Will Bush Administration Recognize Jihad "State" in Europe?

The American Council for Kosovo
www.savekosovo.org
The American Council for Kosovo is an activity of Squire Sanders Public Advocacy, LLC, and Global Strategic Communications Group, which are registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as agents for the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija, under the spiritual guidance of His Grace, Bishop ARTEMIJE of Ras and Prizren. Additional information with respect to this matter is on file with the Foreign Agents Registration Unit of the Department of Justice in Washington DC.
Washington, November 20, 2007
Hashim "the Snake" Thaci Set to Take Power in Kosovo:
Culmination of Long Criminal and Terrorist Career
Will Bush Administration Recognize Jihad "State" in Europe?
Editorial Comment from the American Council for Kosovo - Take every thing you think you know about the stated U.S. policy of combating jihad terrorisn, organized crime rackets, trafficking in persons (i.e., sex slavery), the global drug trade, peddling weapons and explosives to terrorist groups, and so on. Now stand everything you think you know on its head - and picture the U.S. supporting all of these activities, not combating them. As incredible as it sounds, that describes in a nutshell American policy in Kosovo, which seeks to separate the province from Serbia and create a new terrorist and criminal statelet in Europe.
Nothing better illustrates that point than the apparent "election" victory of the "Democratic Party of Kosovo" (PDK), under the leadership of Hashim Thaci, who is expected to assume management of the UN-supervised Albanian Muslim administration. (The "elections," held on November 17, are just a sham to hide the fact that real power in Kosovo is held by men with guns, namely commanders of a terrorist organization, the so-called "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA), including Thaci. According to news reports, only 45 percent of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians took part, and of 40,000 Serbs in northern Kosovo, precisely five (5) persons voted in these farcical "elections," knowing their participation would be giving their consent to their own eradication.)
Let's take a closer look at the aspiring leader of a new independent state:
According to the German Bundesnachrichtendienst ("Federal Intelligence Service," BND), Thaci (also known by his criminal alias, "the Snake"), is one of three KLA kingpins who run the Albanian mafia rackets in Kosovo, meeting regularly in the Grand Hotel in Pristina, as reported in Berliner Zeitung. (According to the BND source, the other two are Agim Ceku, currently styled "prime minister" of the administration Thaci seeks to head, and Ramush Haradinaj, under Hague Tribunal indictment for war crimes.)
Thaci is also known for eliminating anyone who crosses his ambitions. According to a leader of another, relatively more moderate Kosovo Albanian party: "Cadavers have never been an obstacle to Thaci's career."
According to a 2003 report by the Serbian government (post-Milosevic), in 1995 Thaci, together with his KLA crony Haradinaj, met in the Albanian capital of Tirana with Osama bin Laden to plan the jihad in Kosovo. The Serbian government stands by the report, which relies on intelligence sources and methods. However, its plausibility is supported by Fatos Klosi, former head of the Albanian intelligence service SHIK, who says he saw bin Laden in Tirana, according to The Times of London.
In his capacity as a KLA chief, Thaci bears command responsibility for the deaths of 661 Christian Serbs and other non-Albanians in Kosovo, serious physical injury to 518 Serbs, and the abduction of 584 persons. Thaci is also responsible for the premeditated expulsion by the KLA of 250,000 Serbs, as well as 80,000 other non-Albanians (such a Roma (Gypsies), Gorani, Croats, Jews, and others), from Kosovo after the supposed end of hostilities in June 1999.
Finally, among the characteristic jihad terror practices of the KLA, under the command of Thaci and his colleagues Ceku and Haradinaj, is the beheading of victims, as seen in other countries with active jihad terror movements, such as Iraq, Indonesia, Israel, and Pakistan (American reporter Daniel Pearl), India (Kashmir), and Russia (Chechnya). Uniformed KLA terrorists - whose identities are known but who have never been brought to justice - have been photographed with the heads of their Christian Serb victims: WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING IMAGES. Equally horrifying is the account of the torture and beheading of a Christian Serbian Orthodox priest, Hieromonk Hariton (Lukic) in 1999, soon after the beginning of the international administration in Kosovo. Fr. Hariton's body was recovered but his head has not been found.
