31 January 2008

Warning Light On Kosovo

January 31, 2008 Source: Washington Times


By John Bolton, Lawrence Eagleburger and Peter Rodman -


The Bush administration has indicated its readiness to recognize a unilateral declaration of independence by ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, a province of the Republic of Serbia that since 1999 has been under United Nations administration and NATO military control.
Such a declaration may take place as early as February. American recognition would be over Serbia's objections, without a negotiated solution between Serbia and Kosovo's Albanians, and without modification by the United Nations Security Council of Resolution 1244, which reaffirms Serbian sovereignty in Kosovo while providing for the province's "substantial autonomy." U.S. recognition may be joined by that of some members of the European Union, which has been under heavy diplomatic pressure from Washington, though several EU states and a number of countries outside Europe have said they would reject such action.
Attempting to impose a settlement on Serbia would be a direct challenge to the Russian Federation, which opposes any Kosovo settlement not accepted by Belgrade.
We believe an imposed settlement of the Kosovo question and seeking to partition Serbia's sovereign territory without its consent is not in the interest of the United States. The blithe assumption of American policy - that the mere passage of nine years of relative quiet would be enough to lull Serbia and Russia into reversing their positions on a conflict that goes back centuries - has proven to be naive in the extreme.
We believe U.S. policy on Kosovo must be re-examined without delay, and we urge the Bush administration to make it clear that pending the results of such re-examination it would withhold recognition of a Kosovo independence declaration and discourage Kosovo's Albanians from taking that step.
Current U.S. policy relies on the unconvincing claim that Kosovo is "unique" and would set no precedent for other troublespots. Of course every conflict has unique characteristics. However, ethnic and religious minorities in other countries already are signaling their intention to follow a Kosovo example. This includes sizeable Albanian communities in adjoining areas of southern Serbia, Montenegro, and especially the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as well as the Serbian portion of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Recognition of Kosovo's independence without Serbia's consent would set a precedent with far-reaching and unpredictable consequences for many other regions of the world. The Kosovo model already has been cited by supporters of the Basque separatist movement in Spain and the Turkish-controlled area of northern Cyprus. Neither the Security Council nor any other international body has the power or authority to impose a change of any country's borders.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the current policy is the dismissive attitude displayed toward Russia's objections. Whatever disagreements the United States may have with Moscow on other issues, and there are many, the United States should not prompt an unnecessary crisis in U.S.-Russia relations. There are urgent matters regarding which the United States must work with Russia, including Iran's nuclear intentions and North Korea's nuclear capability. Such cooperation would be undercut by American action to neutralize Moscow's legitimate concerns regarding Kosovo.
If the U.S. moves forward with recognizing Kosovo, Moscow's passivity cannot be taken for granted. It may have been one thing in 1999 for the United States and NATO to take action against Yugoslavia over the objections of a weak Russia.
Today, it would be unwise to dismiss Russia's willingness and ability to assist Serbia. On an issue of minor importance to the United States, is this a useful expenditure of significant political capital with Russia?
Our Kosovo policy is hardly less problematic for our friends and allies in Europe. While some European countries, notably members of the EU, may feel themselves obligated to join us in recognizing Kosovo's independence, a number of those countries would do so reluctantly because of Washington's inflexibility and insistence. No more than the United States, Europe would not benefit from an avoidable confrontation with Russia.
Even if Kosovo declared itself an independent state, it would be a dysfunctional one and a ward of the international community for the indefinite future. Corruption and organized crime are rampant. The economy, aside from international largesse and criminal activities, is nonviable. Law enforcement, integrity of the courts, protection of persons and property, and other prerequisites for statehood are practically nonexistent. While these failures are often blamed on Kosovo's uncertain status, a unilateral declaration of independence recognized by some countries and rejected by many others would hardly remedy that fact.
The result would be a new "frozen conflict," with Kosovo's status still unresolved. The risk of renewed violence would further impede Kosovo's development. Moreover, heightened tensions might require reinforcing the U.S. presence in Kosovo when we can least afford it due to other commitments.
Serbia has made great strides in democratic development and economic revitalization since the fall of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. Current policy with respect to Kosovo risks complete reversal of these gains. Faced with a choice between Western partnership and defense of their sovereign territory and constitution, there is little doubt what Serbia would decide.
The current positive trend could falter in the face of political radicalization and possible internal destabilization. Serbia's relations with countries that had recognized Kosovo would be impaired. Serbia would inevitably move closer to Russia as its only protector.
We do not underestimate the difficulty and complexity of the Kosovo question nor do we suggest the status quo can endure indefinitely. As with thorny questions elsewhere, viable and enduring settlements should result from negotiation and compromise. Such an outcome has been undermined by a U.S. promise to the Kosovo Albanians that their demands will be satisfied if they remain adamant and no agreement is reached with Belgrade. Such a promise cannot be justified by the claim, often heard from proponents of independence, that the Albanians' "patience" is running out, so independence must be granted without delay. This is nothing less than appeasing a threat of violence.
A reassessment of America's Kosovo policy is long overdue. We hope a policy that would set a very dangerous international precedent can still be averted if that reassessment begins now. In the meantime, it is imperative that no unwarranted or hasty action be taken that would turn what is now a relatively small problem into a large one.
John Bolton is former permanent U.S. representative to the United Nations. Lawrence Eagleburger is former U.S. secretary of state. Peter Rodman is former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.

