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.

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.

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

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.

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
Statements
Српски

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

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.

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.

Why Kosovo? Because of Kosovo's Orthodox Legacy

Although Nebojsa Malic doesn't just come out and say it, the reason why Serbia is such a magnet for imperialistic imperatives is because of the legacy left it by the actions of Tsar Lazar in defense of the True Orthodox Faith. Kosovo is an epic battle, an Orthodox vs. the decadence of the World epic battle, and few Americans want to acknowledge this because they stubbornly believe the myth that the United States stands for all that is good. It does not, and it never has. It's most revered founders and leaders have all been freemasons and deists and this cannot ever be construed to be anything but to eventually set the United States up against the True Faith and against countries that support, practice and claim the True Faith as the True Salvific Path given to mankind by Our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Below is Mr. Malic's article. Please read it, read history with an Orthodox view, pray to God to illumine you....Supporting Serbia, would actually be good for the American Nation at this point---perhaps, like Ninevah God will spare us for our sins.

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=12086

December 20, 2007
The Die is Cast Empire's Fate is Decided
by Nebojsa Malic
Another chapter of the Kosovo crisis was closed on December 19, when the UN Security Council accepted the report of the "troika" that negotiations between Serbia and the Albanian separatists in its occupied province of Kosovo had failed. As predicted, the U.S. and its EU allies moved to proceed along the lines of the Ahtisaari Plan, rejected earlier this year by both Belgrade and Moscow – in effect, trying to sneak "independence" for the province through the back door. Expectations in Washington, Brussels and other Western capitals are that Russia and Serbia will eventually accept the fait accompli. This belief is as dangerous as it is wrong, and portends a showdown in the near future that will decide matters far beyond the Balkans.
Perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that it was completely unnecessary.
Self-Made Trap
The 1999 illegal war against Serbia was supposed to be the crowning achievement of NATO after 50 years of existence, and provide a new role for the organization as the enforcer of American imperial ambitions throughout the world. Instead, it exposed the underlying weakness of America's European satellites, and the limitations of Empire's air supremacy.
Each subsequent conflict weakened the Empire further, destroying both its military might and political authority. Worse yet, the trampling of Serbia finally jolted Russia out of its rut, bringing about a national revival. Instead of a powerful ally in the "War on Terror," the resurgent Russia became an enemy.
In 2005, following the debacle in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush the Lesser adopted his predecessor's Balkans policy and decided to reassert Imperial power via Kosovo. The foreign policy establishment in Washington counted on the servility of Serbian authorities, installed in power with Washington's blessing and support. To their chagrin, Serbia refused to submit! Now the Empire was trapped, unable to dictate reality through diplomacy or force, but committed publicly to the Albanian separatist cause.
Turning Point
Throughout 2006, the defeats just kept on coming. At the end of the year, all of Empire's efforts in the Balkans and elsewhere had ended up frustrated. In the political chaos following Serbia's general elections, Washington sought to seize the prize, and its agent Martti Ahtisaari proposed his plan for the "final solution" of the Kosovo crisis. Once again, however, Belgrade refused to submit. A diplomatic offensive against Moscow failed utterly and completely. By April, Ahtisaari's plan was dead; by July, it was buried.
In desperation, the Empire tried subterfuge: sending the "troika" mission, which was supposed to negotiate for 120 days. If nothing happened by that point, the Empire and its European satellites argued, the Ahtisaari plan would automatically apply.
The talks failed, of course. Having nothing to gain, Albanian separatists simply ran out the clock. Yesterday at the UN, the Empire tried to argue for independence, trotting out all the worn-out propaganda, false arguments and bluster its envoys could muster. Serbia remained adamant, as did Russia: Kosovo's status cannot change without a new resolution, and it will not pass.
American and European diplomats have hinted that they would take matters into their own hands, using the EU and NATO to force the issue. This is a bluff. Moscow has made it abundantly clear that there is no legitimacy whatsoever for this sort of action in any UN or other international document, and it is no longer willing to stand idly by while the Empire conjures quasi-legal justifications for its illegal behavior.
Lapses of the Tongue and Mind
The newly designated "Prime Minister" of the separatist government, former KLA leader Hashim Thaci, made an interesting lapsus linguae at the UN, arguing that the Albanians had waited too long for their promised independence. "We wasted a hundred years," Thaci is quoted by the AP.
How strange. Didn't the Kosovo crisis begin with the evil Slobodan Milosevic's rise to power in 1987? The confused Western observers would not know that the Albanians have claimed Kosovo as their own since 1878. Serbia's claim on the territory, based on the 1913 Treaty of London, the Albanians call an "occupation," and the Nazi conquest of the territory in 1941 is termed the "first liberation of Kosova (sic)."
Meanwhile, in Serbia, as anti-Imperial sentiment is on the rise, the strongest pro-Imperial party may just have committed a major mistake. Chairman of the Serbian parliament, Oliver Dulic, has called for a presidential election on January 20, without consulting with Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. This opened a rift between Kostunica and president Tadic (leader of the Democratic Party, which Dulic represents).
Many reliable analysts in Serbia now predict that Kostunica will not support Tadic in the election, but instead throw his support behind the Radical candidate Tomislav Nikolic – especially considering that the semi-official line in the West is that Tadic's victory would ensure Belgrade's compliance when the Albanian separatists declare independence in February 2008. Nikolic absolutely rejects Serbian recognition of an independent Kosovo, and openly advocates Russian military presence in Serbia.
Desperation
Why should the Empire care who governs in Belgrade? Imperial officials have frequently and publicly stated that Serbia had no say in the future of Kosovo. And yet, if that were truly the case, why all the efforts to get Belgrade's blessing – including this week's offer by EU leaders to speed up Serbia's EU application in return for giving up Kosovo? Even the Tadic loyalist and Empire-inclined foreign minister Vuk Jeremic called this an "indecent proposal," and rightly so.
Behind Empire's bluster and belligerence is desperation, and a growing awareness that their Kosovo gambit will not lead to an easy victory and popularity points in the Islamic world and at home. Despite the regular pronouncements in the media, Kosovo's independence is neither inevitable nor imminent. If it were, the Empire would have made it so by now.
This isn't 1999 any more; the Empire has very little authority in the world, and nowhere near as much power. That is why it needs legitimacy – and the only way it can legitimize the land grab is through Serbia's agreement. Belgrade isn't giving it, but the Empire and the advocates of "Kosova" believe it will. They are mistaken.
Against the Tide
Intervention in the Balkans helped bring about the American Empire more so than the 1991 Gulf War, which was fought under UN rules. The 1995 intervention in Bosnia and Croatia trampled all over UN rules and international law, but the rest of the world went along because it stopped the bloodshed. By 1999, however, it was obvious that the global hegemon was anything but benevolent.
When Otto von Bismarck called the Congress of Berlin in 1878, he hoped it would resolve the Balkans crisis. It ended up destroying his alliance with Russia, and setting the stage for the Great War in 1914. Austria started that war hoping to crush the pesky little Serbia and establish hegemony in the Balkans. Serbia survived, if just barely. Austria-Hungary did not.
What is it about this corner of Europe that keeps drawing the powers of this earth to contest their will therein? It has little strategic importance, no exceptional natural resources, and a difficult geography. Yet it remains a battlefield of ideas, armies and politics, the Tolkinesque Emyn Dagor whereupon many empires have left their bones over the centuries.
Kosovo may well be the great battle of our time. If so, its outcome has already been decided, and the American Empire will be the most recent addition to the Balkans graveyard. Of course, those leading the Empire are still convinced – and telling their people – of their imminent and inevitable triumph. The tide has turned against them a while ago, though; perhaps as early as March 24, 1999, when the first bomb dropped on Serbia and set in motion the chain of events that would propel Vladimir Putin to power.