In short, Thaci is a walking microcosm of the black hole of crime, terror, and corruption that has taken shape in Kosovo under the nose of the UN- and NATO-led international administration since 1999. His "election" is little more than a pretense to put a "democratic" mask on what Condoleezza Rice's State Department would like to achieve: the illegal separation of Kosovo from Serbia and the installation of Thaci and his associates as the de jure government of a new sovereign state.
Thaci has vowed that Kosovo will declare independence soon after the December 10 expiration of the mandate of the current U.S./EU/Russia "Troika" mediating talks between Belgrade and the Kosovo Albanians. Of course, the Albanians have no incentive to negotiate in good faith because Washington has threatened to recognize them if there is no agreement and they declare independence.
But threatening and acting are two different things. It's hard to believe any responsible American official would move forward on such an ill-advised course, given the virtual certainty of violence in Kosovo and destabilization of nearby areas, presenting our European allies with an impossible dilemma that would shatter any attempt to maintain a unified EU policy, and a needless confrontation with Russia when front-burner issues like Iran and North Korea - and now add Pakistan - loom.
Then again, having supported the KLA this far, Foggy Bottom, and maybe even the Bush White House, where "the buck stops," may feel there is no other choice but to continue down the same path. If that turns out to be so, it will resolve nothing about Kosovo's status. But it would mean that Washington policymakers had managed to paint themselves into a corner where they became hostage to the whim of "the Snake" and his terrorist and criminal associates. Let us hope that is not the case, and someone, somewhere in the Bush Administration finally notices that this is a policy in desperate need of some adult supervision.
James George Jatras
Director, American Council for Kosovo
Other news worthy of note:
1. In November 19, 2007 International Herald Tribune article, "Don't go it alone, EU warns Kosovo," Dan Bilefsky wrote: European Union foreign ministers Monday warned Kosovo against unilaterally declaring its independence, cautioning that such a move threatened to spur secessionist movements in Europe and to plunge the Balkans into crisis. Hashim Thaci, the former Kosovo Liberation Army warrior-turned-politician, said over the weekend that Pristina would declare independence immediately after a Dec. 10 deadline. Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo claimed victory in parliamentary elections Saturday, and he is expected to become the province's next prime minister. But the EU, whose 27 member governments remain divided over the province's future, is urging Pristina to proceed with caution, fearing that a unilateral declaration would cause the Serbian minority in Kosovo - who largely boycotted the elections Saturday - to align with Belgrade. They also fear that a declaration of independence by Kosovo would prompt the Serb half of Bosnia and Herzegovina, currently embroiled in a political crisis, to push for statehood. "We need a soft landing on this issue, or we'll have a hard crash," said Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister.
