Americans For Serbia News

Medvedev on Serbia-Russian Relations

2009-10-29T18:07:00.001-07:00

Prior to his official visit to Serbia, President Dmitry Medvedev gave an interview to the Serbian newspaper Evening News.

Yahoo StumbleUpon Google Live Technoratidel.icio.us Digg Reddit Mixx PropellerEvening News: The Serbian leadership is already calling your visit to Belgrade historic. You are the first Russian president to go to Serbia as an independent state. What do you view as important in your talks in Belgrade, and what prospects are there for the relations between the two countries?

Dmitry Medvedev: The upcoming visit to Belgrade is indeed very important for me. I count on further promoting our intergovernmental cooperation and improving brotherly relations between our peoples.

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This visit is timed to coincide with the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Serbian capital from fascist occupiers. This is an event of huge significance, because it’s filled with our common historical memory and pride for the courage of our fathers and grandfathers who defeated fascism.

This is the first visit of a Russian president to Serbia after its return to the international arena as an independent, sovereign state. At the same time, we are not building our relations from scratch. We have accumulated very rich experience of cooperation, based on the centuries-old traditions and mutual sympathy of our peoples. We are united by similar goals and mutually pragmatic interests.

In our upcoming contacts we hope to be able to discuss, in detail, plans for the implementation of huge joint projects, including those in energy, transport, cultural, humanitarian, science and technology cooperation. In other words, we have serious work to be done, not only to fortify the foundations of cooperation through our joint efforts, but also to help realize its huge potential to a fuller extent.

E.N.: Russia’s leadership and people have lent efficient and sincere support to the Serbs in the past decades in their struggle for maintaining the integrity of their territory, Kosovo and Metohija. Both Belgrade and Moscow share the opinion that the struggle for preserving Kosovo should be done within international law. What prospects do you see for the Kosovo problem when the big Western powers are ignoring international law?

D.M.: Unfortunately, the past decade – which has critical in the story of settling the Kosovo problem – has seen many tragic mistakes made. Some of them were made deliberately as part of the plan of intruding into the international practice of unilateral relations.

Despite the efforts by the champions of Kosovo independence, it appears impossible to present it as an irreversible process and to close the case. We believe it’s crucial to prove, step by step, that there is an alternative to unlawfulness. Without Serbia’s final word, no one will argue that the Kosovo question is settled.

It is up to Belgrade to put forward an initiative and it is up to us to back it consistently. This approach – with adjustments, given that the problem is very complicated – has proven efficient.

E.N.: Not long ago you said in New York that the period of a unipolar world was over. Obviously, President Barack Obama does realize there should not be a single “master” in the world. However, this process is not promising to be either fast or easy. What do you think should be done to bring more justice to the world and make it so that less force will be used? Can a reformed UN regain the respect it lost in the world?

D.M.: No one calls into question the fact that the world is undergoing profound transformation. Quite a new geopolitical situation is being developed and defined by the emerging multipolarity, new points of economic growth and political influence.

It became obvious that the strategy of unilateral relations only destabilizes the international situation, provokes tension and an arms race and aggravates interstate differences, as well as brings about more tension in inter-civilization relations. International security and cooperation will no doubt only gain from our US partners’ becoming aware that one country’s domination is unacceptable – which is what Obama told the UN General Assembly.

Adaptating to the new reality will not be fast by any means. The important thing, though, is that the US administration is inclined toward multilateral diplomacy and is realizing the necessity of relying on the UN’s potential.

Such a unifying agenda is being formed in international relations on a wide range of issues, which is caused by global challenges common to all the states. They are seeking ways out of the world financial crisis, and ways to counteract the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and means of their delivery, and to fight international terrorism. This trend increases the significance of so-called network diplomacy and a multilateral mechanism to the secure involvement of all states into the global processes.

Today the need for the expanding authority of informal collective leadership, such as in the case of G20, is higher than it has even been before. Demand is also growing for the United Nations as a time-tested tool of balancing the interests of different nations in compliance with the international laws and regulations. The significance of the UN in addressing such global issues as overcoming the economic crisis and settling conflicts has by no means decreased. The UN Charter was in fact originally developed in view of a multi-centered world. Recent years have supplied us with abundant examples proving that bypassing the UN Charter and Security Council is not only inefficient in terms of problem solving, but in fact can expand the conflict zone.

Certainly, the changing world requires the United Nations as a global organization, together with all of its institutions, to adjust to the new reality. Yet we should bear in mind that UN reform (including the expansion of Security Council) is not an objective itself. Any reforms and changes should be targeted at increasing the UN’s efficiency and securing its central role in international affairs. Reform-related decision-making should be governed by the task of maintaining the unique international nature of this organization. Achieving this is conditional on obtaining as wide a consensus as possible among the member states on all aspects of reform.

E.N.: Russia’s success is always good news for the majority of Serbians. The progress is striking compared to the times of Boris Yeltsin’s rule. Yet you and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin believe that Russia should upgrade manufacturing plants and move away from relying on the proceeds from the export of raw materials. How do you plan to encourage upgrading the manufacturing facilities on the federal level? How realistic are your plans to have the manufacture output volumes dramatically increased and the volumes of import significantly decreased by 2020?

Today we are working on the transition from raw materials-oriented economics to economics relying on innovations, upgrading and technological progress. This should secure Russia the place it deserves in the modern world, the world of the 21st century.

D.M.: As much as the political, social and economic changes in the 1990s were painful and dramatic, they laid the groundwork for the market model of economic development in Russia. Throughout the following years, we pursued measures to strengthen the private property institution, encourage entrepreneurship, and improve the conditions for business activities and investments.

