficulties and by making “painful compromises” are hypocritical, head of the Russian Office in Pristina Andrei Dronov told the Rosbalt news agency on Wednesday.

“As someone who speaks with them both officially and privately I can say that they were quite satisfied with the first version of Ahtisaari’s package,” Dronov said.

Kosovo-Metohija Serbs Live in Fear and Constant Danger

Speaking about the situation in Kosovo-Metohija province, Russian diplomat said that Serbs that were ethnically cleansed from the province were still not returning, because they do not have sufficient guarantees for their security.

“I have to say that they have all the reasons to feel insecure. Regardless of the official claims, the wave of ethnically motivated attacks has not subsided and Serbs really still do not have freedom of movement,” Dronov said and added that, for example, buses with Serbs going to cemeteries to visit the graves of their families were being attacked and explosive devices were planted on the railway tracks.

The head of the Russian Office in Pristina said that the other reason for the distrust of Serbs was the absence of results in the investigations into the March 2004 pogrom, since “they see that people who torched their houses and destroyed their churches remain unpunished.”

“They fear that the same can happen again, especially if the province is granted independence,” Dronov said and added that the latest report of UNMIK head Joachim Ruecker to the UN Security Council was supposed to “reflect the real situation in the province and realistic course of fulfillment of standards.”

“If at the UN Security Council only the view of one side in the conflict gets presented, the principles of objectivity are undermined and this is what Russia stood up against,” he said.

Revision of Borders Only Through Mutual Consent and Agreement of Both Sides

Dronov said that the other Contact Group members raise expectations of Kosovo Albanians through “unfounded support to the idea of independence,” which makes it nearly impossible for Albanians to accept any other position.

Stressing that the mood of Serbs in their southern province “is entirely pessimistic because, understandably, they do not want to lose their land, a territory which accounts for 15 percent of Serbian state, which is not merely a region, but the cradle of Serbian culture,” the Russian diplomat said that they were pressured from different sides and that, in view of the Western position, Russia was their only hope.

“Still, I believe that their hopes have slightly raised,” he said, adding that in the case of Serbian Kosovo province Russia does not defend the Serbian position, but the universal principles for the conflict settlement, as well as the principles of the world order, based on the UN Charter.

“The revision of border issues can be solved only through mutual consent and agreement. There is no other way, because if we impose a solution here, this means that it can be imposed anywhere,” said Dronov, stressing that this did not refer only to South Ossetia and Abkhasia, but also to a number of “painful spots in Europe.”

March 21, 2007

Winds of Change

President George W. Bush
Photo: White House by Eric Draper

Someone Gets It — The Most Important Someone

WASHINGTON, U.S.A, March 20, 2007 — In a memorandum to the Secretary of State, President Bush has authorized arming of Serbia.

According to the White House Press Release, President Bush has authorized “furnishing defense articles and defense services” to Serbia and Montenegro, with an aim to “strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace.”

Glad to see someone finally got it: weak Serbia with hands tied behind its back equals strong white al-Qaeda in the Balkans, marching onward and upward into the Western Europe and States.

“Pursuant to the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 503(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, and section 3(a)(1) of the Arms Export Control Act, as amended, I hereby find that the furnishing of defense articles and defense services to the Republic of Montenegro and the Republic of Serbia will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace,” says the George Bush memo to the Secretary of State.

Addressing the Secretary of State, President George Bush further orders that “You are authorized and directed to transmit this determination to the Congress and to arrange for the publication of this determination in the Federal Register.”

Special Units of Serbian Police Still At Work

This authorization to arm Serbia and Montenegro comes in the wake of the most alarming report by the foreign intelligence service about preparations for an all-out jihad in former Yugoslavia, focused primarily on Serbian Kosovo-Metohija province, Serbia proper, Montenegro and Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Between March 17 and 18, special anti-terrorist units of Serbian police have busted an al-Qaeda cell operating a training camp in Serbian region of Raska (Sandzak), arresting five members and seizing a cache of weapons and explosives transferred from Kosovo province for coordinated breakout of violence in Kosovo-Metohija and Serbia proper. The short-term goal of al-Qaeda cells infiltrated into Serbia proper during the last two months, according to the KFOR intelligence report, was to start unrest in Serbia proper at the same time jihad breaks in Kosovo-Metohija, thus keeping Serbian army away from Kosovo province where it could help the international troops against the planned Albanian Muslim attack. The KFOR intelligence report even claims that Albanian Kosovo jihadists decided to use chemical weapons against American troops stationed in Bondsteel base in Kosovo province and were expecting a shipment of nerve and paralytic gas for that purpose from the al-Qaeda cells entrenched in Serbia proper, near the administrative border with Kosovo province.

Serbian anti-terrorist units are still combing through the rough terrain of Ninija mountain, searching for other stashes of weapons and explosives and al-Qaeda members in hiding. According to Serbian reports, Ninija mountain is full of caves, away from populated area and can be crossed only on foot. The whole Raska/Sandzak region, mostly populated by Muslims, since Montenegro declared independence, is split between Serbia and Montenegro, so al-Qaeda cells operating in the region are moving between two states now. Serbian police suspects some jihadi members have moved to Montenegro and are hiding there, but combing Serbian part of Raska continues until every stone is turned, as testified by the Serbian Glas Javnosti reporter who went there two days ago.

Those “Nasty Serbs&