2. In a November 19, 2007 FrontPage Magazine article, "Platform for a Terrorist," Julia Gorin wrote: Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article on Kosovo's impending unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. The piece attested to the inevitability and rightness of this independence. It was also penned by a terrorist. Specifically, by the "former" terrorist and current "prime minister" of the province, Agim Ceku. If Hamas were threatening to declare unilateral Palestinian statehood, would The Journal print an unopposed perspective from the leader of Hamas, or of Hezbollah, for that matter? To give readers a sense of who Agim Ceku is, he was such a Serb-hunting enthusiast that when the early, Croatian leg of the Balkan wars kicked off, he volunteered to become a colonel in the Croatian Army, leading the 1993 offensive on a Serbian village in Croatia named Medak. As Canadian military journalist Scott Taylor wrote: It was here that the men of the 2nd Battalion of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry came face to face with the savagery of which [Agim] Ceku was capable. Over 200 Serbian inhabitants of the Medak Pocket were slaughtered in a grotesque manner (the bodies of female rape victims were found after being burned alive). Our traumatized troops who buried the grisly remains were encouraged to collect evidence and were assured that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. Nevertheless in 1995, Ceku, by then trained by U.S. instructors as a general of artillery, was still at large. In fact, he was the officer responsible for shelling the Serbian refugee columns and for targeting the UN-declared "safe" city of Knin during the Croatian offensive known as Operation Storm. Some 500 innocent civilians perished in those merciless barrages, and senior Canadian officers who witnessed the slaughter demanded that Ceku be indicted. Once again, their pleas fell on deaf ears. "Throughout the [1999] air campaign against Yugoslavia," continues Taylor, Ceku--by then commanding KLA terrorists in driving two-thirds of Kosovo's remaining Christian Serbs out along with other non-Albanians--"was portrayed as a loyal ally and he was frequently present at NATO briefings with top generals such as Wesley Clark and Michael Jackson." The Canadian soldiers today suffer physical maladies from the suppression and denial of what they witnessed, and they await justice for Ceku, which the U.S. actively intervenes to prevent every time a move is made in that direction. That this monster is now given a platform in the pages of the Wall Street Journal only adds insult to their injury. Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a "jihad" in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan. Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with "freedom fighter" Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists. The Wall Street Journal has defaulted to the Bush administration's policy on Kosovo, the Bush administration itself having defaulted to the Clinton administration's policy, being too distracted with bigger battles to bother changing course in the Balkans--even after 9/11 supposedly taught us a few things. And so here we are, with a now institutionalized terror-friendly policy in Kosovo.Until we start viewing terrorism against Serbs as terrorism, we will continue to be co-targets of the Serbs' enemies. When we betray our Christian kin, just as when we betray our Israeli kin, in a fanatical but futile attempt to win favor with an incompatible society, we put ourselves at risk.
3. In a November 19, 2007 VOA News article, "EU Opposes Independence Plans by Kosovo's Election Winner," Stefan Bos wrote: The European Union is urging former Kosovo guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, who appears to have won Saturday's election as prime minister, to hold back on any unilateral declaration of independence for the Serbian province. European Foreign Ministers made the appeal Monday at a meeting in Brussels, after Thaci promised ethnic Albanian supporters he would be the prime minister of an independent Kosovo. Stefan Bos reports for VOA from Budapest. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt says a hasty move to declare independence from Serbia will further isolate Kosovo, and jeopardize international support. "Kosovo is already de facto independent from Serbia," he said. "I don't think Kosovo wants to be independent from the international community. They want to be defended, protected by NATO. They want to be supported in every other way by the European Union. I don't think he should make them independent from the international community."
4. In a November 19, 2007 article, "EU Faces Embarrassing Split Over Kosovo Independence," DW-WORLD.DE reported: EU foreign ministers on Monday appeared resigned to an embarrassing split over an independent Kosovo after diplomatic efforts to find a negotiated settlement with Serbia moved closer to failure. The ministers' meeting in Brussels came just hours after Hashim Thaci, a former Kosovar guerilla leader, reiterated calls for a split from Belgrade after winning Saturday's elections in the Serbian breakaway province... Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia have all expressed reservations over the move, fearing that an independent Kosovo could inspire other minorities in their own territories to do the same... Lack of unity over Kosovo would deal a serious blow to the EU's ambitions of forging a common foreign policy on the most pressing issues facing the bloc.

5. In a November 20, 2007 article, "Kosovo's relentless push for independence stokes fears of a domino effect," Associated Press reported: With no deal in sight, there are fears that Kosovo may declare independence unilaterally. Some observers warn that the breakaway province could become the first domino to fall - triggering a chain reaction of potentially violent secession across the Balkans and beyond. "There is a risk that the situation will destabilize" and unleash a flurry of other independence declarations in the Serb half of Bosnia or ethnic Albanian-dominated northern Macedonia, said Alex Anderson, Kosovo project director for the International Crisis Group. U.S. and European hesitancy over how best to handle the relentless drive for statehood by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority "has begun to loosen some of the foundations of the current state order in the western Balkans," Anderson said Tuesday. "The patching together of states and protectorates that we've had since the end of the wars of the 1990s could come undone," he said.