Make Your Voice Count Today For Kosovo-Metohija

Today is a significant day in the history of Orthodox Christendom. We who are American Orthodox Christians, must shed our will ful ignorance of our countries misdeeds against our brethren.



We must ask how do we justify that our nation for the last 70 years have stood by while Orthodox Christians were being massacred, slaughtered, imprisoned and experimented on because they were Orthodox Christians. We must ask ourselves this as we learn that while the Turks and Muslims were slaughtering Orthodox Christians in Greece, in the Balkans, and while the Bolsheviks were slaughtering Orthodox Christians in Russia, while Stalin and the Nazis killed Christians and Jews in during WWII, while Muslims and Nazi's along with Roman Catholics, killed and massacred, yes, martyred Orthodox brethren in the Balkans we, the United States Government stood by and watched, and lifted nary a finger to help those who we professed a Christian unity with in Faith and Creed. Surely this is not the actions of someone who is exhorted by their God, our God, to lay down our lives for our brethren?



Today these sobering thoughts have a immediancy, that will mark every one of us who hide behind United States innocence and professed goodwill, even in the face of the many atrocities that this nation has committed in the name of manifest destiny, now called by the State Department Transformational Diplomacy.



It will have an immediancy for every American Orthodox who choose to believe in the "prophecies" of such men as Hal Lindsey, rather than understand that we today undeservedly, have witnessed the miracle of Orthodox Rulers in the World, and these, the defenders of the True Faith deserve our support as Orthodox. We must remember that our true nation is not of this world, and we must support those people who support true decency in human nature which can only be realised by our Faith.



We must understand that our country the US is among those trying to establish one world rule, and is trying to do away with the concept of nation states, first established in 1648 in Westphalia and preserved in the the Helsinki Final Accord and even in the United Nations. Once this is dismantled, we will see an unprecedented disregard of the rights to decency as taught us by our True Faith. Free Will and the Right of Consciouness of Nation States will be compromised--the the beginning of that compromised will be looked at on this day, as the beginning of the end, for internationally civility as practised these few hundred years, and which established the great powers toward an understanding at least of the concept of the national integrity and the right of sovereign rulership. The events in Kosovo and the Amercian Orthodox response to it, will make an indelible mark on world events, that will exacerbate instability to unprecedented proportions.



Even though today talks have failed concerning the status of Kosovo, and this was inevitable, and really a victory for Serbia for not caving in and accepting secession of her hallowed lands, we American Orthodox need to wake up from the propaganda that maligns our brethren, that our brethren even thoses who are demoralized and weak and who even speak evil about themselves, and we need to rise up to the occasion and write our congressmen about this issue, saying that we oppose senate bill 135, we oppose any recognition of independence of Kosovo. We oppose giving to the invading forces, the Wahabi Muslims, the Albanians, the sacred Christian land of Kosovo-Metohija.



Today you can not pride yourself on being a good American, if you allow your Orthodox Brethren to fall at the hands of the American Government. You must speak up in defense or be mark indelibly for now on.



Please sign petition at http://thepetitionsite.com/petition/905791187



and write, call your representatives. We need American Names on the Petition. You have been silent too long. But it is not too late. Prayers without Action without synergy, how can you justify yourselves before God?

We Must Fight For Serbia

December 06, 2007
„Before or after that is the question“?
During the negotiations „over future status of Kosovo and Metohia“, about this artificial created topic and by force imposed from side of world powers, because that status is well known to all , recognized and defined in many international law documents, conferences, charters, resolutions e ct., they have been heard many discrepancies. So, Problem of Kosovo and Metohia does not exist. That’s pseudo problem.Exists problem of Albanian (Shiptar) minority in Serbia, which truly should get their own solution on concepts of solving similar problems in all democratic countries in the world. No more, no less.
Our politicians and state top in Serbia, during last negotiations (and those in 2006. and this in 2007), more times they had announcement and statements for us, for citizens of this country , what are their intentions if the Albanian leaders from Kosovo and Metohia proclaim INDEPENDENCE OF KOSOVO . Those intentions, dressed in declarations and statements, are unlikely for one sovereign state. „We will not recognize“; „we will proclaim ineffectual “; „We will nullify the independence“; „we will fight with all legal and democratic instruments“; „We shall not send our army on Kosovo“ etc. All those and similar statements, encouragement, even – impel the Albanians to start with unilateral proclamations of Kosovo independence. It is obviously, that they have nothing to fear about. From state top places we hear often: „Serbia is not for the war“; „Serbia will not take place in war“. We agree that Serbia is not for war, but we have to say clearly that Serbia is for defense. And which other country shouldn’t be? In any case, anything we act „Day after“, will be fruitless, because that decision about independence of Kosovo will not be drown by the Shiptars nor from their mentors, who will recognize them immediately. Nobody and nowhere, unfortunately, have not told what Serbia should do„ Day before“of proclaims, as preventive, as serious warning or innuendo what could produce this decision. That will, maybe, prevent proclamations of such unilateral and irrational decision, such as the competence of some people to recognize and uphold that decision.
And what is that what Serbia as a state should and have to do (figuratively spoken) „Day before“. There are a lot of things, but let we speak truly:
- Close the borders (administrative) of Kosovo and Metohia from Side of Kosovo to Serbia for tree days (for travelers , merchandise etc.).
- Call „Observer Mission “ for members of Shanghai group of states (China , Russia, India, Pakistan...).
- Call on mobilization all military tributaries from Serbia (under form of checking of competence, education) on tree days. (Show to all whom Serbia have for defense ).
- to organize military practice in regions very close to Kosovo and Metohia, with assisting of some observers from coalitions of Shanghai .
- call for mass protests in Belgrade and in the other places in Serbia(to realize how important Kosovo and Metohia is for Serbs). (And here our church should be engaged , to organize, to call, to help), etc.
With this we will act as a prevention, and that should influence on (un)responsible, before making decision of independence of Kosovo.
By eventual proclamation, all activities mentioned above, will be absurd and inefficient. „Better prevent this, than heal “. That also stands for here.