30 January 2008

Open Letter To KOCE Public Broadcasting Station in California

January 28, 2008
An Open LetterPublished in The American Srbobranand on Serbian websites
Ms. Brenda BrkusicChannel ManagerKOCE-TV17011 Beach Blvd, Suite 1550Huntington Beach, CA 92647

Dear Ms. Brkusic:
Two days before you aired Freedom From Despair, I called KOCE to lodge a complaint. When I asked to whom I should direct my views you said I should give them to you. When I asked your name I discovered you were not only the producer of this film, you were also the station manager. This was like a fox guarding the hen house. I will be lucky if my correspondence makes it to the nearest round file—that is why I have prepared an ‘open letter’ to be published in the Serbian press, placed on Serbian websites, distributed to PBS executives and sent to members of the U.S. House and Senate.

You assured me in our telephone conversation that I “had nothing to be worried about,” because, as you asserted, “your documentary was about your father and his escape from communist Yugoslavia.” That remark was as transparent as glass once I watched the program. Your film was shameless bigoted propaganda. How outrageous that KOCE, a member of PBS, would provide a platform for racism, disinformation, ethnic slander and historical revisionism. This makes a mockery of tax-supported broadcasting.

Your program began with the assertion that, “700 Roman Catholic priests were murdered by the Communist.” Yet you cleverly omitted the fact that in 1945 some 740 Roman priests fled through the “Vatican Ratline” for Argentina. These were war criminal priests who joined the Ustashe and murdered tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies with their own hands and escaped justice—their crimes make the current crop of pedophile Catholic priests pale in comparison.

In 1941, Fr. Ivan Raguz was only one of dozens of Catholic priests who yelled from the pulpit: “Kill all Serbs and Jews, including children, so that not even the seeds of the beast are left.” This was the very foundation, the pretext and the horror of Jasenovac, a sick mentality that exists today in Croatia.

You also omitted any reference that Croatian Nazi collaborators (the overwhelming majority of the population), created the Jasenovac Concentration Camp system, one of the largest camps during the Holocaust, where Croats put to death an estimated 700,000 Serbs, 30,000 Jews and 70,000 Roma gypsies. They also put to death 60 rabbis. You can run from historical accuracy Ms. Brkusic, but you can’t hide! Not a single Croatian war criminal was brought to justice at Nuremberg or since the Holocaust.

“If you cannot kill a Serb or a Jew, you are an enemy of the Croatian State,” were the words uttered by Andrija Artukovic, Minister of the Interior, Independent State of Croatia, 1941. This is the same war criminal who escaped justice by entering the United States dressed as a Roman Catholic priest with a false passport—he remained in the U.S. on a tourist visa for over 3 decades, protected by Catholic circles including Mrs. Dorothy Chandler who owned the Los Angeles Times.
Artukovic was finally extradited in 1986 to stand trial, not for Genocide of a half million Serbs, but for a lesser crime, killing his driver. He was found guilty and died in jail. At his extradition trial, Cardinal Manning of Los Angeles called Artukovic, “A great good man.” That ‘great good man’ put to death hundreds of thousands of people. Michael McAdams in your film testified in Artukovic’s behalf as well—I remember that hearing, I was sitting in the courtroom and the unused jury box was filled with Catholic priests.

I remind you of the words of one of the 87 survivors of Jasenovac, a Croat by the name of Antun Miletich, from his book Concentration Camp Jasenovac, 1941-45. Belgrade, 1986, pg.7:

“There is not a pen capable of describing the horror and terror of the atmosphere at Jasenovac. It surpasses any human fantasy. Imagine Hell, the Inquisition, a terror more dreadful than any that ever before existed anywhere, run by bloodthirsty wild animals whose most hidden and disgusting instincts had come to the surface in a way never before seen in human beings—and still, you have not said enough.”

The Croatian Commission on November 15, 1945 said the following: “…The exact number of victims swallowed by the camp of Jasenovac will never be established, but that on the basis of investigation led by the Commission, it can be concluded that the number of around 500,000 to 600,000 conforms to reality.”