We have recently defined five key priorities which are being developed under direct presidential control. These priorities are the energy-saving and efficient energy use issues (which includes development of new types of fuel), nuclear technologies, pharmaceutical and medication production industry, cutting-edge information and software technologies, as well as outer-space development and telecommunications. I am chairing the relevant commission in charge, whose staff includes state officials, representatives of big and medium-sized business, prominent scientists and researchers, experts, and public representatives.

I’d like to add that we are alert to any incoming signals and feedback indicative of the necessity to introduce changes to institutional, tax, depreciation, and budget policies. And I think we are quite capable of achieving significant progress in terms of upgrading and modernization within the next 5 to 10 years.

E.N.: In many of your interviews you and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin admit quite honestly that you have achieved little results in fighting Russia’s biggest evil, corruption. What is the major obstacle in the way of eradicating bribery?

D.M.: It is well known that all states, even the most developed ones, face the problem of corruption, to a larger or smaller degree. In Russia, it is indeed a very acute problem. According to polls, over half of the country’s population considers corruption to be the major hurdle in the way of Russia’s economic advancement.

It may seem unexpected at first glance that one of the major difficulties in fighting corruption is technological underdevelopment. The state of things can be dramatically changed by building an informed society, and by increasing the quality and transparency of public services (many of which should be conducted in electronic format). Wide public access to information about the state institutions’ activities and minimizing the necessity of direct personal contact between a citizen and a public official will not let the “corruption links” build up. So it is not accidental that computerization of public affairs and economy, together with implementing the “electronic government” principles on all levels of power, are among our top priorities in drive for modernization.

Of course, it is by no means the only way of fighting corruption. The main measures are captured in our “National Anti-corruption Action Plan,” which primarily focuses on preventive measures. We have already developed the required legal framework using international best practices.

I am sure that all these measures will be successful, including those that we introduced recently – I mean controlling the income and property records of state officials.

The political will of the country’s leadership is quite clearly stated. Fighting corruption should not deteriorate into red tape or a fanatical campaign. The results cannot be achieved immediately, so the major thing for us is to follow consistently all the planned actions, not to give up and to promote intolerance to corruption in our society.

E.N.: When you were in the government, you were in charge of one of the most important issues of Russia’s future: demography. Before the beginning of the financial crisis there were a lot of ideas regarding birthrate stimulation plans, as well as fighting alcohol addiction. What are you going to do in the next years to resolve the problems, to prevent the situation in which many Russia’s regions will be deserted in several decades?

D.M.: Really, the problems of demography are among the most complicated for our country. The population increase ceased to grow at the beginning of the 1990s, and then the death rate began to exceed the birth rate.

Two years ago the Russian Federation adopted a demographic policy for the period up to 2025, including principles and priorities, as well as the main working guidelines in that sphere. Apart from birthrate stimulation and fighting alcohol addiction, which you’ve mentioned, there are also measures aimed at mortality reduction (including citizens of working age). Moreover, the concept provides for measures regulating the migration process.

This is a long-term document, well prepared and well thought. Our task is to follow its guidelines and fulfill all the previously made decisions; first and foremost, the social obligations taken by the state. And we are to do it in spite of the economic crisis and reduction of the budget income.

Just a year after the beginning of the demographic program’s implementation, we received the first results. The demographic results for the year 2007 reveal that in Russia, 1.6 million children were born, which is 8% more than in 2006. It was the highest rate since 1991.

The birth rate increase continued in 2008 and 2009. For the period of January-August of this year, the mortality has decreased by 4%, and the birth rate has grown by 3.6%. I admit, these rates are not very high so far, but they do demonstrate a positive trend. Today we are working on fixing it and developing the support system – first of all for young families.

Over a million young mothers yearly use “birth allowance certificates” to choose medical institutions which would provide the most qualified assistance. Unemployed mothers – about 1.2 million – started receiving allowance for baby care for children aged up to one and a half. The system of maternity (family) capital became a strong stimulus for birth rate growth. When the second child is born into a family, the boy or girl is eligible for an allowance that can be used for the child’s education, improvement of the living conditions, or it is possible to transfer the money to the cumulative part of the mother’s pension. All in all in 2007, about 1.5 million such certificates were issued.

An important practical solution was the implementation of the “Residential Property for Young Families” sub-program within the framework of the “National Residential Property Program for the Years 2002–2010.” Thanks to this sub-program, thousands of young families moved into new, modernized and comfortable apartments.

The following number speaks in support of the fact that we are on the right track: this August, the natural population increase has reached 1,000 people.

Our experience tells us that positive results are achieved when very specific and clear measures are undertaken. The key things here are consistency and a systematic approach, as well as alignment in actions of all levels of power.

E.N.: Recently you were very optimistic in one of your interviews about the possibility of reaching agreements with the Americans on missile defense and reduction of nuclear arms. Many Russian generals say that at present, significant reduction of nuclear potential is more beneficial for the US than for Russia, because the US is already testing new types of arms. According to your experts, how many nuclear warheads are necessary to provide undisturbed sleep for your citizens?

D.M.: Let’s proceed from the fact that unfortunately there is no treaty on missile defense with Americans so far. However, I gave a positive assessment of President Barack Obama’s decision to abandon the plan of strategic missile defense deployment on the territories of Poland and the Czech Republic.

As for the new American project of creating a global missile defene (including its European segment), here we will have detailed negotiations on the level of experts. We need to assess it from the point of view of Russia’s national security interests.