Bishop Artemije

Europe's Oppression of Serbia

December 06, 2007.
EIGHT YEARS AFTERMEMORIES AND TESTIMONIES

Your Eminence, Honourable Ministers, Esteemed guests,
The topic of our today’s forum, “The place of Kosovo and Metohija Serbian spiritual heritage in the European culture” is a demanding one as much as a challenging one. We suppose that all of you, esteemed lecturers, will talk about the monuments of cultural heritage of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija, as experts and scientists, each one of you from your own aspect, bringing to our minds’ eye an image of all the spiritual beauty and values of that heritage, over centuries created by the Serbian people as the expression of its christian determination, its belonging to the vast sphere of the christian peoples of Europe. As for me, I decided to draw your attention to something unusual, painful as much as realistic, I decided to talk on the contribution of Europe itself to the destruction and dismantling of the cultural and spiritual heritage of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija in the last eight years, its contribution to the process occurring simultaneously with the martyrdom of the Living Church of God, in sufferings, murders, expulsions and pogrom on the Serb people, under the auspices and full attention of the democratic Europe and USA.
We present you our memories and reminders on the first days, and then, it was a whole year, since KFOR, as international peace forces, and UNMIK as a civil UN administration arrived to Kosovo and Metohija in June 1999. For our Serbian people, their arrival marks exactly the beginning of martyr and calvary-like path through sufferings, the sufferings inflicted by Albanian criminals inspired by jihadist Wahabi ideology, and under the “protection” of the international community. Yugoslav army and police had withdrawn from Kosovo, like almost all authority representatives, intellectuals, doctors, professors… and also a great number of our people (more than two thirds, or numerically around 250 000). Only the Serbian Orthodox Church, its clergy and monastics stayed with those who remained (around 130 000).
Through the first days and months, in the time of our people’s greatest torment, we took maximum of strenuous pains and efforts to stop the flows of Serbian refugees leaving Kosovo and Metohija, we tried to keep them to stay, in spite of all the sufferings, the victims and the pressures.
Even quick overview of all the events happening those days in Kosovo and Metohija would take us much out of the framework of one short summary like ours. Mostly, we were killed on daily basis, abducted, looted, our houses burned, our churches and monasteries destroyed, and thus jihad signs were left all over. We had no liberty of movement, no possibility to work, to school our children, there was no social care.
And so on, and so forth; day by day, month by month, year by year. All the promises by KFOR to protect us, to establish law and order, to secure the return of the expelled, and all other things foreseen by UNSC Resolution 1244 remained unfulfilled. Yet, the Serbs, suffering for Christianity and their fatherland’s sake, still persist in larger enclaves – the bravest ones. With them, the others stay, too. We stayed through with our people. We stayed and shared all the evil, for there was no good to share. We took pains to make or to compel the international community to fulfill its obligations, taken over by the Resolution. The results were weak, but you couldn’t do otherwise. As by a rule, the perpetrators of crimes, the Al Qaeda-inspired destroyers of our churches, remained unidentified, inadequately punished.
This represented an encouragement to the terrorists in Kosovo and Metohija, a reassurance that to the Serbs they can do whatever they wanted and bear no consequence. The international community was mislead and soothed, all since the time of Bernard Couchner, and until today, for the SRSG’s in their reports presented unrealistic and embellished conditions in the Province. Each one of the SRSG’s wanted to show the successes achieved during their mandates. These reports avoided to define and identify the real problems in Kosovo and Metohija, their approach to the issues was unilateral and biased. Such an indecisive and yielding attitude of the international community toward all kinds of criminals, and not the unresolved status of Kosovo, has, in fact, lead to the further escalation of violence against the Serbian people and his sanctuaries. Just as the words of the Holy Scripture describe it in the book of Revelation: “One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter” (Rev, 9:12).
And all of a sudden, unexpectedly and abruptly – here comes the tempest, an eruption of violence and crimes, culminating on March 17 2004. The Serbs are made experience their Kristallnacht. In only two days, a horrible pogrom happens; unheard of, never to have happened in the time of peace. This pogrom was well organized, synchronized and orchestrated. There are numerous proofs for that. But, let us leave it for later.
Very tragic, but, nevertheless, indispensable to say, all these are the results of the UN mission, which, only a month before the March events was defined a “success story”. NATO generals kept talking on the necessity of further diminishing its military presence, removing check points, abolishing military escorts to the Serbs when they travelled through Kosovo and Metohija. UNMIK representatives, on their side, repeatedly talked about complete transfer of all authorities to interim Kosovo, i.e. – Albanian, institutions. Serb representatives, Church representatives included, constantly kept warning that beneath the interim institutions’ façade, beneath the so called democracy and apparent multiethnicity, one can find, in fact, a horrific picture of ethnic violence and discrimination, lawlessness and various kinds of criminality. We were warning that, after the end of the armed conflict, and NATO forces arrival in 1999, not only the paramilitary structure of ex-UCK has not been disbanded, but it merely transformed into few satellite paramilitary and criminal organizations (KPC, ANA etc.) which actively kept arming, planning and carrying out the ethnical cleansing in the Province, with the aim of creating another Islamic-Albanian state in the Balkans, a state where there would be space only for ethnic Albanians and Islam.
On the very day the March pogrom began, Mr. Hashim Thaqi was to Washington, lecturing on multhietnicity and achieved progress of democratization in the Province. The events on the ground proved him immediately wrong. For, while Thaqi lectured on the democracy, thousands of Albanians, members of his party, savaged through Serbian villages, burned Serbian churches, leaving behind graffiti with acronyms of Thaqi’s PDK, terrorist ANA, KPC and other organizations, operating under the umbrella of the infamous KLA. Buses, packed with heavily armed, so called “war veterans”, moved from Thaqi’s home Drenica toward Pristina and Mitrovica where they clashed with international forces.
Unfortunately, March pogrom did not mark the end of violence against the Serbs. Violence kept on, in one way or another, all until today. Truthfully, there are other ways and means of “deserbization” of Kosovo and Metohija. In latest period, money is being offered, Serb property, houses and flats are being bought. Serbs move away, leave. Whole villages disappear again. Towns are being conquested. Serbian flats usurped. The number of inhabitants doubles, thanks to the incoming immigrants, newcomers.
Besides the testimonies of members of the international community, both those from KFOR contingents and UNMIK directly acquainted with the March events in Kosovo and Metohija, , we would like to shortly mention how many international institutions since 1999 carefully followed the situation in Kosovo and Metohija (e.g. USA State Department, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch etc.), especially concentrating on the destruction of the Serbian spiritual and cultural heritage (churches, monasteries, cemeteries), with a particular overview of March events. Occasional and annual reports were published, reporting and exactly identifying the derelictions and KFOR, UNMIK police and other international organizations failures, both in protecting people and its property, as well as cultural heritage.
Thus, in the USA Foreign department reports for 1999, on the implementation of human rights in different countries, “social violence upon the property of the Serbian Orthodox Church” is particularly indicated, for by the end of that year, “more than 80 Orthodox churches have been destroyed, damaged and desecrated” and the “clergy harassed”.
Similar reports of the same department were repeated in the next years, with the special attention given to the consequences of the March 2004 pogrom. According to the report, the March events “represent a serious blowback for the stabilization and normalization in Kosovo”, with the detailed description of all the horrors, particularly emphasizing the attacks on “cultural and religious heritage in Kosovo” in which “36 Orthodox churches, monasteries and religious and cultural sites have been damaged and destroyed”. Particular emphasis in the report is given to the fact that the “attacked religious objects date back to the 14th century. Two of them are on UNESCO list as main sites of universal importance, and the third one of regional importance”. Further, it is pointed out that “Kosovo security forces – KFOR, UNMIK, International Police and Kosovo Police Service (KPS) –catastrophically failed in their mission. This terrible failure of KFOR, particularly in its responsibility to enable “safe and secure environment” and establish “public order and security (according to 1244 UNSC Resolution) in regard to the March attacks is fully documented”.
Finally, at the mere end, comes the culmination of cynicism of the international community: Instead to adequately sanction and rightly punish the perpetrators of so many (many of them unspeakable) crimes and violence, the international community takes utmost pains to reward them, by its commitment to enable and present them with the independent Kosovo and Metohija, allowing them to finish, now impeded by no one, the ethnical and religious cleansing of the Serbs in the Province, as well as the cultural genocide upon the rich and centuries-old, cultural heritage of the Serb people.
The politics enabling all these horrors at the beginning of the third millennium, in the heart of Europe, is a felonious politics. It is simply impossible to understand how come the USA and its EU allies, while waging a sharp battle against terrorism all across the world (Afghanistan, Iraq, Hamas in Israel etc.) at the same time tolerate and give support to the very same Jihad terrorism in Kosovo and Metohija. And even worse: they take efforts to enthrone it in the independent Kosovo. It seems as if EU is not aware that, by enabling USA to accomplish the forceful islamization of Kosovo and Metohija, establishing the base for a militant Jihad in this Serbian Province, it ruins the mere foundations upon which EU itself is founded, for – Jihad has no limits. Its action from Kosovo will soon be felt in Europe herself, and probably in the USA, too. The sooner they understand this simple truth, the better it will be for all.
Bishop ARTEMIJE