You spout the Nazi party line Ms. Burksic, just like President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia who was quoted in the Jerusalem Post in 1991 as saying: “I am a doubly lucky man, my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew,” and boasted in 1992: “only about 80,000 Serbs were put to death at Jasenovac.” Most Croats in the U.S. repeat this stupid remark as though liquidating 80,000 people is a proud accomplishment, considering that most of their victims were defenseless women and children.

Your presentation about “Goli Otok,” (The Naked Island) was pure revisionism. That island was used for political prisoners who were hard-liner pro-Soviet or anti-Tito communists—so, if you had a relative on Goli Otok he must have been one or the other. However, most of the prisoners on Goli Otok were Serbs from Lika and Montenegrins and only a few hundred Croats. Your presentation was deliberately misleading. And who cares if Tito spoke a strange dialect? He was a miserable Croatian bastard, and it must eat away at you at not being able to blame this monster on Serbian ethnicity.

One of the best Washington testimonies I found in doing research for my 1991 book, Serbian Genocide 1941-45, (co-written with David Martin and Michael Lees), was by Senator Herbert H. Lehman, New York, October 20, 1951: “For centuries the Serbian people have stood in the Balkans as the bulwark of Christian civilization against invaders and oppressors. As a consequence of their stand, great losses have been inflicted on them in the course of centuries… Genocide in its worst and most destructive form, however, was inflicted upon the Serbs in 1941-45 by the members of the Croatian Fascist movement, the Ustasha. The massacres carried out in the Serbian Orthodox Church in Glina, 1941, belong undoubtedly, to the darkest chapters of human depravity in modern times.”

The Ustashe converted over 500,000 Serbian Orthodox to Catholicism. Those Serbs believe this would save their lives—but it only accelerated their demise as the Nazis were able to discover who the Serbs were among them. On August 21, 1941 in the Serbian church in Glina 1,030 gather for what they believed was yet another forced ‘conversion’ to Catholicism. A baby was baptized and a picture remains as evidence of this hideous war crime. The chief of the Zagreb police, Bozidar Corouski, entered the church and proclaimed: “Now that you are all Roman Catholics, I guarantee you that I can save your souls, but I cannot save your bodies.” The doors were suddenly locked from outside and the Ustashi goons and thugs entered the church and in a macabre fashion slit the throats of 1,029 Serb victims. Only one man survived to tell this grim story, his name was Ljuban Jednak. In 1991, Ljuban was warned that his name appeared on a list of Serbs to be exterminated. His house was shot from all sides one night, but Jednak had already escaped from Croatia and the Balkans. He died in 1997 of natural causes.

Your deception in the production of this film was clear, Ms. Brkusic. You went out of your way to omit that Roman Catholic nuns at Jasenovac used toxic soda to murder over 100,000 Serbian children to save bullets. This was 3 years before the end of WWII and before there was even a thought of a communist regime on which to blame your depraved behavior. So what excuse did the Croatians have for killing their Serbian neighbors? This was “democracy,” Croatian style.

During the current Civil Wars, Croatia murdered thousands of Serbs, destroyed 98 Serbian churches and ethnically cleansed 12% of the Serb population. Less than 4% have been allowed to return in the past dozen years. Of those who have returned, more than half have fled again from continued Croat persecution. You used this film to blame everyone but yourselves for perpetrating such ethnic hatred.

Serbophobia has deep roots in the Croatian people. During the First World War when it became obvious that the Allies would crush the Austrian Empire, Croats fled into the arms of their Serbian enemies like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Serbia, an internationally recognized nation at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 gave up its statehood to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918. This shotgun marriage was forced on the Serbs by the major powers. Ungrateful Croats who were vassals of the Austrians for centuries became obstructionists from the outset of the new Balkan state. For over a thousand years there was no such thing as a “Croatian state” in Europe. But once Croats moved in with their Serbian hosts it only took two generations to evict Serbs from land on which they lived since the 15th century. As the Jews say, “What Chutpzah!”

The Serbian Krajina is my ancestral land from the 15th century. The very word Krajina means “Frontier Zone” and it was land granted by the Austrian Empire to the Serbs in exchange for protecting their borders. The Krajina was never part of Croatia until Tito came to power and made that territory a part of the Croat Republic, just like he dictated Albanian autonomy in Kosovo in 1974. Tito went out of his way to destroy any Serb unity and history shows that in spite of Croat and Bosnian claims of “Serbian oppression,” the Serbs ranked 4th place in political positions throughout the Tito regime. Since the turn of the last century Serbs have become a minority in their own country.

When the war started in 1991 the president of Yugoslavia was not Milosevic as most are led to believe—it was Ante Markovic, a Croat who order Serbian troops to attack Croatia, then he resigned, knowing full well what he had unleashed.