1. Don't go it alone, EU warns Kosovo
By Dan Bilefsky
International Herald Tribune - November 19, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/19/europe/kosovo.php
BRUSSELS: European Union foreign ministers Monday warned Kosovo against unilaterally declaring its independence, cautioning that such a move threatened to spur secessionist movements in Europe and to plunge the Balkans into crisis.
Hashim Thaci, the former Kosovo Liberation Army warrior-turned-politician, said over the weekend that Pristina would declare independence immediately after a Dec. 10 deadline. Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo claimed victory in parliamentary elections Saturday, and he is expected to become the province's next prime minister.
But the EU, whose 27 member governments remain divided over the province's future, is urging Pristina to proceed with caution, fearing that a unilateral declaration would cause the Serbian minority in Kosovo - who largely boycotted the elections Saturday - to align with Belgrade. They also fear that a declaration of independence by Kosovo would prompt the Serb half of Bosnia and Herzegovina, currently embroiled in a political crisis, to push for statehood.
"We need a soft landing on this issue, or we'll have a hard crash," said Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister.
Serbia, which is vehemently opposed to independence for Kosovo, has offered the province broad autonomy, but Pristina does not want any agreement that falls short of full independence. The future of Kosovo has become a test case for EU foreign policy, for its relations with Moscow and Washington and for its ability to prevent ethnic strife from once again erupting in its own backyard.
EU diplomats close to the negotiations privately conceded that a declaration of independence from Kosovo was all but inevitable. But they said that they were pressing Pristina to ensure that such a declaration was coordinated with Brussels and Washington to prevent a political vacuum that could allow violence on both sides to erupt.
"We are doing all we can to persuade the Kosovars not to make a unilateral declaration," said Jean Asselborn, foreign minister of Luxembourg. "A unilateral declaration would be quite, quite bad. There's a certain explosiveness in this region."
Wolfgang Ischinger, the German diplomat mediating negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, alongside Moscow and Washington, is to meet Serbian and ethnic Albanian leaders in Brussels on Tuesday. He said Monday that the mediators were determined to exhaust all the options, and he did not foresee negotiations continuing after a December deadline was reached.
One consideration is to offer both sides a so-called "status-neutral" agreement that would outline relations such as trade and border control between Belgrade and Pristina, without broaching the issue of independence. The rationale is that such an agreement would lock the two parties into a framework, thereby helping to foster stability on both sides.
But EU officials said they doubted that such an agreement would be accepted by Belgrade unless the EU agreed not to recognize unilateral independence for Kosovo.
Separately, the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said Monday that he hoped to meet with Iranian nuclear negotiators this week. He emphasized that new sanctions against Iran were being considered at the United Nations and that time for Tehran to cooperate was running out.
2. Platform for a Terrorist
By Julia Gorin
FrontPage Magazine - November 19, 2007
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=274866B0-EF16-4EF7-AD42-04649E560BD7
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article on Kosovo's impending unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. The piece attested to the inevitability and rightness of this independence. It was also penned by a terrorist. Specifically, by the "former" terrorist and current "prime minister" of the province, Agim Ceku.If Hamas were threatening to declare unilateral Palestinian statehood, would The Journal print an unopposed perspective from the leader of Hamas, or of Hezbollah, for that matter?To give readers a sense of who Agim Ceku is, he was such a Serb-hunting enthusiast that when the early, Croatian leg of the Balkan wars kicked off, he volunteered to become a colonel in the Croatian Army, leading the 1993 offensive on a Serbian village in Croatia named Medak. As Canadian military journalist Scott Taylor wrote:
It was here that the men of the 2nd Battalion of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry came face to face with the savagery of which [Agim] Ceku was capable. Over 200 Serbian inhabitants of the Medak Pocket were slaughtered in a grotesque manner (the bodies of female rape victims were found after being burned alive). Our traumatized troops who buried the grisly remains were encouraged to collect evidence and were assured that the perpetrators would be brought to justice.