The Africanization of the Balkans

The Africanization of the BalkansThe lessons of Zimbabwe are lost in darkest Kosovo
EuroPress ReviewBy Denis BoylesNovember 30, 2007

The report in Le Figaro that a trio of today's big powers - including Russia, the U.S., and the European Union - was at loggerheads in the Balkans, has a certain cold air of familiarity about it, right down to the annoying Serb nationalists at the center of it all.
The sudden chill between Russia and what we can now again call "the West" is the result of the collapse of talks between the Serbs and the Kosovars a couple of days ago. Their negotiations were supposed to be the "last chance" at working out a "settlement" - ostensibly of what relationship the Serbian province of Kosovo should have with Belgrade. In reality, the two sides were negotiating the terms of Serbian surrender demanded by the Kosovar terrorists they had once fought. The Serbs were willing to continue to come up with something, as the IHT report today, but most think it would be an empty exercise: On December 11, the international community will impose a "solution" and grant Kosovo the independence its leaders demand. The Serbs will be scarred and Russia might not like it, but they both had their chance to do something about it eight years ago, and they missed it. Serbia was being run by a dangerous buffoon and the Russians were broke.
Now the Russians are rich as czars and everybody's worried about what they might do - including, I guess, the Russians: Le Figaro's reporter says the Russian foreign minister is "very alarmed" at the consequences of forcing Serbia to accept Kosovo's independence. That Russian alarm was matched by American concern. Our negotiator, Frank Wisner, told Le Monde that "tensions are obvious." Sorting out the Balkans should be a snap. The countries there are little and cute. But the "Balkan powder keg" is a local trademark, and for good cause.
The place is a mess; for starters, the air war against Serbia left affairs in a state of perilous improvisation. The feebleness of Russia a decade ago is what permitted the bulldozer diplomacy of heavy-handed men like Richard Holbrooke, whose famous Dayton agreement criminalized not only Serbia's actual criminals, including especially Slobdan Milosevic, but also the entire Serbian nation. As the architect of America's diplomacy in the Balkans, Holbrooke left a legacy of lean-tos and shanties. The Dayton Accords ended the conflict in Bosnia by enshrining fractured politics in a state dominated by Muslims, and where today, consequently, "hundreds of mujahadeen fighters.are successfully spreading their fundamentalist Islamist views" at the expense of Bosnian Serbs, according to Der Spiegel.
As in Kosovo, the international community will eventually force a settlement on the Bosnian Serbs. In fact, tensions will rise this weekend, as the Islamic presidency seeks to impose reforms that will eliminate the semi-autonomy Dayton had granted the Serbs, Muslims, and Catholics, in favor of the Muslim majority. The resulting Islamic state may well drift further toward the Wahhabism now firmly taking root there.
Kosovo may travel a similar path path. During the last eight years of often ineffective NATO occupation, Kosovar Serbs have been effectively cleansed from all but the very northernmost districts. This constitutes an ironic end to a conflict that only came to America's attention when Milosevic's army tried to solve a backyard terrorism problem by driving Albanian Kosovars, including members of the Marxist-inspired Islamic Kosovo Liberation Army, back to Albania (a country that desperately didn't want them). The goal of the KLA, of course, was to cleanse Kosovo of Serbs, as newspapers and magazines - including NRO and The New York Times, in dispatches like this one and others from the 1990s - occasionally noted. The Republican in the White House may think the KLA is heroic now, but in 1999, the party felt differently, as this Senate Republican Policy Committee report makes clear.
The current Kosovo government is populated by the former terrorist leaders mentioned in that report, including Hashim Thaci, whose radical party defeated a more moderate one, and carried the elections that were held in the province on November 17. According to the BBC, Thaci, who's married to an Albanian mafia princess (Pristina's a long way from Queens), has long been associated with racketeering in Kosovo. He was also widely known as a ruthless opponent of the late Ibrahim Rugova, Kosovo's popular moderate leader who died in 2006. Wary of the ex-KLA leaders' ambitions, and maybe knowing a few things we don't, most Albanians avoided the election (turnout was around 45-percent, and Kosovar Serbs boycotted the vote entirely.)
But an independent Kosovo under the leadership of former KLA commanders is apparently a done deal, no matter what the Russians want. The statements from the Kosovar leadership imply the threat of violence if they are not appeased. Violence against whom? The few remaining Kosovar Serbs? The Independent's ill-formed "big question" is "Would the Balkans flare up again if Kosovo declared independence?" That's the wrong question, of course. The question is will violence flare up again if they don't declare independence? The Kosovars may not want to make the mistake the Serbs made. The "war" in Kosovo was widely supported in the U.S., largely on the basis of genuine outrage at what Milosevic was doing, and if the press made mistakes in reporting, as some claim they may have in Radac, for example, there's no escaping the fact that in Kosovo, the Serbs deserved to lose.
And lose the Serbs did. It was a neat, Clintonian kind of war, led by a general only Clinton could really love, Wesley Clark (Peter J. Boyer's entertaining New Yorker profile from 2003 is here), in which civilians may have been bombed in Belgrade but our casualty list was fairly short. Some wondered why we were cluster-bombing people in a country that had been our ally in two wars (at no small cost, either) instead of boycotting them into compliance with civilized norms, and exactly how much punishment Serbia deserves. But the larger question is why we were there at all. Kosovo became America's problem only because the Europeans were no better at solving Balkan crises than they are at negotiating with Iranians. As Ed Morrissey recently observed in his Captain's Quarters blog, "[Kosovo] is, and should always have been, a strictly European affair."
Maybe, but when there's a spliff of moral outrage to be passed around, nobody wants to miss the buzz. So enthusiasm in the U.S. for an independent Kosovo comes from right and left. William Finnegan's lively piece in the current New Yorker captures the mood about Kosovo in blue-state America perhaps better than it does the mood in Kosovo itself, judging from those election turnouts. But The Wall Street Journal also has demanded quick independence for Kosovo and lately has taken to giving Kosovo's current prime minister, Agim Ceku, op-ed space not just once, but twice in three months (but each time inviting James Jatras of the lonely American Council for Kosovo to write a letter to the editor, the most recent of which is here). Richard Holbrooke, one of the most authoritative American advocates of independence for Kosovo, endorsed Thaci, telling the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that he had known the chap "for about ten years" and had found that he had a "remarkable" way about him. No doubt.
Holbrooke and others are irritated by suspicions that an Islamic Kosovo might pose a security risk. They shrug off concerns by claiming, rightly, that most Kosovars are secular Muslims and that the place will never be an al-Qaeda base or a haven for extremists. But they say that about Bosnia, too. Besides, what was Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier telling that jury in the Jose Padilla trial? Something, Reuters reported, about "al Qaeda-affiliated groups" fighting in Kosovo in the '90s? I guess they were our allies, back in the day. Any friend of Thaci's.
If 55-percent of the Kosovo citizens couldn't bring themselves to vote at all, how rushed are they for independence? Maybe they realize that independence isn't as simple as a slogan, and that they'll have to live with whatever happens next. And maybe they too think there may be other ways to go, as this Christian Science Monitor article proposes. Kosovo's neighbors, including Macedonia, Montenegro, and Albania itself, are deeply concerned about the implications of an independent Kosovo, and the whole idea of a "greater Albania." It's Europe's Kurdistan in some ways.
The Balkan crisis recalls more than just Sarajevo, 1914. It also smacks of Salisbury, 1980, and a dozen other African capitals upon achieving an expeditious, politically convenient independence, in which something bad was replaced by something arguably worse. The common complaint about colonialism wasn't how it began but how it ended: When it was time to go, the retreating colonial power gave the keys to the guy with the most guns and ran for it, rather than trying to take the time to fight for a more careful solution that required careful thought, and saved lots of lives. Thus, the history of post-colonial Africa is littered with murderous tyrants, the most notorious of which is Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe (a recent NRO piece describing his early support from an unthinking international community is here). Kosovo's not a colony and southeastern Europe isn't Africa. But in Zimbabwe, we enthroned a known criminal. The result was much, much more criminality. Do we really want to do the same in the Balkans?