Fascism also runs deep in the U.S. Croatian community. In White Plains, New York, the Archbishop Stepinac High School is named for a Croatian Archbishop who was convicted of Holocaust war crimes by the Allies. He was sent to prison for 13 years, then spent the remainder of his life under what amounted to house arrest. The Croat Catholics have convinced the Vatican to make this thug a Catholic Saint. Is there no shame?

The readers of this ‘open letter’ need to be reminded that Serbs were murdered by their Croat neighbors and local Roman Catholic priests who led the lynch mobs. They join with the SS Hanjar the 20,000 strong Muslim Nazi Division in trying to eradicate Serbs from the Balkans. Your film demonstrated an immoral desire to eradicate the truth.

As an example, historical documents disclose that Fr. Miroslav Filipovic Majstorovic, a Franciscan friar, entered the Serbian village of Drakulic on February 7, 1942 under the leadership of the Ustashe. Over 2,300 Serbian adults, mostly women and 551 children were murdered. Would you like a list of their names and ages, Ms. Brkusic?

The torture began by cutting off noses, ears and genitals of these children—body parts that allowed the victims to remain alive for hours through their rape and tortures. The most hideous crime of all was the decapitation of these children—their heads thrown into the laps of their mothers, who, in shocked horror, were then murdered. Pregnant women had their bellies slit open and the fetus removed, a horrific form of death to both mother and child.

Ante Pavelic, who was brought to power by Hitler, set up the First Independent State of Croatia in 1941, a Nazi puppet state where Pavelic set up 34 “summary” courts throughout Croatia that year. He empowered every Croatian to arrest and kill Serbians without being charged with a crime. Any Croat could sit on these so-called “courts,” including former convicts. Mobile court units roamed the countryside in which Serbs were arrested, tried, convicted and hanged—within hours. Hundreds of photographs from this period show thousands of Serbs hanging from trees and light posts throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. How dare you portray Croats as victims? Your film is shocking and appalling exploitation!

Apparently Ms. Brkusic, you never counted on any authors or Balkan historians seeing this visual garbage. In your self-serving effort you were able to raise the $100,000 dollars in the Croatian community to produce this shameful film in an attempt to hoodwink an ignorant American audience.

Croats have shown that they will even steal heroic Serbian figures like Nikola Tesla, by constantly claiming he was a Croatian. A hideous lie as Tesla was the son of a Serbian Orthodox priest. The village in which Tesla was born was in Austria and did not become part of former Yugoslavia until 30 years after Tesla immigrated to the United States where he invented the radio and AC electrical power.

In the village of Vojnic, Croatia where my father was born, 97 Serbs were locked inside their church in 1941 and it was burned to the ground. Seventeen of those victims were my relatives. In 1972, I photographed the remains of that church. President Tudjman had the site bulldozed in 1992 just as he bulldozed the museum and buildings at the Jasenovac Concentration Camp in order to destroy the evidence of their crimes.

If a country cannot own up to its failures then that nation is doomed to repeat them, and Croatia has by creating an ethnically pure state, fulfilling their Nazi dreams.

During “Operation Storm” in August, 1995 when 250,000 Serbs were cleansed from Croatia—the last 5 relatives of my name were too old and too sick to flee. I was notified a month later they were found with their throats slit. In my lifetime, I have been a double victim of Croat inspired Genocide. These immoral crimes against humanity demonstrate the contempt you have for the truth, Ms. Brkusic. Your claim that “Tito killed 10,000 Croats in a decade” was not only a gross exaggeration, it pales in comparison to Croatians killing 700,000 Serbs, 30,000 Jews and 70,000 Roma gypsies for which no one has been held responsible.

I suggest that you visit a library from time to time, if you can read. You might also spend some time in the military archives of the United States and Great Britain before giving us a display of your ignorance and lack of integrity. Your film was an amateurish endeavor that betrayed history at the expense of the Serbs. Be careful Ms. Brkusic, your bigotry and intolerance is showing!

Today there are 1.2 million Serbian refugees from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. That is twice the combine number of Croat and Muslim refugees. So stop the propaganda ploy. It is now quite obvious who excels at ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the Balkans. KOCE should be ashamed of participating in this ugly whitewash of history. In whose interest do they work so diligently, it certainly is not historical accuracy?

Just a few days ago on January 23, 2008, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia said it received a written message threatening Serbs and Jews living in Croatia with “extermination.” The message was signed by supporters of ‘Hajduk Split,’ a leading Croatian soccer club. In the past several years Croat fans at soccer games formed a large Swastika with their bodies in the stands and use the Sieg Heil salute. Recently a Neo-Nazi Croat Rock group came to the United States. This group has been ban in several European countries for singing songs that praise the Ustashe regime in Croatia. Therefore, your crocodile tears in this documentary was obviously intended for naïve Americans, most of whom know less about European history then they do their own history.