When we speak of nuclear disarmament, we assume that nuclear arms cannot be applied in practice. And we remember that its existence has been serving as a guarantee for strategic stability and security in the world for many decades. At present we think it necessary to keep the balance of forces with the US. On our part, we are geared to keep nuclear arms at the minimum level necessary to provide Russia’s and our allies’ national security.

We announced several times that we are ready to reduce the number of strategic offensive arms bearers more than threefold. At present, negotiations are held in Geneva to work out a new legally binding Russian-American treaty for reductions and limitation of strategic offensive arms, and to fix that level. We are doing the utmost to sign the corresponding document in December.

I am sure that resolving the issues of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament are among our mutual interests. That would be a strong factor for formation of a favorable international atmosphere.

Albanian Leading Push for UNESCO Renaming of Kosovo

2009-04-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

Serb heritage in Kosovo renamed
Apr 23, 2009
Over thousand years of Serbian heritage in Kosovo has been deliberately renamed as “Kosovan” by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee who is, says Serbia, being pressured by Western powers to falsify history in order to support the claim that Kosovo is not the integral part of Serbia and that it must be independent.

“This scandalous and outrageous attempt of mistaken cultural identity has never before happened within this organization and we will not allow it to happen now,” Serbia’s foreign minister Vuk Jeremic told the reporters in Paris.

Certain countries, led by Albania, are leading an initiative for the Committee in Seville, Spain, to be held from 22-30 June, to re-register Serbian heritage as non-Serb.

“These are the holy objects not of Kosovo, but of the Serbian Orthodox Church,” Jeremic said.

Jeremic called on the international community, in particular UNESCO, to prevent attempts at re-writing the cultural history of that province.

“The Republic of Serbia, in a recent exchange of letters, signaled to UNESCO our commitment to the use of funds collected during and subsequent to the donors’ conference to the tune of 5.5 million dollars. This reaffirms the traditional, good faith partnership between UNESCO and the Republic of Serbia in the area of cultural heritage, to the benefit of all,” said Jeremic.

Jeremic warned that using culture and falsifying it in order to force Serbia to accept the illegal declaration of independence made by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian extremists does not bring the region closer.

“I fervently believe that only when we come to look at diversity as a source of strength only when we embrace the view that individual cultures genuinely prosper and progress when they come into contact with other cultures can we say that the tide has inexorably turned in favor of peace and a common sense of destiny,” Jeremic said.

UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) is set to rule on the illegality of Kosovo’s self-proclaimed independence proclaimed in 2008. Since 1999, Serbian heritage along with ethnic Serbs have been targeted for eradication by ethnic Albanian extremists in Kosovo.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin has asked the international community not to repeat the mistakes made in mediating in the resolving of the conflict in Kosovo and Metohija.

“Unilateral solutions should not be enforced during mediation, and no cause should be given to suspect a mediator of being biased or inclined in favor of one of the sides,” Churkin said.

Jeremic said he could not imagine a 21st century in which an act of secession is left to the free will of ethnic communities which maintain that their human rights are treated in an unsatisfactory manner by the state in which they live.

“That would be a very unstable world. That is why I believe the Court will decide in favor of the preservation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a sovereign democratic state,” Jeremic said.

No matter what the ICJ decides, says Jeremic, Serbia will never recognize Kosovo.

April 23, 2009
SERBIANNA

Tags: Kosovo

Pascha on Network Television

2009-04-17T06:18:00.001-07:00

ABC Network to Air Pascha: The Resurrection of Christ
Apr 3, 2009

NEW YORK – The video presentation of “Pascha: The Resurrection of Christ,” a program highlighting Orthodox Christian Pascha, or Easter, will broadcast on ABC affiliates nationwide this month. The program, produced by Greek Orthodox Telecommunications and sponsored by FAITH: An Endowment for Orthodoxy and Hellenism, highlights Holy and Great Week, focusing on the deeply moving and ancient services that recount the Gospel narrative leading to the Death and Resurrection of Christ. Archbishop Demetrios of America leads a procession of the faithful around the church and outside where, following the reading of the Gospel of the Resurrection, they proclaim the joyous hymn “Christ is Risen!”

ABC Network has released broadcast dates and times, with additional coverage information to come in the coming week. Below you will find a listing (as of April 3) of ABC affiliates by state. Please check the listing for exact date, time and station. Please contact the Department of Communications if you need assistance.

You may also log on to www.PaschaABC.goarch.org or www.interfaithbroadcasting.com/onair.aspx?PID=306 for a complete listing.

DVD copies of the program available for pre-sale ($25, plus $6 shipping). To pre-purchase please contact the Department of Communications at 212.774.0244 or email gotel@goarch.org.

Church Ask That Quarrel Between Archbishop Artemije and Bishop Teodosije End

2008-08-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

Serbia: Church calls for end to Kosovo monastery quarrel

Belgrade, 26 August (AKI) - The Serbian Orthodox Church on Tuesday called for a quarrel between two of its senior officials in Kosovo to cease, saying unity was vital at a moment when Serbs there were going through difficult times.

A Synod of all archbishops convened in Belgrade after hardline Kosovo archbishop Artemije dismissed bishop Teodosije, the head of the Kosovo monastery Visoki Decani last week.

The monastery's monks violently resisted Teodosije's dismissal, turfing Artemije's secretary, Simeon out of the monastery and reportedly injuring his foot in the process.

Artemije claimed Teodosije and his allies were undermining his position at the request of the United States and spreading lies about his alleged business ventures.