United States' Train Wreck Diplomacy

The American Council for Kosovo
http://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 28, 2007
"TRAIN WRECK": U.S. Policy Knowingly Sets Course for Diplomatic Collision Over Kosovo
State Department Pushes Throttle Despite Clear Warnings
Renewed Violence Likely - But, Hey, Let's Do It Anyway!
Editorial Comment from the American Council for Kosovo - You would think that anyone generally regarded as a skilled American diplomat, looking ahead to a looming confrontation among the major world powers, would be interested in finding a way to avert it. You would think that with U.S. forces stretched thin in so many places, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, such an American diplomat would not seek to trigger violence in a region that, if not entirely quiet, at least has not been sufficiently unstable as to require the deployment of additional American forces. You would think that with America engaged in a global struggle with jihad terrorism, any competent diplomat would want to make extra sure the U.S. took no action that would strengthen terrorist and organized crime elements.
If that was what you thought, then meet former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke.
Writing in the Washington Post, Ambassador Holbrooke as much as says that an Albanian Muslim unilateral declaration of independence will lead to renewed violence in the Balkans - not just in Kosovo but possibly spilling over into Bosnia. (Anyone remember Bosnia?) Yet, applauding such a declaration as "long overdue," his answer is to "beef up" the American and NATO presence in advance of the violence his recommended course would in fact trigger.
Perhaps even worse, Ambassador Holbrooke himself describes as a "train wreck" the inevitable confrontation U.S. recognition of an illegal and forcible attempt to separate the province from Serbia would provoke with Russia. (In a strange inversion of the truth, Ambassador Holbrooke blames Russia for the collision that would occur - because Moscow refuses to go along with an action that violates every accepted principle of the international system - not his friends at the State Department for insisting on it.) Meanwhile, Serbia's reaction to any illegal and forcible attempt to grab any of its territory should not lightly be dismissed. "No one should have any doubt that we will annul any unilateral act, and treat unilateral independence as a null, void and non-binding phenomenon," said Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, after once again offering a deaf Albanian delegation the widest autonomy enjoyed by any ethnic or religious minority anywhere in the world; but, he said, "Serbia will not let an inch of its territory be taken away."
It remains to be seen if the Bush Administration will proceed with eyes wide shut down the path Ambassador Holbrooke has marked. (And one can't help asking: What's he doing calling the shots for the Bush Administration, anyway?) But if they do, they can't say they weren't warned.
James George Jatras
Director, American Council for Kosovo
Other news worthy of note:
1. In November 21, 2007 Wall Street Journal letter-to-the-editor, "Mr. Ceku's Disorderly House," James George Jatras wrote: For the sake of brevity, let us focus on just one [assertion]: Mr. Ceku's suggestion that Kosovo, under his U.N.-supervised administration, has "put our structures in place and our house in order." This month's report by the European Commission tells a very different story: "Due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still widespread," the report said. "Civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism" and "Kosovo's public administration remains weak and inefficient," the report added. Furthermore, "the composition of the government anti-corruption council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of trafficking in human beings." War crime trials are being "hampered by the unwillingness of the local population to testify" and "there is still no specific legislation on witness protection in place," according to the report. "Civil society organizations remain weak" and "awareness of women's rights in society is low." If this is the "house" Mr. Ceku claims "is in order" in advance of what he hopes will be conferral of independence, one shudders to think what disorder would look like. To be sure, Mr. Ceku makes use of the usual dodge that Kosovo's progress is limited by the absence of "clarity on our future status," namely independence. But Taiwan, by contrast, has gone without such clarity for over half a century and is nothing like the disaster over which Mr. Ceku presides. Instead of falling for his fairy tales about Kosovo's fitness for sovereignty the international community needs to open its eyes to the reality of this corrupt, criminal, and nonviable entity. Granting independence to Kosovo, which would mean handing de jure power to those responsible for this state of affairs, can only turn a disaster into a catastrophe.
2. In a November 20, 2007 WorldNetDaily column, "Kosovo and Israel," Joseph Farah wrote: Let's face it: Americans don't care about Kosovo. So I want to talk about Kosovo today in a way that may help you care. If for no other reason, you should care because your government is about to shape the destiny of this province in Serbia in a way that is, well, immoral, illegal and counterproductive, to say the least. For starters, Kosovo is, and always has been, a part of Serbia. Its population is mostly Muslim and ethnically Albanian, in part due to a campaign of anti-Christian persecution that continues even under the watchful eye of the United Nations and NATO since 1999. Apparently George Bush and Condoleezza Rice believe America can win goodwill with radical Muslims around the world by creating a new state for them in Europe by ripping a province away from the predominantly Christian country of Serbia. Think about this: Globalists like Bush and Rice are at once promoting mergers and integration of sovereign nations into ever larger superstates and, at the same time, breaking apart tiny states like Serbia and Israel into even smaller pieces based on religious identity and ethnic issues. Why, on the one hand, does George Bush see no problem in welcoming tens of millions of Spanish-speaking Mexicans into the U.S. without regard to our laws but insists Arabs who recently moved into land controlled by Jewish Israel should have their own independent state? Is this consistent? Will Bush turn around at some time in the future and apply the same self-determination rules to his own country, creating an independent Spanish-speaking state? Supporters of Israel should be especially concerned about what is taking place in Kosovo. This is proving ground for the New World Order. Do you think the U.S. and the Western world should have the power to break apart sovereign nations that pose no threat whatsoever, carving them up and creating new states out of existing ones? I don't think so.
3. In a November 20, 2007 Boston Globe editorial, "First Kosovo, and then what?," the editorial page opined: While 20 of the EU's 27 members favor independence for Kosovo, nearly all dread a unilateral declaration. That prospect conjures up memories of Europe's careless acceptance of declarations of independence from Yugoslavia by Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia in the early 1990s. Those acts ushered in horrific wars and crimes against humanity. A unilateral lunge for independence by Kosovo could spur Serbs in Bosnia and Herzogovina - half that country's population - to follow suit. And Kremlin warnings against the imposition of any Kosovo formula not acceptable to Serbia raises the specter of Russian backing for independence movements in Georgia, Moldova, and even Ukraine. This would be a prescription for armed conflict around the periphery of Europe. Some European diplomats also worry about the United Nations carving new countries out of older countries' provinces. They recognize that separatist reflexes persist in regions such as Catalonia and the Basque country. Even the Flemish and Walloon populations of tiny Belgium may want a nationalist divorce. The Kosovo majority's impatience for independence is understandable, particularly since it has been subjected to a corrupt and inefficient UN tutelage. But the European, American, and Russian mediators should keep Serbia and the Kosovars at the negotiating table as long as it takes to hammer out a resolution to which both sides agree. This may mean incorporating the Serbian-populated area of Kosovo into Serbia proper, along with Serbian monasteries and holy sites. It may entail minor population transfers. But whatever the eventual solution, it should be accepted by the two peoples and not imposed by outsiders.