It has become more than clear that the Croats have established an ethnic and religiously pure Croatian State while you speak of “democracy” with a forked tongue. But this is nothing new. I quote the views of the famous Roman Catholic author, Avro Manhattan who wrote Vatican Imperialism in the 20th Century (1965):

“The lessons we have learned from the emergence of the Independent State of Croatia, where the religious and political totalitarianism of Catholicism was not only made to work, but put to death more than one million Serbian Orthodox Christians, should never be forgotten. For it happened in our times, when the Catholic Church—then as now, posing as a victim of religious intolerance—was clamoring for freedom, while at the same time suppressing that same freedom for which she was vociferating so loudly, in a tiny state where she had set up her kind of freedom, Catholic freedom: i.e., freedom for herself to eliminate whatever and whoever dared to resist her embrace.”

As for the explanation by Michael McAdams in your film regarding the Croatian “checkerboard symbol dating to the 15th century,” you make no apologies that the same symbol was used during the Holocaust to put to death nearly one million people. I remind Mr. McAdams that the Swastika is a symbol from the Bonze Age. It’s not about when these symbols were created, it is about what they represent. What is apparent is that the Croats are not interested in how much they offend or insult others or how insensitive it was to use this Nazi symbol on their flag—they are far more interested in brainwashing the world about their Nazi past as they cover up their bigoted presence.

Who is next on the Croatian hate list, and whom will Croats blame for their dysfunctional society when the Serbs are no longer their Achilles heel? Real history has shown that Croats, like their former Nazi Albanian neighbors, cannot survive without hating someone.

—————————

William Dorich is the author of 5 books on Balkan history including his 1991 book, Serbian Genocide 1941-45, co written by the late David Martin, author of The Web of Disinformation (1989) and the late Michael Lees, author of The Rape of Serbia (1989). His 1992 book, Kosovo raise over $200,000 to aid the more than 30,000 Serbian orphans from the current Civil Wars. He is the recipient of The Order of St. Sava, the highest recognition given to a layperson by the Holy Synod of Serbian Orthodox Bishops and An Award of Merit from the Serbian Bar Association of America. His articles have appeared in numerous publications including The International Herald Tribune, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Times and in the Serbian media.

29 January 2008

Please Americans, Let's Stop Bickering Amongst Ourselves

I wrote this in response to a discussion on a listserv but thought it appropriate to list here as well: After REAding This I Beg All American Orthodox to Sign Petition No Independence For Serbia. Thank you.
Dear ListServ Members:

In a few days there will be an election in Serbia between two men, and not one of them is Serbia's PM Kostunica's choice, Velimir Ilic. After this election, how soon after, I suppose will depend on who wins, there will be a declaration of independence of Kosovo by PM Thaci of the renegade Kosovo parliament in Pristina, Kosovo, Serbia. This declaration will be supported by the United States, Germany, France and other E.U. members and opposed by Russia, China (who just gave a little boost to our bank/investing infrastructure in return for more manufacturing jobs for its people at slave labour prices, further eroding fair competition between nation states), and a few staunchly Orthodox countries who have not forgotten their purpose on this earth, nor who their God is. (Blessed are the nations who have God as their Lord).

While we are bickering about a candidate who will most likely, (not one hundred percent sure, because he is allies with Governor R. Blagojevich who is Serbian Orthodox)-if he becomes president, may continue the hostilities against Serbia and Russia by the United States government or may seek to right the wrongs perpretrated on Serbia and the slavic countries. Somehow, I don't think Obama will do that. I don't know what to make of the Governor, because I don't know what the Governor's stance on Kosovo is, and/or whether he could be influenced to use his association with Obama, if he wins, to make just decisions about Kosovo pending illegal independence. Serbia said that it will pursue all legal means at its disposal to offset any declaration of independence. Russia supports her. This sets us up for a potential state of hostilities that can lead to war, between Russia and her allies, and the United States and its allies. This will have huge ramifications for the Faithful in this land, as we will have to make a choice about our national and spiritual loyalties at that time.

We know that if Russia and the U.S are in a war while Bush is President and Clinton succeeds, she will continue the war against the Orthodox Faithful in support of the Muslim radical government of Pristina. We know that if she is elected, and there is no war started under Bush against Serbia/Russia, she will move to stop Serbia from keeping what is rightfully hers. The reason why Yeltsin removed his troops from Serbia in 1999 was because he did not want to start WWIII. This is the war that almost happened in 1999. The American General wanted to fight Russia, the British General told him, I'm not going to be responsible for WWIII. This is what we are looking at, please excuse me, but I am only a layman, a poor one at that.

The only candidate who has addressed the atrocities of what is going on in Serbia, (and not just Serbia) is Presidential Candidate Ron Paul.