Nevertheless in 1995, Ceku, by then trained by U.S. instructors as a general of artillery, was still at large. In fact, he was the officer responsible for shelling the Serbian refugee columns and for targeting the UN-declared "safe" city of Knin during the Croatian offensive known as Operation Storm. Some 500 innocent civilians perished in those merciless barrages, and senior Canadian officers who witnessed the slaughter demanded that Ceku be indicted. Once again, their pleas fell on deaf ears.
"Throughout the [1999] air campaign against Yugoslavia," continues Taylor, Ceku--by then commanding KLA terrorists in driving two-thirds of Kosovo's remaining Christian Serbs out along with other non-Albanians--"was portrayed as a loyal ally and he was frequently present at NATO briefings with top generals such as Wesley Clark and Michael Jackson."
The Canadian soldiers today suffer physical maladies from the suppression and denial of what they witnessed, and they await justice for Ceku, which the U.S. actively intervenes to prevent every time a move is made in that direction. That this monster is now given a platform in the pages of the Wall Street Journal only adds insult to their injury.
Chris Deliso's new book The Coming Balkan Caliphate offers a window into how Ceku operates with Kosovo's Western champions and benefactors:
Embarrassingly for Ceku, two of his KPC (Kosovo Protection Corps) men were involved in an ANA (Albanian National Army) bridge bombing attempt on April 12, 2003, near the northern Kosovo town of Zvecin. For the stated goal of making Kosovo a multiethnic society based on rule of law, having members of the civil police moonlighting as terrorists was not auspicious.
[UN Mission in Kosovo Chief] Harri Holkeri, had infuriated Agim Ceku on December 3 [2004] by ordering the suspension of [the] two KPC generals.over the April bridge bombing debacle. Ceku darkly intoned that "this decision is unacceptable for us."
In writing about the March, 2004 riots throughout Kosovo by the majority-Muslim Albanians -- riots that injured a thousand people and killed over 30 including six NATO troops, according to UN officials in Kosovo -- Deliso mentions that:
Most embarrassing for the UNMIK authorities, Agim Ceku's KPC officers actively aided the mobs. The suspicious complicity of leading Kosovo Albanian politicians and KPC commanders was attested to by other internationals, such as the Greek policeman who pondered, "Why did [Hasim] Thaci and [Agim] Ceku not say 'stop' until three days into the riots?.And why, once they did say 'stop,' did everything suddenly stop?"A former German soldier in Kosovo explains that."the Albanians put women and children in front of our barracks as 'human shields' so that our vehicles couldn't get out."While the March 2004 riots were seemingly fueled only by ethnic hatred and general frustrations, evidence indicated an Islamist dimension to the violence. The Albanian Muslim rioters did everything from slashing the throats of Serbian farmers' pigs.to the dynamiting, burning, or vandalizing of 35 churches.. videotapes glorifying the destruction of such Christian monuments were soon being circulated throughout radical Islamic mosques in Western Europe, for the purpose of jihad fundraising.The wiretapped conversations between the jihadi leaders had eerie similarities with those captured by the FBI before 9/11: "It was said, for example, that 'in two or three weeks the party will begin' and that 'in Prizren everything is prepared for a hot party;' then it was asked whether the interlocutor 'can guarantee it will be a blast in Urosevac?'"
These are just a handful of the countless, uncomfortable Balkan truths that are out there, but one is hard-pressed to find any mention of them in mainstream American news outlets. One Balkan truth that did make it past the censors was the May arrest of four Albanian Muslims plotting to massacre American soldiers at Fort Dix-but The Journal's editorial and opinion pages ignored this major news story.In his Journal article, Ceku speaks of cooperating with Serbia in fighting "organized crime." This comes from the head of a "state" founded on organized crime. Ceku and other Kosovo leaders hold regular meetings to manage their criminal rackets at Pristina's Grand Hotel, according to German intelligence (BND).