4. In a November 21, 2007 Washington Times Forum, "Jihad can't break our cold war addiction," Julia Gorin wrote: Despite al Qaeda and Iran considering it their greatest recent victory, the Balkans remain the most aggressively ignored region in the context of the war on terror - by media, by the blogosphere that is supposed to police the media, and by our politicians - busily feeding off the spoils of our suicidal machinations there. It is popularly thought that this forgotten and convoluted region is insignificant. Most people hardly remember the word "Kosovo" and even members of the conservative (and liberal) intelligentsia furrow their brows when someone is odd enough to bring it up. And yet "insignificant" Kosovo has so far managed to restart the Cold War; to lay the foundation for Europe's next Muslim state; to foist a terrorist neighbor onto Macedonia, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia; to break international law; to set a precedent for secessionist movements the world over; to reverse the American imperative in the War on Terror and the War on Drugs; and to expand al Qaeda's long-sought European base. In short, it has managed to turn America into a traitor to itself and the Free World it once led. Had the Right grasped the horror of what Bill Clinton's Balkan wars have achieved, and exposed the mainstream media lies that led to them, the Bush policy could have charted a different course there, one consistent with post-September 11, 2001, thinking, and conservatives would be setting the terms of debate today rather than constantly defending their war in Iraq.
5. In a November 23, 2007 EUobserver comment, "A Baltic Solution to a Balkan Problem," Peter Sain ley Berry wrote: We are not often given the privilege of seeing into the future. Certainly, if we expect something to turn nasty, we rarely know when that nastiness will begin. Yet we have on the European continent at the present time just such a time bomb with the days and minutes until it goes off quietly ticking away. I wonder that they don't erect a large digital display on the Berlaymont in Brussels; it might help to concentrate minds. I refer, of course, to Kosovo and the deadline of Monday 10 December by which date a determination of that province's final status has to be determined. At the time of writing, we are a mere 18 days away. Legally the province is a part of Serbia but has been under United Nations administration since NATO led troops drove out the Yugoslav army almost a decade ago. The population is overwhelmingly Albanian and in last Sunday's general election, boycotted by the few remaining Kosovo Serbs, the largest number of seats were taken by a party pledged to declare independence unilaterally after 10 December, if an agreed solution has not been found beforehand. Such a unilateral declaration has always been seen as potentially damaging to orderly relations and poses a special problem for the European Union whose members would be split over whether to recognise the new entity in the absence of a UN resolution. It would also split the USA and Russia whose sympathies lie respectively with the Kosovans and the Serbs; Russia wielding a UN veto over any independence proposal, not approved by its Serbian ally.


1. Mr. Ceku's Disorderly House
By James George Jatras
The Wall Street Journal - November 21, 2007
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119561138717200039.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The recent column by Agim Ceku ("Kosovo Wants Independence," Nov. 15) presents the critic with what military planners would call a target-rich environment. Virtually every assertion about Kosovo's prospects as an independent state screams out for rebuttal.
For the sake of brevity, let us focus on just one: Mr. Ceku's suggestion that Kosovo, under his U.N.-supervised administration, has "put our structures in place and our house in order." This month's report by the European Commission tells a very different story:
"Due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still widespread," the report said. "Civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism" and "Kosovo's public administration remains weak and inefficient," the report added.
Furthermore, "the composition of the government anti-corruption council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of trafficking in human beings."
War crime trials are being "hampered by the unwillingness of the local population to testify" and "there is still no specific legislation on witness protection in place," according to the report. "Civil society organizations remain weak" and "awareness of women's rights in society is low."
If this is the "house" Mr. Ceku claims "is in order" in advance of what he hopes will be conferral of independence, one shudders to think what disorder would look like. To be sure, Mr. Ceku makes use of the usual dodge that Kosovo's progress is limited by the absence of "clarity on our future status," namely independence. But Taiwan, by contrast, has gone without such clarity for over half a century and is nothing like the disaster over which Mr. Ceku presides.
Instead of falling for his fairy tales about Kosovo's fitness for sovereignty the international community needs to open its eyes to the reality of this corrupt, criminal, and nonviable entity. Granting independence to Kosovo, which would mean handing de jure power to those responsible for this state of affairs, can only turn a disaster into a catastrophe.
James George JatrasDirectorAmerican Council for KosovoWashington