Ron Paul opposes abortion.
He opposes U.S. government expansionist foreign policy, that sells the jobs and freedoms of the United States citizen to the highest bidder. If I were a betting man, I would say that he opposes gay rights.
He opposes the North Atlantic Union Treaty. He opposes unbridled spending, but I'don't think he would be foolish enough to dismantle the (social infrastructures) that every country needs to operate on a day to day basis for the private, public and national good.

He supports many things that resonate with Orthodox Christian values. Íf elected not only will he honour Serbia's territorial integrity, but I think his election will also give some respite to our Church here in the U.S. ...because I sincerely believe that if war breaks out between U.S. and Russia, and it will be over Serbia, our Church here in the U.S. will be torn apart.

So please, stop bickering about Obama...it is such a waste of time---in a few days or weeks you will see that. We need to start preparing our Church bodies for what is most likely ahead of us in the very near future.

In Christ,
xenia

27 January 2008

Kostunica Stands Firm

Arrival of EU mission in Kosovo-Metohija would annul SAA
Belgrade, Jan 26, 2008 – Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said this evening that if an EU mission arrives in Kosovo-Metohija, signing the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU would mean signing the recognition of the independence of Kosovo-Metohija.
Speaking in an interview on the Radio Television of Serbia, Kostunica said that sending the EU mission to the province, implies implementation of Ahtisaari’s rejected plan, and it would annul the SAA which states that Serbia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected. The Serbian Prime Minister said that the independence of Kosovo-Metohija can be legal only if Serbia gives it away.He added that Serbia attempted to find a “proper balance” between cooperation with the EU and safeguarding its territory, and stressed that neither the Serbian Constitution nor moral principles give this generation the right to give away part of the country’s territory as a gift. He reiterated that the agreement between Serbia and Russia on cooperation in the oil and gas industries is of strategic importance and will make gas supply in Serbia stable during the upcoming decades. He said that this is a very profitable agreement, which will draw new investments, boost employment in Serbia, and make the country more secure. The Prime Minister said that the majority of EU countries are turning to Russia because it is rich in energy recourses so there can be nothing controversial about Serbia doing the same since it is in great need of energy, especially gas supply.

23 January 2008

What is of God, to God.....

From the Serbian Patriarchate in Serbia--But Applicable Here As Well

What is of God, to God,
What is of the King, to the King...

17. January 2008 - 8:12

A Blessing for Honorable and Fair Elections



«« But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness…»(Matthew 6:33)... »(Мт. 6, 33)...
Bearing in mind that preelection silence is about to begin soon and that there have been some speculations in the public that the Church was supporting one or the other political option, we must point out some postulates on which not only the relationship between the Church and the state are laid, but also the very identity of the Church, which can’t be exploited or abused, not even on behalf of church institutions or dignitaries.
From the early Nineties on, when Serbia started its multy-party system existence, the Serbian Orthodox Church has issued an explicit synodal decision ordering its clergy, i.e. to the deacons, the priests and the bishops, to refrain from any active partisan engagement. In accordance to the above, every member of the clergy who engages actively in a party, is not only dissenting a synodal decision, but the Church itsself.
Of course, each individual has the liberty and the obligation to exercise his or her legitimate and constitutional civil right, and to vote according to his or her conscience and personal judgement.
One thing is certain: The Church prays for every pious authority, which means that it can only recommend to its worshippers to cast their vote for that authority, which is not against God, and which will include in its program and fully respect fundamental christian norms and principles.
Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church