Ceku also gives the usual spiel that independence is "inevitable" and can't be delayed. Why is that so? He doesn't say. Perhaps it's for the same reason that a Hungarian member of the EU parliament bluntly said, "Because we're afraid of them," when asked why the U.S. and EU are giving the Kosovo Albanians what they want unconditionally.
Ceku refers to suffering of "all the people of Kosovo in the 1990s", the oft-used justification for Kosovo to never again be ruled from Belgrade. What many people suffered from-Albanians and Serbs alike-were ceaseless attacks by the KLA even during ceasefires and pullouts by the Serbs as per Western-mediated agreements. And why are sufferings in the 1990s-which the KLA fomented with a terrorist insurgency-more relevant than the "peacetime" suffering post-1999?
Ceku also speaks of "guarantees for 'minority' citizens." Based on post-1999 life in Kosovo for non-Albanians, why should anyone believe those guarantees? If Ceku and his cronies were not the violent criminal types that they are, why would Serbs need guarantees? Do other democratic states in Europe (including Serbia) need guarantees for minorities enforced by outside powers, or are they simply expected to behave according to civilized standards--which Ceku and Co. have shown themselves incapable of?
One is reminded of something that was said of the writer and communist fellow traveler, Lillian Hellman: You can't believe a word she says. Not even "the" or "and."It is curious that the Journal would agree to publish a commentary by a KLA leader, especially when one considers that the paper's European edition ran the following piece two months after September 11, 2001:
For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part.
By 1994, major Balkan terrorist training camps included Zenica, and Malisevo and Mitrovica in Kosovo.In Albania, the main training camp included even the property of former Albanian premier Sali Berisha in Tropje, Albania, who was then very close to the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Islamist infiltration of the Kosovo Liberation Army advanced, meanwhile. Bin Laden is said to have visited Albania in 1996 and 1997, according to the murder-trial testimony of an Algerian-born French national, Claude Kader, himself an Afghanistan-trained mujahideen fronting at the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank. He recruited some Albanians to fight with the KLA in Kosovo, according to the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues.
Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a "jihad" in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan. Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with "freedom fighter" Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists.
The Wall Street Journal has defaulted to the Bush administration's policy on Kosovo, the Bush administration itself having defaulted to the Clinton administration's policy, being too distracted with bigger battles to bother changing course in the Balkans--even after 9/11 supposedly taught us a few things. And so here we are, with a now institutionalized terror-friendly policy in Kosovo.
Until we start viewing terrorism against Serbs as terrorism, we will continue to be co-targets of the Serbs' enemies. When we betray our Christian kin, just as when we betray our Israeli kin, in a fanatical but futile attempt to win favor with an incompatible society, we put ourselves at risk.

3. EU Opposes Independence Plans by Kosovo's Election Winner
By Stefan Bos
VOA News - November 19, 2007
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-11-19-voa52.cfm
The European Union is urging former Kosovo guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, who appears to have won Saturday's election as prime minister, to hold back on any unilateral declaration of independence for the Serbian province. European Foreign Ministers made the appeal Monday at a meeting in Brussels, after Thaci promised ethnic Albanian supporters he would be the prime minister of an independent Kosovo. Stefan Bos reports for VOA from Budapest.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt says a hasty move to declare independence from Serbia will further isolate Kosovo, and jeopardize international support.
"Kosovo is already de facto independent from Serbia," he said. "I don't think Kosovo wants to be independent from the international community. They want to be defended, protected by NATO. They want to be supported in every other way by the European Union. I don't think he should make them independent from the international community."
Internationally supervised negotiations with Belgrade on the future status of Kosovo are scheduled to end on December 10. After his Democratic Party of Kosovo took the early lead in Saturday's elections, Hashim Thaci said he would declare Kosovo independent, in his words, "immediately" after the negotiations end.
Speaking to supporters in comments aired by the France24 television network, Thaci made clear he wants to be the prime minister of an independent Kosovo.