2. Kosovo and Israel
By Joseph Farah
World Net Daily - November 20, 2007
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58770
Let's face it: Americans don't care about Kosovo.
So I want to talk about Kosovo today in a way that may help you care.
If for no other reason, you should care because your government is about to shape the destiny of this province in Serbia in a way that is, well, immoral, illegal and counterproductive, to say the least.
For starters, Kosovo is, and always has been, a part of Serbia. Its population is mostly Muslim and ethnically Albanian, in part due to a campaign of anti-Christian persecution that continues even under the watchful eye of the United Nations and NATO since 1999.
Apparently George Bush and Condoleezza Rice believe America can win goodwill with radical Muslims around the world by creating a new state for them in Europe by ripping a province away from the predominantly Christian country of Serbia.
Think about this: Globalists like Bush and Rice are at once promoting mergers and integration of sovereign nations into ever larger superstates and, at the same time, breaking apart tiny states like Serbia and Israel into even smaller pieces based on religious identity and ethnic issues.
Why, on the one hand, does George Bush see no problem in welcoming tens of millions of Spanish-speaking Mexicans into the U.S. without regard to our laws but insists Arabs who recently moved into land controlled by Jewish Israel should have their own independent state?
Is this consistent?
Will Bush turn around at some time in the future and apply the same self-determination rules to his own country, creating an independent Spanish-speaking state?
Supporters of Israel should be especially concerned about what is taking place in Kosovo. This is proving ground for the New World Order. Do you think the U.S. and the Western world should have the power to break apart sovereign nations that pose no threat whatsoever, carving them up and creating new states out of existing ones?
I don't think so.
It's a power grab. And it is wrong. Where does this stop? If the New World Order crowd gets away with it in Kosovo, as soon as next month, will Israel even need to agree to future land grabs by world powers? Serbia doesn't agree.
I want to go on record right now: I object to my government's participation in this fraud, this meddling, this unlawful intrusion into the affairs of a sovereign nation posing no threat to its neighbors.
By the way, this is going to be done over the strong objection of Russia - a long-time, historic ally of Serbia.
I thought Bush was interested in improving relations with his buddy, Vladimir Putin. Why is he sticking his finger in his eye over a piece of real estate that means nothing to the interests of the United States? Why is he siding with radical Islamists against pro-Western Christians in the Balkans?
Let me explain, again, in case the Bush administration has missed my many previous explanations of why this policy will come back to haunt the U.S.
The Islamist world Bush seeks to mollify and appease with this strategy will not recognize this effort as an act of goodwill. It will see it as a retreat by the West. It will see it as a victory for its cause and its tactics - namely terrorism. That's how jihadists see concessions of any kind. Once they have Kosovo, their demands for more territory will increase.
Already, even under NATO-U.N. control, Kosovo resembles a jihadist state. The Saudis are building fabulous new mosques. Ancient churches are being torn down. Armed militias roam the countryside intimidating the minority population of Christians.
If anyone should be able to recognize the danger of U.S. meddling in Kosovo, it is supporters of Israel. What's happening in Europe is a warning shot of what is to come in the Middle East.
I know it's off your radar screen. I know you feel like you have more important things to worry about. I know the fix is in. But it's time for Americans to stand up and scream about what their government has been doing, is doing and is about to do in Serbia with Kosovo.
Time is running out.