Српски

http://www.spc.yu/eng/what_god_god_what_king_king

19 January 2008

Rewarding Deception in Kosovo

Rewarding terrorism, deception in Kosovo
Posted: January 14, 20081:00 a.m. Eastern
By Andy Wilcoxson
© 2008
Eight years ago, the United States and its NATO allies bombed Serbia to rescue the ethnic Albanian population from genocide at the hands of Serbian troops loyal to Slobodan Milosevic in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo - or so we were told.
During the NATO campaign, the State Department told us 100,000 to 500,000 Kosovo-Albanians were missing and feared dead. State Department spokesman James Rubin warned us of "indicators that genocide is unfolding in Kosovo."
President Clinton compared Kosovo to Nazi Germany's Holocaust against the Jews. He said Serbia's alleged persecution of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, like "the ethnic extermination of the Holocaust," was a "vicious, premeditated, systematic oppression fueled by religious and ethnic hatred."
Today Kosovo's Albanian leaders are poised to declare the beleaguered province's independence from Serbian rule and America, along with her allies, stands ready to recognize that independence regardless of Serbia's objections.
On the surface, this might appear to be a perfectly reasonable policy; one might assume that Serbia forfeited any right to govern the province when it committed genocide against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population eight years ago, but things aren't what they appear to be.
After eight years of searching, evidence of genocide against Kosovo's ethnic Albanians has not materialized. The number of ethnic Albanians who died or went missing is anywhere from 90 percent to 99 percent lower than the estimates we were given during the war.
Although the Serbs were accused of genocide, and the Albanians were said to be their victims, a Serb was three times more likely to be killed or abducted than an Albanian, and Serbs made-up a disproportionately large share of the Kosovo war's refugees. Kosovo's ethnic Albanians comprise an even larger share of the population today than they did before the war, which adds up to one simple fact: They weren't victims of genocide.
Kosovo was a war over territory that pitted ethnic Albanian secessionists in the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, against Serbian security forces.
To elicit Western sympathy and win NATO intervention against the Serbs, the KLA sought to portray the war as an aggressive Serbian genocide against Kosovo's Albanians - the strategy worked. The shocking images of civilians driven from their homes and streaming out of Kosovo are indelibly burned into our memories.
Eve-Ann Prentice, a British journalist who covered the Kosovo war for the Guardian and the London Times, testified during Slobodan Milosevic's trial in the Hague. She said that rather than being driven out by the Serbs, "The KLA told ethnic Albanian civilians that it was their patriotic duty to leave because the world was watching. This was their one big opportunity to make Kosovo part of Albania eventually, that NATO was there, ready to come in, and that anybody who failed to join the exodus was not supporting the Albanian cause."
Alice Mahon, a British MP and a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Brussels, also testified during Milosevic's trial. She said, "The KLA definitely encouraged the exodus."
Muharem Ibraj and Saban Fazliu, two ethnic Albanian witnesses from Kosovo who testified in Milosevic's trial, said Serbian security forces encouraged civilians to remain in their homes, and that it was the KLA who made the civilian population leave the province.
Fazliu testified that the KLA would kill anybody who disobeyed its orders. He said, "The order was to leave Kosovo in later stages, to go to Albania, Macedonia, so that the world could see for themselves that the Albanians are leaving because of the harm caused by the Serbs. This was the aim. This was the KLA order."
During the war, the London Times reported how "KLA 'minders' ensured that all refugees peddled the same line when speaking to Western journalists" by threatening the refugee's loved ones. Unfortunately, that report was one of the few honest pieces of journalism to come out of Kosovo.
Testifying in the Milosevic trial about the coverage he had seen in the Western news media, Dietmar Hartwig, the chief of the European Union's Monitoring Mission in Kosovo said, "I didn't think it had anything to do with reality. [The] reporting was always very one-sided."
(Column continues below)
In addition to biased coverage of the Kosovo war, our news media may have deliberately misled public opinion by staging fake news footage designed to make the plight of the refugees look worse than it actually was.
Goran Stojcik, a Macedonian ambulance driver who worked in the refugee camps during the war, testified under oath at the Hague Tribunal that he had eye-witnessed Western news crews stage-managing fake news footage in the refugee camps. He said, "CNN was the most prominent in stage managing things that were to be filmed."
He gave examples of news crews coaching refugees on how to act in front of the cameras. In one example, he said a news crew threw a refugee child into the mud to make him cry for the camera.
On another occasion, he said his colleague's medical supplies were stolen so a perfectly healthy man could be wrapped in bandages and placed on a stretcher to be portrayed as wounded in front of the TV cameras.
At a minimum, the media was quick to report accusations against the Serbs that later turned out not to be true. There were reports that the Serbs were running a concentration camp at the Pristina soccer stadium, and that they were butchering Albanians by the thousands and burning their remains in the Trepca mining complex, but none of it turned out to be true.
We were conned into being the KLA's air force. Our compassion and our sympathy for human suffering was abused and turned into a weapon of war by a group of sadistic terrorists who abused the very people they claimed to protect.
The KLA has been credibly linked to Osama bin Laden. In 1998, Fatos Klosi, the head of SHIK (Albania's intelligence service), told London's Sunday Times newspaper that bin Laden had visited Albania to send units to fight in Kosovo. In 1999, the Washington Times reported that it had obtained intelligence documents that showed a "link" between bin Laden and the KLA - including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists.
It was no secret that the KLA was a terrorist group. In 1998, Robert Gelbard, the U.S. special envoy for Kosovo, told the Agence France Presse wire service that "the KLA is, without any questions, a terrorist group."
One doesn't have to look any further than the public communiqués that the KLA freely published in the Albanian media in the years and months leading up to the war to see that they started the war, not Slobodan Milosevic or the Serbian authorities.
Two years before the war started, the KLA published a communiqué in the Albanian media that said, "Through this communiqué, we would like to state clearly to the current Serbian political leadership that they must withdraw from our territories as soon as possible, or our attacks to liberate the country will be fierce and merciless."
One year before the war started, the KLA published another communiqué threatening the international community with "a greater slaughter than in Bosnia-Herzegovina" and warning the Serbs of a fate "worse than their Russian brothers in Afghanistan and Chechnya" unless their demands were met.
To keep the ethnic Albanian civilian population from cooperating with the Serbian authorities, KLA communiqués openly threatened "death to enemies and traitors." One communiqué said, "Operations were carried out against Albanian collaborationists, who, despite earlier warnings, did not abandon their antinational courses of action."
The KLA openly boasted of how it murdered ethnic Albanian "collaborators." In one communiqué they explained how they killed an ethnic Albanian named Hetem Dobruna because of his "notorious and open collaboration" with the Serbian authorities in Kosovo. In another communiqué they took credit for the murder of an ethnic Albanian named Dalip Dugolli who they called "a collaborator and one of Milosevic's most trusted men" before explaining how "Kosovo and the other Albanian territories will not be liberated down the telephone or from an office, but only by a serious commitment in support of the armed struggle."
Three out of the last four prime ministers elected in Kosovo were senior members of the KLA. Kosovo's current prime minister, Hashim Thaci, was the leader of the KLA. If the United States supports Kosovo's independence, we will not only betray Serbia, our ally through two world wars, we will put power in the hands of the self-same terrorists who murdered their own people and conned us into being their air force by claiming, of all things, to be the victims of human rights abuses!
Andy Wilcoxson administers a website where he covered Milosevic's trial in the Hague. He recently finished writing a book about the break up of Yugoslavia based on the information that came to light during the course of Milosevic's trial.