"Kosovo has gone one step further on the road to independence from Serbia," he said. "Today the citizens send a message to the world to say: "We are a democratic country, and we are ready to take our country towards the European Union."
Saturday's elections in Kosovo came ahead of another round of negotiations starting in Brussels on Tuesday between Serbs and ethnic Albanians on the province's future status. The talks are being facilitated by an international troika comprising the European Union, Russia and the United States.
4. EU Faces Embarrassing Split Over Kosovo Independence
DW-WORLD.DE - November 19, 2007
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2934485,00.html
EU foreign ministers on Monday appeared resigned to an embarrassing split over an independent Kosovo after diplomatic efforts to find a negotiated settlement with Serbia moved closer to failure.
The ministers' meeting in Brussels came just hours after Hashim Thaci, a former Kosovar guerilla leader, reiterated calls for a split from Belgrade after winning Saturday's elections in the Serbian breakaway province.
All but a handful of the EU's 27 member states are ready to recognize supervised independence for Kosovo, a predominantly ethnic-Albanian province of around 2 million people.
Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia have all expressed reservations over the move, fearing that an independent Kosovo could inspire other minorities in their own territories to do the same.
And with a United Nations December 10 deadline for concluding diplomatic efforts looming, efforts to find a united EU front are rapidly running out of time.
Kosovo threatens EU common foreign policy aim
Lack of unity over Kosovo would deal a serious blow to the EU's ambitions of forging a common foreign policy on the most pressing issues facing the bloc.
"A substantial majority (of EU countries) want to recognize (an independent) Kosovo ... certainly well above 20, but we haven't got to 27 yet," said Britain's Minister of State for Europe, Jim Murphy.
But Murphy then stressed that individual EU states, not the EU as a whole, were ultimately responsible for recognizing an independent Kosovo. "And (ministers) have made it clear that they will make their own assessment," he added.
Kosovo independence is strongly opposed by Serbia, which enjoys the support of Russia in the UN Security Council.
A troika of EU, US and Russian mediators, led by German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, has been given until December 10 to find an agreement between the two sides.
Troika leader admits agreement unlikely
But Ischinger, speaking a day before another round of troika talks was due to be held in Brussels, admitted his efforts were unlikely to succeed. "We have explored almost every humanly known option for squaring the circle of the Kosovo status issue," Ischinger said.
"The troika process, even if it were terminated today, has not been window dressing. It was a genuine and intense negotiating process," he added.
In an interview published Monday by Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) leader Thaci said that while he would respect the December 10 deadline, he did not expect "a compromise between Kosovo and Serbia."
Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999, when NATO bombing raids drove Serbian troops out of the province. NATO has since been leading a peacekeeping operation in the area, and its KFOR mission currently totals about 16,000 troops.
EU presidency to pursue all avenues
Speaking at the end of Monday's meeting in Brussels, Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said ministers would continue to pursue "all the possibilities to have a common position."
But German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, while insisting that "a negotiated and agreed solution" to Kosovo's status would also be good for Russia, admitted that his country was already getting prepared for "possible alternatives."
And Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik said it was time EU ministers began giving serious thought to "the possibility that there will be no agreement" come December 10.
5. Kosovo's relentless push for independence stokes fears of a domino effect
Associated Press - November 20, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/20/europe/EU-GEN-Kosovo-Domino-Effect.php
Faik Krasniqi epitomizes the frustration sweeping Kosovo: He wants independence from Serbia, and he wants it now.
"People here have waited for very long - much longer than they deserve," said Krasniqi, a 50-year-old power plant worker. "After Dec. 10, they must decide for themselves."
Suspense is building with the approach of Dec. 10, the deadline for international mediators to report back to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on their faltering efforts to negotiate a settlement.
With no deal in sight, there are fears that Kosovo may declare independence unilaterally. Some observers warn that the breakaway province could become the first domino to fall - triggering a chain reaction of potentially violent secession across the Balkans and beyond.
"There is a risk that the situation will destabilize" and unleash a flurry of other independence declarations in the Serb half of Bosnia or ethnic Albanian-dominated northern Macedonia, said Alex Anderson, Kosovo project director for the International Crisis Group.