The archbishop is the staunchest opponent of Kosovo's independence, declared by majority ethnic Albanians in February. He would like Serbs to cut all cooperation with foreign and local officials in Kosovo.

The more moderate Teodosije, on the other hand, argues the the church should work with any authorities to ensure the protection of Kosovo's tiny Serb minority and its shrines.

But Belgrade daily Politika and some analysts said that behind the quarrel was actually a power struggle for the successor to ailing patriarch Pavle, who has been hospitalised since last November.

Artemije and rival archbishop Amfilohije have emerged as the main candidates to take over the spiritual leadership from Pavle of some eight million Orthodox Serbs.

After a four-hour meeting, the Synod said: “The key decisions on this and other urgent matters will by taken by the highest Church body, the Holy Church Assembly in a foreseeable period of time."

It pleaded for the Kosovo quarrel to stop in the meantime.

Some reports have however quoted unnamed church sources as saying Artemije is seeking to retain control over the lucrative business of the reconstruction of Serb shrines in Kosovo.

A large work amound of the work was carried out by a Belgrade-based firm under his control, the sources said.

Kosovo independence was recognised by the United States and over 40 countries including most other western powers.

But Belgrade continues to oppose the move and to wage a diplomatic battle to retain Kosovo.

There Goes Kosovo

2008-01-31T13:57:00.001-08:00

January 31, 2008There Goes Kosovo
January 31, 2008.Source: The American Spectator
There Goes Kosovo
By Doug Bandow

Kosovo is preparing to declare independence with American support. Although the Bush administration apparently expects nothing much to happen, the process is likely to be both divisive and destabilizing.
Relations among Europe, Russia, and America could sour. Serbian politics may lurch further to the nationalist right; the Radical Party's Tomislav Nikolic led the first voting round for president Sunday before last. Another Balkans war is possible, though thankfully unlikely.
Friends of Kosovo's independence argue that stability isn't everything. The U.S. has no intrinsic interest in Kosovo's status and would be best served to stay out of it, but that ship sailed long ago.
Washington spent most of the 1990s working overtime to break up Serb-dominated Yugoslavia while forcing ethnic Serbs to remain in the newly independent states. The new countries Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia were allowed to form, but Serbs locked in Bosnia and Croatia, in particular, were expected to cheerfully accept their fate.
The U.S. applied the same policy to Kosovo, a constituent part of Serbia. In 1999 Washington led NATO in a military campaign to aid the ethnic Albanian forces, eliminating Serb authority over the territory.
The Bush administration has built on the Clinton administration's policy. After presiding over unproductive faux "negotiations" predicated on Kosovo's ultimate independence, the administration now plans to recognize the new nation even if it fails to win United Nations approval.
Of course, Washington insists that all ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo must remain in the new state. As before, secession from Serbs is okay, but secession by Serbs is prohibited. Sound fair?
GRANTED, SORTING THROUGH the conflicting claims involving Kosovo ain't easy. Once Serbian heartland, it hosts the site of the Battle of the Blackbirds, where the Serbs lost to the Ottomans in 1389 (the loss probably shaped Serbian consciousness more than would have a victory -- such is the way of the Balkans).
Over time the population shifted to an ethnic Albanian majority, in part due to Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito's efforts to dampen Serbian nationalism in the multi-ethnic communist state.
In the 1980s it was Serbians who complained of misconduct by the ethnic-Albanian majority in Kosovo. In 1982, the New York Times reported on "almost weekly incidents of rape, arson, pillage and industrial sabotage, most seemingly designed to drive Kosovo's remaining indigenous Slavs--Serbs and Montenegrins -- out of the province."
That all changed after Slobodan Milosevic used an appearance in Kosovo in 1987 to ignite Serb nationalism and leapfrog into national leadership. With his rise, Belgrade reasserted Serb control over Kosovo.
When Yugoslavia broke up, the secession of Bosnia and Croatia produced particularly gruesome conflicts, since both of those provinces contained many ethnic Serbs who wished to remain independent if not in Serbia.
Although ethnic Serbs may have been responsible for the bulk of atrocities, Bosniacs and Croats also freely murdered Serbs and each other. The largest single episode of ethnic cleansing prior to the Kosovo war was conducted against ethnic Serbs in Croatia's Krajina region, where the battle damage remained evident for years. Most of Krajina's ethnic Serb residents have yet to return.
Serb-Albanian relations in Kosovo also deteriorated as the 1990s proceeded. Serb rule was heavy-handed; Albanians, who made up the vast majority of the population, created alternative government and social institutions; the Kosovo Liberation Army (labeled a "terrorist" group by the U.S.) began attacking Serb officials and Albanian "collaborators"; the Serbian government responded brutally; fighting expanded and casualties increased.
EVEN AS 1999 dawned, the war, though tragic, was minor as ethnic and sectarian conflicts go, costing perhaps two thousand lives over a couple of years. About the same time a quarter of a million people were slaughtered in Sierra Leone. But the Clinton administration, led by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, decided to go to war against Serbia, and American bombers forced a quick surrender.
Since 1999 the territory has been run by the UN and NATO, more or less. After the allied victory ethnic Albanians kicked out 200,000 or more Serbs and other minorities, such as Roma. Kosovo's guerrillas took over as leaders -- of both the political system and abundant criminal enterprises. Three years ago ethnic Albanian mobs arose to murder and displace ethnic Serbs, and to burn and wreck Serb homes, churches, and monasteries.
Perhaps it's no surprise, then, the U.S. and Europeans want to be done with the mess that they helped to created. Desultory negotiations over Kosovo's status occurred over the last two years, but the outcome was never in doubt. The allies made clear to the ethnic Albanians that independence would result if no accord was reached, so no accord was reached.
The Serbs refused to be bought off with the promise of European Union membership and the Russians said no to another Western fait accompli. So now Kosovo plans to declare independence, perhaps in days, and the U.S. and most Europeans say they will recognize the new state.
The most sensible policy for Washington would be to step back and indicate that there will be no recognition without genuine negotiations, that is, talks without a predetermined outcome, between Kosovo and Serbia.
On the table should be all options, including overlapping citizenships (Kosovo, Serb, EU), and secession within secession, that is, allowing the ethnic Serbs concentrated to Kosovo's north, principally around Mitrovica, to remain in Serbia.
THE U.S. SHOULD halt the independence bandwagon, though not because Washington has an intrinsic reason for objecting to Kosovo becoming a separate nation. In principle the status of this particular piece of real estate should not matter much to America. Whether the ethnic Albanians or Serbs rule in Pristina is intrinsically irrelevant to U.S. interests.
However, Washington has spent more than a decade unbalancing the Balkans. By accelerating the break-up of Yugoslavia with the early recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence, the allies short-circuited negotiations, most importantly over the status of minorities within the breakaway states. U.S. diplomats also discouraged early settlement of the Bosnian conflict, further bloodying allied hands.
Washington and Brussels have done the same in Kosovo. Starting in 1998 the allies took the side of the ethnic Albanians, encouraging their intransigence in ensuing negotiations. Maybe a peaceful outcome was never possible. We will never know because of U.S. and European intervention.
After the 1999 Kosovo war, the allies essentially promised the ethnic Albanians independence and dismissed any compromise, such as allowing ethnic Serbs to secede from Kosovo. All the while the West blamed Belgrade for refusing to accept the ethnic Albanian position. Now those same allies are greenlighting a declaration of independence by Pristina.
The outcome of this strategy is not likely to be pretty. There will be a new, violent, and unstable state, permeated by crime and possibly open to terrorists, in the Balkans.
This will push Serbia away from Europe, conceivably leaving a large economic and political hole in the Balkans. The allied approval of Albanian self-determination will encourage other secessionist movements in the Balkans and elsewhere as ethnic and political minorities demand the same "right" of independence. Western dismissal of Russia's interests will make Moscow more antagonistic and assertive. Failure to resolve the status of Serbs within Kosovo risks triggering conflict between ethnic Albanians and Serbs, and possibly Kosovo and Serbia.
Nice work all around.
Washington still has time to say no and mitigate some of the consequences of its past meddling in the Balkans. But, at this point, the odds aren't good.
Doug Bandow is the Robert A. Taft Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire (Xulon Press).
Relics of St. Tsar Lazar
Please call Pres. Bush 202 456 1111
tty 202 456 6218 (for the deaf).
Secretary Condoleeza Rice 202 647 4000
Personal Assistant Laura Lineberry 202 647 9572
Regional Director Europe/Eurasia Dan Roseblum 202 647 5222
Please tell them that you do not support the United States endorsement and recognition of Kosovo as an Independent State.
Also if any of you are fans of Michael Bolton who happens to be cousin to John Bolton, please call him and ask him to, if he supports John Boltons stance on Kosovo-support our cause. IF we organize a protest--the people like Bolton who supports us will come.
IN Christ,
xenia