12 January 2008

Consequences Created On Our Behalf

Kosovo and unintended consequences
Posted: January 12, 20081:00 a.m. Eastern
By Joseph Farah
© 2008
As Kosovo goes, so goes northern Cyprus?
That's the way the Turkish Cypriots see it.
They can't see any distinction between the West's plans for a new "independent" state of Kosovo and the aspirations of Turkey for an independent Turkish Cyprus.
It's just one more reason against the creation of a new state of Kosovo, where none has ever existed before.
The real problem with these fanciful new "independent" states is that they are not independent at all. Both will be aligned with Islamic world, where freedom, individual liberties and respect for peaceful neighbors and non-Muslim minorities are virtually unknown concepts.
This is what happens when globalists start redrawing maps of the world in ways they think are beneficial to them - with or without understanding the consequences of those actions.
New rules are being established - new rules that make no sense.
But have no illusions. The Turks are chomping at the bit to make their move in Cyprus - even before the seemingly inevitable agreement to grant Kosovo statehood is approved.
"When diplomatic efforts are exhausted, other alternatives are put on the table," explains Fulya Özerkan, a senior Turkish Cypriot official. "We clearly see this in Kosovo where diplomacy proved futile, and other formulas are floating around. This will certainly have an impact on Cyprus."
Özdil Nami was appointed by Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat last month to chair negotiations with the EU and United Nations for a settlement to the Cyprus dispute.
"Everyone sees 2008 as the last window of opportunity for a solution to the Cyprus problem, and especially Turkey's friends in the EU are pressuring the Greek Cypriots not to accept the status quo and to back initiatives for a settlement, and warning other alternatives could be on the agenda otherwise," he told the Turkish Daily News.
Nami, elaborating on the alternatives, compared the Cyprus problem with the deadlocked talks over the future of Kosovo.
"Balances are changing in Europe," he said. "What do we see in the case of Kosovo or Bosnia? When diplomatic efforts are exhausted other alternatives are put on the table. We clearly see this in Kosovo where diplomacy proved futile and other formulas are floating around. This will certainly have an impact on Cyprus."
As the EU nations failed to resolve the deadlock over Kosovo during negotiations this month, ethnic Albanians in this province pledged to proclaim independence from Serbia early this year. The United States and several EU states have indicated they will recognize it.
EU-member Greek Cyprus remains the only member blocking a unanimous position on Kosovo - both concerning recognizing its independence and on sending a 1,800-strong force there.
What are the dynamics for conflict here?
Russia supports Serbia's position that Kosovo has always been and should always be a part of Serbia.
Russia likewise supports Greece in its position on Cyprus.
How many times will Russia sit back and accept these pokes in the eye without retaliation?
But, making matters worse for the West, Russia happens to be right in both cases.
There is nothing to be gained by supporting the breakup of sovereign nations, unless you view it from the position of those whose real agenda is to break up all sovereign nations - confederating them all under regional and eventually global governments.
Those are the real stakes in Kosovo - not to mention the fact that recognizing the independence of Kosovo will be rewarding a Muslim terror campaign that has killed, raped and maimed countless Christians, burned down churches and ethnically cleansed the region in anticipation of statehood.
That's why I dissent on this global rush to welcome Kosovo into the community of nations.
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. His latest book is "Stop The Presses: The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution." He also edits the online intelligence newsletter Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, in which he utilizes his sources developed over 30 years in the news business.