U.S. and European hesitancy over how best to handle the relentless drive for statehood by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority "has begun to loosen some of the foundations of the current state order in the western Balkans," Anderson said Tuesday.
"The patching together of states and protectorates that we've had since the end of the wars of the 1990s could come undone," he said.
Complicating matters is U.S. and Russia disagreement over the region.
The U.S. has said it is committed to recognizing Kosovo's independence. But Russia, a Serbian ally, has threatened to veto any proposal that gives the province statehood, arguing that it would set a dangerous precedent for separatists in parts of the former Soviet Union and worldwide.
Few expect more violence on a scale to rival the conflicts that bloodied the former Yugoslavia more than a decade ago. Bosnia's 1992-95 war alone killed 100,000 people and drove another 1.6 million from their homes.
But thinly veiled threats by Serbian nationalists, and the ominous resurfacing of an outlawed band of ski-masked Kosovo Albanian paramilitaries, have put NATO's 16,000-member peacekeeping force on guard.
Although Kosovo remains formally part of Serbia, it has been run by the U.N. and NATO since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
Kosovo's Albanians demand full independence; Serbs insist the province must remain part of Serbian territory.
Braca Grubacic, a leading political analyst in Belgrade, doubts there will be large-scale violence if Kosovo unilaterally declares itself an independent state.
"I don't see the Serbian army and police going down there. No one in Serbia will allow war," Grubacic said.
"But I do not exclude isolated incidents, and I do not exclude that Serbs will be ready to defend northern Kosovo," where most of the province's beleaguered 100,000-strong Serbian minority live, he added.
EU foreign ministers, eager to avoid the specter of renewed unrest on their doorstep, have urged Kosovo's likely next prime minister - former rebel leader Hashim Thaci - to refrain from any unilateral independence declarations right after Dec. 10.
During weekend elections that his party won, Thaci vowed to swiftly declare a post-Dec. 10 split from Serbia. He since has backed off of that threat and has pledged to coordinate any move with the U.S. and Europe.
Talks between the rival sides, mediated by the so-called "troika" of the U.S., EU and Russia, remain deadlocked over the central question of whether Kosovo should gain independence.
The latest session Tuesday in Brussels, Belgium, was no exception: Neither side would budge.
"No one can fool us or impose upon us anything less than independence," said Kosovo's current premier, Agim Ceku. "We are getting close to the independence of our country, and there is no going back on this issue."
Although the two sides will meet again one last time in Vienna, Austria, next week, the prospects of a breakthrough appear increasingly slim.
Rather than declare statehood immediately after Dec. 10, Thaci instead could opt to announce a date - perhaps for sometime in late winter or early spring - that would be the province's "Independence Day" and serve as the ultimate deadline.
"They may be well-advised to do that," said the ICG's Anderson. "It would remove the day-to-day pressure for independence and could even help focus the EU."
The 27-member bloc is divided over whether Kosovo should gain independence, particularly if it makes a play for nationhood without U.N. approval. Spain, Greece and Cyprus all have separatist movements and fear Kosovo could set a dangerous precedent.
Even part of Kosovo itself - a province roughly the size of Belgium or Connecticut - could break away if its minority Serbs decide to join with Serbia.
"There is EU nervousness about the whole situation," Anderson said.
And there are concerns that stretch well beyond the Balkans.
Critics contend that if Kosovo is allowed to circumvent the U.N., there will be no moral or legal grounds to keep separatists in Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions - or others as far afield as Kashmir and Quebec - from following suit.
"This is the ace up the Serbs' sleeves," said Grubacic, the Serbian political analyst. "It's not that Kosovo is so important to the world. But it could create political turbulence in a wider sense."
Ordinary Kosovars don't much care, so long as their long wait is near an end.
"There have been too many delays," said Avni Kepuska, 72, an ethnic Albanian lawyer and author. "We can wait a week or two. But certainly not until spring."