Diplomat Forced to Quit Upon Being Exposed that Orders Were Being Received for U.S. Government--Christian Phobia in Europe

2008-01-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

EU BUSINESS (UK)Slovenian diplomat quits after report of US meddling in EU presidency29 January 2008, 19:33 CET(LJUBLJANA) - The Slovenian foreign ministry announced the resignation of atop Slovenian diplomat Tuesday who press reports claimed had taken ordersfrom the United States about Slovenia's EU presidency.The Foreign Ministry announced on its website that political director MitjaDrobnic had resigned and would be replaced by state secretary MatjazSinkovec during Slovenia's six-month term as EU president.Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel "has accepted the resignation of politicaldirector Mitja Drobnic", the ministry said in a statement.The resignation comes after a report in the daily newspaper Dnevnik lastweek which said that Slovenia had been taking orders from the US.According to the newspaper, which quoted an internal foreign ministryreport, Drobnic had met in December with US Assistant Secretary of StateDaniel Fried, who allegedly suggested to the Slovenian side what theirpriorities should be during the EU presidency.Fried encouraged Slovenia to be among the first to recognise theindependence of the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, the newspaperclaimed.Fried had also reportedly told Drobnic that there was "no need to worry"about the recognition of Kosovo's independence by all EU members, but thatthe most important thing was for an EU mission of police and lawyers to besent to the province "despite critical positions of Russia and Serbia," thenewspaper said.Following 18 months of failed negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina,the majority ethnic Albanian province has vowed to declare independence.The United Nations has run Kosovo since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaigndrove out Belgrade's forces waging a crackdown on independence-seekingethnic Albanians who make up 90 percent of the population.Foreign Minister Rupel has not so far denied the existence of the internalreport, nor its content, but said earlier this week that an investigationhad been launched to find the source of the leak.In view of the leak, "we are having some difficulties with ourinterlocutors, especially from the US," Rupel told Slovenian statetelevision late Monday.Slovenia, a former Yugoslav state that declared independence in 1991, is thefirst new EU member to take over the EU presidency and it has made Kosovoone of its priorities during its six-month term.
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www.religionandpolicy.org

Institute on Religion and Public Policy News Update

JANUARY 29, 2008
JANUARY 29, 2008
Russian bishop concerned about Christianophobia in Europe

Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in European international organizations, has drawn the attention of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to the increase in the crime against Christians in Europe."We often hear about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and very little is said about Christianophobia, which is gaining strength in many European countries," Bishop Hilarion said during a meeting between Barosso and representatives of the Orthodox Churches to the European Union.Among the forms of Christianophobia in Europe, Bishop Hilarion mentioned the removal of Christian symbols from the public sphere, the denigration of Christianity and refusal to recognize the Christian heritage of Europe, the persecution of people who openly express Christian convictions and who choose to live according to Christian moral standards."Mentioning the recent discussion of the matter in the British parliament, Bishop Hilarion called for a similar discussion in European international organizations and called on representatives of the European churches to take part in it.He also informed the European Commission president on the recent initiatives by the Russian Orthodox Church regarding the human rights debate.