3. First Kosovo, and then what?
Boston Globe - November 20, 2007
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/11/20/first_kosovo_and_then_what/
EUROPE STILL has a Balkans problem. This is the message to take away from the victory of former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci's party in Saturday's parliamentary elections in Kosovo - balloting that was boycotted by the 10 percent of Kosovo's population who are Serbs.
The UN-supervised region is officially part of Serbia. But ever since NATO went to war in 1999 to force Slobodan Milosevic to end his ethnic cleansing of Albanian villages in Kosovo, the region's Albanian majority have set their sights on separation from Serbia. Recently, American, Russian, and European mediators have been trying to craft a formula for autonomy or phased independence that would be acceptable both to Serbia and the Albanian Kosovar government.
The mediators are due to report to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon by that date, and Thaci has threatened to declare independence unilaterally if they do not recommend independence for Kosovo. But any such unilateral action could set off instability across the Balkans and beyond.
While 20 of the EU's 27 members favor independence for Kosovo, nearly all dread a unilateral declaration. That prospect conjures up memories of Europe's careless acceptance of declarations of independence from Yugoslavia by Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia in the early 1990s. Those acts ushered in horrific wars and crimes against humanity.
A unilateral lunge for independence by Kosovo could spur Serbs in Bosnia and Herzogovina - half that country's population - to follow suit. And Kremlin warnings against the imposition of any Kosovo formula not acceptable to Serbia raises the specter of Russian backing for independence movements in Georgia, Moldova, and even Ukraine. This would be a prescription for armed conflict around the periphery of Europe.
Some European diplomats also worry about the United Nations carving new countries out of older countries' provinces. They recognize that separatist reflexes persist in regions such as Catalonia and the Basque country. Even the Flemish and Walloon populations of tiny Belgium may want a nationalist divorce.
The Kosovo majority's impatience for independence is understandable, particularly since it has been subjected to a corrupt and inefficient UN tutelage. But the European, American, and Russian mediators should keep Serbia and the Kosovars at the negotiating table as long as it takes to hammer out a resolution to which both sides agree.
This may mean incorporating the Serbian-populated area of Kosovo into Serbia proper, along with Serbian monasteries and holy sites. It may entail minor population transfers. But whatever the eventual solution, it should be accepted by the two peoples and not imposed by outsiders.
4. FORUM: Jihad can't break our Cold War addiction
By Julia Gorin
Washington Times Forum - November 21, 2007
http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071121/COMMENTARY/111210003/1012&template=printart
It appears to many American observers that Moscow has been gravitating toward Cold War behavior without any rationale. This would certainly be puzzling behavior, given that, as some astute observers have pointed out, this is a Russia that recalled the Red Army from everywhere outside Russian borders, a Russia that allowed its satellite states to be thrown out of power, a Russia that recently embraced freedom and capitalism and let us show them how to do it But soon after, the U.S. did something to sabotage, and ultimately reverse, this progress, making Russia legitimately wary of U.S. "interests" and leading it - and other nations - to conclude America is capable of being as mischievous as Russia. We bombed Europe. Specifically Serbia, for the crime of launching a counteroffensive against a terrorist insurgency in Kosovo whose aim was to snatch 15 percent of the country's land. And now the United States supports severing Kosovo from Serbia via a precedent-setting unilateral declaration of independence next month by the province's terrorist masters - over Moscow's logical objections. One of those terrorist masters, Agim Ceku - the province's "prime minister" - made the terrorist case in last week's Wall Street Journal. To this day, almost no one grasps the significance of the damage the 1999 intervention single-handedly did to American standing and American credibility, when the United States turned NATO into an aggressive body, attacking a sovereign nation fighting none other than Islamic-financed separatists within its borders. The current puzzlement at Russia's behavior harkens to a job interview I had the following year for a PR-writing position for a group called the Conference of Presidents of Major American-Jewish Organizations. Interviewing me was the executive vice president, a man named Malcolm Hoenlein. After discovering I was from Russia - and even recognizing my family name from the Refusenik lists he and other Jewish activists in the 1970s kept for clandestine visitations behind the Iron Curtain - he told me of a recent trip the and some other giants of organized Jewry took to Moscow. They were on a mission to impress upon the Russian government U.S. concerns about the selling off of Russia's military weaponry to the highest bidder. Mr. Hoenlein said he and his colleagues were blindsided by the chilly and condescending reception they got from Moscow. "They laughed at us," he told me. "They said, 'Why should we do what you Americans tell us?' The way we were treated - it was as if it was 20 years ago." I thought for a moment, then asked whether he thought it could have something to do with our recent actions in Yugoslavia (which, incidentally, were carried out while telling the Russians to take it easy on their own rebels, the Chechens). Mr. Hoenlein looked at me as if I had two heads: "What does that have to do with anything?" he snapped indignantly. But at that moment the phone rang, and afterward the subject was dropped. Despite al Qaeda and Iran considering it their greatest recent victory, the Balkans remain the most aggressively ignored region in the context of the war on terror - by media, by the blogosphere that is supposed to police the media, and by our politicians - busily feeding off the spoils of our suicidal machinations there. It is popularly thought that this forgotten and convoluted region is insignificant. Most people hardly remember the word "Kosovo" and even members of the conservative (and liberal) intelligentsia furrow their brows when someone is odd enough to bring it up. And yet "insignificant" Kosovo has so far managed to restart the Cold War; to lay the foundation for Europe's next Muslim state; to foist a terrorist neighbor onto Macedonia, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia; to break international law; to set a precedent for secessionist movements the world over; to reverse the American imperative in the War on Terror and the War on Drugs; and to expand al Qaeda's long-sought European base. In short, it has managed to turn America into a traitor to itself and the Free World it once led. Had the Right grasped the horror of what Bill Clinton's Balkan wars have achieved, and exposed the mainstream media lies that led to them, the Bush policy could have charted a different course there, one consistent with post-September 11, 2001, thinking, and conservatives would be setting the terms of debate today rather than constantly defending their war in Iraq. Had even one A-list blog bothered to investigate and shine a light on that debacle - which will yet prove itself to be the nexus of the free world's demise - there never would have been even any talk of a Clinton candidacy for 2008.
5. [Comment] A Baltic solution to a Balkan problem
By Peter Sain ley Berry
EUobserver - November 23, 2007
http://euobserver.com/9/25203/?print=1
EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - We are not often given the privilege of seeing into the future. Certainly, if we expect something to turn nasty, we rarely know when that nastiness will begin. Yet we have on the European continent at the present time just such a time bomb with the days and minutes until it goes off quietly ticking away. I wonder that they don't erect a large digital display on the Berlaymont in Brussels; it might help to concentrate minds.I refer, of course, to Kosovo and the deadline of Monday 10 December by which date a determination of that province's final status has to be determined. At the time of writing, we are a mere 18 days away.Legally the province is a part of Serbia but has been under United Nations administration since NATO led troops drove out the Yugoslav army almost a decade ago. The population is overwhelmingly Albanian and in last Sunday's general election, boycotted by the few remaining Kosovo Serbs, the largest number of seats were taken by a party pledged to declare independence unilaterally after 10 December, if an agreed solution has not been found beforehand.Such a unilateral declaration has always been seen as potentially damaging to orderly relations and poses a special problem for the European Union whose members would be split over whether to recognise the new entity in the absence of a UN resolution. It would also split the USA and Russia whose sympathies lie respectively with the Kosovans and the Serbs; Russia wielding a UN veto over any independence proposal, not approved by its Serbian ally. So much is known and indeed has been discussed many times as talks over UN envoy Marti Ahtisaari's plans for the province to have supervised independence have ground on.Now a spectacle far more hideous than a mere diplomatic split threatens to raise its ugly head. It is no exaggeration to say that the spectre of war is again hanging over the Balkans. The fear is that a unilateral declaration of independence could prompt a new invasion of Kosovo by Serbia with the immediate objective of securing those Serb communities in Mitrovica, Zvecan, Zubin Potok,and Leposavic on the Kosovo side of the border and leading to a de facto partitioning of the province. This would be resisted of course, both by the UN's NATO led peacekeeping forces - KFOR - and certainly by the Kosovans. In recent days the UN administration has dispatched KFOR forces to the Kosovo-Serb border, effectually closing it off to possible incursions. Inexorably we could be dragged into conflict again. And not just in Kosovo. For even a minor skirmish would threaten to destabilise the fragile status quo among the Serb communities in neighbouring Bosnia-Herzegovina, at least some of whom are still attached to the idea of a greater Serbia and not entirely comfortable in their Bosnian republic. It would not take much for them to come to the aid of the Kosovo Serbs and perhaps to try a little border alteration of their own between Bosnia and Serbia. Even Macedonia is still not completely stable with recent clashes between police and armed Albanians. By Christmas a swathe of the Balkans could be alight.That we can even be contemplating such a scenario in the heart of the European continent in the first decade of the twenty-first century and among nations whose future membership of the great European partnership is all but assured, is remarkable to say the least. That we can be contemplating such a scenario without the most strenuous efforts being made to avert the crisis in the capitals of the Union is almost unbelievable. Far from being at the heart of the European continent, enveloped by the Union itself on three sides and by the sea on the fourth, the Balkans is too often treated as some distant and far away region of which we know little and care less. A problem for the UN, perhaps, or NATO, and one to which we contribute certainly, but not as a major EU problem for which we take the prime responsibility in finding a solution.Well, that needs to change quickly if we are not to have another red stain on our proud European map.Of course solutions are being advanced - various kinds of independence along the 'now you see it now you don't' lines are proposed for Kosovo. The latest is to suggest that the province takes on a similar status to the Baltic Aland Islands, which belong to Finland but are, for all practical purposes, independent, neutral, and demilitarised. Their people speak Swedish to which country they are geographically and socially proximate.Such solutions might have worked had not the Kosovans been encouraged first by the Ahtisaari plan and then by the United States and certain EU members who let it be known that independence was their preferred solution. Their strong indications to the effect that they would recognise an independent Kosovo, regardless of any UN resolution, have of course led the Kosovans to believe they have nothing to lose by taking a hard line.Moreover, with a new electoral mandate (albeit on a low turnout of 43 per cent) behind him, Mr Hashim Thaci, the former Kosovo guerilla leader, is unlikely to back down now. Meanwhile the clock ticks away the minutes to potential disaster.It is difficult to see what can be done, but a start might be for the EU and the USA to declare - as Russia does - that they would not recognise an illegal independence, unilaterally declared by the Kosovans, without a UN resolution. That at least would be a signal that the international community had re-adopted the principle of international law as a means of settling inter-state disputes. This would send a clear signal to the Kosovans that although they might declare independence, no advantage, indeed considerable disadvantage, would result from such a declaration.If the Kosovans could be made to understand this, just possibly they could be persuaded to join a Baltic cruise to the Aland Islands and to study ways in which they could enjoy the benefits of self-government without having their own seat at the UN. And just possibly we could continue to be able to say that the last conflict on mainland Europe took place in the 20th century.The author is editor of EuropaWorld