Serbia's Choice

2008-01-25T23:30:00.000-08:00

January 26, 2008.Source: Chronicles

Serbia's Choice

by Srdja Trifkovic

The political consequences of the first round of presidential election in Serbia, held on January 20, are significant, and they will remain that significance regardless of the outcome of the second round on February 3. President Boris Tadic lost the first round last Sunday to Tomislav Nikolic of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) by almost five percentage points and is fighting an uphill battle to retain the presidency.
The voters have given overwhelming support-over 55 percent-to the candidates who are adamant that there can be no compromise over Serbia's fundamental position on Kosovo. Those three candidates, Tomislav Nikolic (the Radical Party, SRS), Velimir Ilic (Our Serbia, NS) and Milutin Mrkonjic (the Socialist Party, SPS), say that there can be no compromize over the status of Kosovo in exchange for some vague promise of Serbia's eventual "European integration."
It appears that Boris Tadic and his followers have badly overestimated the President's popularity. They may have mecome the victims of their own peopaganda, which is easier to understand in view of the fact that all the mainstream print and electronic media in Serbia-which are either financed or owned Western corporations, governments and quasi-NGOs-are openly pro-Tadic. Such unfounded self-confidence had prompted the pro-Western camp to force this election prematurely, and without any regard for the views of their coalition partners, the Democratic Party of Serbia of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. Accordingly, on December 12 of last year Speaker of the Assembly of the Republic of Serbia Oliver Dulic-a ranking official of Tadic's Democratic Party (DS)-called an early presidential election for January 20.
This decision was made with prior approval of Brussels and Washington but, let us emphasize, without any previous consultation with Prime Minister Kostunica. He and the DSS were opposed to the poll, arguing that it was highly inappropriate to call an early presidential election at a time when the threat of unilateral secession of Kosovo is real and ought to take precedence over domestic political squabbles. The turmoil of an election campaign, it was argued from Kostunica's camp, could threaten unity of the country and the coherence of the shaky ruling coalition at a vulnerable moment.
The result of the first round makes Kostunica's position decisive for the outcome of the second. The Prime Minister set his terms on January 23, when he asked Tadic to formally commit himself not to sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union if the EU decides to dispatch a civilian administrative and police mission to Kosovo-a key move that is viewed as an implicit go-ahead for independence. Kostunica favors a resolution stating that the EU mission would violate UN resolution 1244 as well as the Serbian Constitution, which would mean that the EU has voluntarily cancelled the agreement initialled last November.
Tadic would be loath to accept such terms, because he claims that the association process should proceed regardless of the Kosovo issue. On the other hand, without Kostunica's endorsement he will find it haerd to garner an additional 15 percent of votes necessary for victory. In other words, things are becoming uncomfortably complicated for Tadic. He and his supporters had wanted this election to be held as early as possible because they feared that the unilateral proclamation of Kosovo's independence (UDI)-which is certain to be be supported by most key Western powers-would fuel Serbian anger and work to the detriment of "pro-Western, moderate reformists." The timing of the election was accordingly chosen by the European Union (EU), the United States, and the leaders of the DS, as a means of getting Tadic re-elected before the unilateral declaration of independence in Pristina.
In this manner Serbia has been subjected to the repetition of a sordid scenario we have witnessed just over a year ago. Last January the unveiling of the Ahtisaari plan was deliberately postponed by a month, so that the Serbian parliamentary election could be held on January 21st before its terms were known. At that time the ruse had the same objective as today: to help Tadic by not burdening his party with the mortgage of Ahtisaari's disastrous plan supported by all major Western powers.
Both then and today, Tadic's rhetoric promised the squaring of the circle: saving Kosovo on the one hand, but getting ever closer to Europe on the other. This is palpably an impossibility. All key Western leaders have stated, in one form or another, that Serbia would have to chose between retaining its claim on Kosovo and getting closer to the EU. Such statements have come from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his predecessor Tony Blair, from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and a veritable array of American bureaucrats.
Most Serbs are not a priori Euro-skeptics. A Gallup Poll conducted a year ago shows that, generally speaking, the majority looked favourably on the EU. Thdere is a catch, however: an even greater majority is adamant that Kosovo is an inalienable part of Serbia. In subsequent polls, most Serbs have said that they would not give up the title to Kosovo in return for the accelerated prospect of EU membership. Furthermore, in the same Gallup poll, they said they viewed Russia-which has said it would veto a Western-backed UN Security Council plan for Kosovo's statehood-even more positively than the EU: 63 percent of those polled approved of Russia's leadership.
On January 20, Serbia responded to this Euro-dilemma with greater clarity and decisiveness than Tadic and his sponsors had ever expected. Over 55 percent of Serbia's voters supported three candidates (Tomislav Nikolic, vise-president of the Radical Party; Velimir-Velja Ilic who leads "Our Serbia," a DSS coalition partner; and Milutin Mrkonjic of the Socialist Party) who are uncopromizing in their rejection of any "deal" with the West over Kosovo. The voters' message was clear: if Serbia is forced by the West to choose between preserving the title to Kosovo and joining "Europe" on Western terms-which evidently demands the amputation of Kosovo-Serbia will opt for the former. If the EU sends the illegal mission to Kosovo-and it is almost certain that this will happen shortly after the second round-that would be a clear sign for Serbia that time has come to say that further aspirations to the membership of the EU are not only futile but so demeaning and degrading.
The tables have been turned: it is now up to Washington and Brussels to choose between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians. Do they wants an illegally constituted Kosovo that is going to be a black hole of jihad-terrorism, ethnic cleansing, unprecedented corruption, institutionalized criminality, drug peddling and white slave trading? Or do they want a solid partnership with Serbia-the key country in the Western Balkans and a civilized country, which the Albanian controlled Kosovo never will be-on the basis of the recognition of her territorial integrity?.
In the run-up to the second round on February 3 the media in Belgrade, which is overwhelmingly pro-Tadic, will exert massive pressure on the Serbs by invoking the ghosts of sanctions and economic collapse, if not yet another war, if Nikolic is successful. They will insist that Tadic's defeat would mean further isolation. But before making their choice the Serbs will look at the outside world and see what the supporters of Kosovo's independence abroad are hoping for, who do they want to win in Serbia. The supporters of Kosovo's independence want Boris Tadic to be the winner on February 3 because they see in him the embodiment of the kind of "pro-Western reformist" now prevalent all over post-Communist Eastern Europe. They are pleased that Tadic keeps repeating-strictly for the domestic consumption-all the right patriotic platitudes, without believing them for one moment. While parroting "Serbian" rhetoric for the popular consumption, Tadic & Co. are sending messages to Brussels and Washington, sotto voce, that when the time comes they will be cooperative and do what needs to be done. Tadic and his protégé, Serbia's current foreign minister, have been winking and nudging to their Western interlocutors throughout the Kosovo negotiating process. If Tadic can appoint a man of so uncertain personal loyalty and so dubious moral qualities such as Vuk Jeremic to the post of Serbia's foreign minister, he is not to be trusted on any other front.
By re-electing Boris Tadic the Serbian voters would provide the supporters of Kosovo independence with the sure signal that Serbia is effectively reconciled to the amputation of the Province, and resigned to the endless continuation of never-to-be-completed "European integrations" that will always entail new conditions to be met, ever higher prices to be paid, and ever more brazen blackmails.
In the second round of the Serbian election the name of the eventual winner is perhaps less significant than the fact that the nation has displayed a remarkable level of unity and spontaneous determination. Whoever wins, he will have to take account of the fact that a small yet proud Balkan nation has had enough humiliation and that it will bend no more to either Washington or Brussels.

Old Threats are Renewed In The Balkans Against Serbs and Jews

2008-01-24T00:15:00.000-08:00

Neo-nazi threats to Serbs and Jews in Croatia
16. January 2008 - 8:57

Today on the 15th of January 2008 in the late afternoon hours, church community in Split has received a letter full of national hatred and with neo-nazi threats in which it is claimed that Serbs and Jews in Croatia will and sholud be slaughtered and butchered.In this appaling letter fascism and ustashi; Ante Pavelic and «holy» concentration camps of Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska are praised; it is also full of awful menaces such as «Serbs to be butchered», «Juden raus» and some such.
Besides, it is said in this petrifying note that Serbs in Croatia should be exterminated; and death theretas are even send to the president of Croatia Stjepan Mesic.
The police has been informed about this case and the investigation is ongoing.
From the Office of the Diocese of Dalmatia, Sibenik, the 15th of Jan 2008
Eparchial (Diocesan) News
Српски

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

Orthodox Church in Kenya DestroyedPosted on Fri Jan 18 2008

Orthodox Christian Mission Center

Nairobi – Upon his return to Kenya from Egypt, His Eminence Archbishop Makarios of Kenya was greeted by scenes of widespread destruction and great suffering. His homecoming tour took him to some of the places hardest hit by the violence that flared over contested presidential elections.In Nakuru, the Orthodox Church of the Holy Virgin has been completely destroyed. Many people, still afraid to travel, are staying in their homes. The thousands who have lost their homes are staying anywhere they can, including churches and parks. The transportation system has largely stopped. As a result, many people are without food and medicine. The Red Cross is responding but the need is still great. The “Kenya Crisis Collection” that is being taken by the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC) is now being expanded to help His Eminence offer these basic provisions as he reaches out to the people of Kenya regardless of their tribal or religious affiliation on behalf of the Orthodox Church.So far, ten-thousand dollars from this collection has been sent to buy food and medicine for the needy and suffering in Kenya, but much more is needed. According to His Eminence, it will take the country years to rebuild.All donations for this special collection should be made payable to the Orthodox Christian Mission Center with “Kenya Crisis Collection” clearly marked in the check’s memo line. Gifts may be submitted to:The Orthodox Christian Mission CenterRe: Kenya Crisis CollectionP.O. Box 4319St. Augustine, FL 32085-4319OCMC is a non-profit organization that has been commissioned by the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA) to proclaim the fullness of the Christian Faith by establishing and nurturing vibrant, Eucharistic communities, which evangelize those around them and minister to the poor.

STOP TERRORIZING ORTHODOX PEOPLES Will Hold Protest In Front of Croation Embassay

2007-08-04T16:51:00.000-07:00

Protest against Genocide at Croatian Embassy, 1:00pm, Sunday, August 5
Believers in God and in Human Rights!
August 5th marks 12 years since Croatia's 1995 genocidal ethnic cleansing of over a quarter of a
million of its own Orthodox Christian Serb citizens from its Krajina region a matter of several days.
Today, Croatia celebrates this ultimate crime as "Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day"!
PLEASE join our MEMORIAL:
1:00 pm, SUNDAY -- AUGUST 5th
We can never forget!
Protest against "OPERATION STORM" (Oluja)
In front of the
Croatian Embassy
2343 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008
On Aug. 5, 1995 the army of the newly independent European state of Croatia attacked its own
citizens, expelling its undefended Orthodox Christian population in what it called "Operation Storm".
These Orthodox Christian Serbs had earlier survived the slaughter of three quarters of a million
Serbs, Jews and Roma (Gypsies) in the Holocaust conducted by Nazi-allied fascist Croatia in World
War II. Only some Serbs, who were forcibly converted to Catholicism at gunpoint, were spared.
Modern-day Croatia completed the crime it started in World War II. On Aug. 5, 1995, in front of
CNN cameras and an inexplicably silent international community, Croatia completed the biggest
ethnic cleansing of the entire Yugoslav conflict, expelling over half a million Orthodox in four years.
We must bear witness against this genocide!
We demand a public apology from Croatia. We demand an end to all persecution, anywhere, of
Orthodox Christian peoples whose only "crime" is that they refuse to abandon their ancient
traditional worship of God. Croatia must let its refugee citizens return home in safety.
We demand an end to Croatia's official celebration of ethnic cleansing as a “Victory and
Homeland Thanksgiving Day." No nation that cheers genocide can ever enter the European Union!
CONTACT: theSTOPcoalition@gmail.com
Post Office Box 18946, Washington DC, 20036
Telephone: 202-538-3229
The STOP Coalition
“Stop Terrorizing Orthodox Peoples!”
Our group is open to any and all who believe the time has come to draw public attention to the evil
of the continuing genocides against the many millions of Orthodox Christians around the world.

Maarti Ahtisaari: Did He Take Bribes From the Albanian Mafia?

2007-07-31T23:03:00.000-07:00

Exclusive Evidence UN Special Envoy for Kosovo Marti Ahtisaari Received Albanian Mafia Bribes for Kosovo Independence

Defense & Foreign Affairs Analysis.

By Valentine Spyroglou, GIS Station Chief, South-East Europe.

On July 8, 2007 the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army, Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës or UÇK) war veterans issued an announcement warning the international community and especially the United Nations (UN) not to interfere the process of recognizing Kosovo’s independence. The KLA announcement specifically said that the Albanian leaders of Kosovo should not accept more suspensions (delays) or new negotiations because these would lead to new hostilities. If their demands were not accepted, then the KLA veterans warned that they would have to take action as KLA soldiers and honor the oath of their national heroes. The announcement came while the UN Special Envoy for Kosovo, former Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari, was publicly accused of having connections with the Albanian mafia in Kosovo.

The Finnish News Agency, STT, published on June 26 and June 27, 2007, two articles stating that the UN Special Envoy for Kosovo was “bought” by the Albanian mafia in order to support independence for Kosovo. The STT articles reported that the information was initially published by the Banja Luka (Republica Srpska, Bosnia & Herzegovina) Daily Fokus on June 21, 2007, entitled “Albanian Mafia Bought Ahtisaari”. According to the Banja Luka report, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had requested that the German Federal Intelligence Service, BND, inform him in detail on what was happening in Kosovo, and he finally received a detailed report on Special Envoy Ahtisaari’s activities in Kosovo. Based on the Banja Luka article, the UN Secretary General was informed that Albanian separatists in Kosovo had paid for Ahtisaari’s plan which proposed independence for the Serbian province. The BND secret service team, headed by Brigadier Luke Neiman, who was directly appointed by the German Government to designate part of the German Secret Service apparatus to the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNOSEK: United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Kosovo), discovered the connection between the Albanian mafia and Marti Ahtisaari.

Brig. Neiman had recordings of discussions between Ahtisaari and Albanians; how they transferred money; the banks accounts plus codes in Switzerland and Cyprus.One of the BDN recordings revealed the transportation of two-million euros from the Swiss Bank based in the city of Visalia, account number 239700-93457-00097, owned by Exhet Boria, which was masked by an offshore account with a code XS52-KOLER to Ahtisaari’s bank account in the Bank of Cyprus, account number 3459346699004533, code VOLANND.What was also reported was the visit of two men to UNOSEK, in the presence of Ahtisaari on February 12, 2007, at 06:23 hrs (local time) in one black Mercedes four-wheel drive SUV, with license plate PR-443-22CD, which was confirmed to belong to the Albanian Government in Priština. The two visitors carried two silver briefcases which were handed to Ahtisaari. A source inside the UNOSEK facilities confirmed that the briefcases contained cash and were delivered to the UN Special Envoy for Kosovo. Twelve days later, at 17:44 hrs (local), the same car, with the license plates removed, visited UNOSEK but this time it was Exhet Boria himself and two bodyguards that entered the building, carrying again two silver briefcases.

Exhet Boria is a Kosovo Albanian figure involved in organized crime and heroin trade in Europe and he is the “right hand” of Behgjet Pacolli, the Albanian billionaire mafia boss, living in Switzerland. The BND agents realized that the four briefcases had diplomatic luggage labels, and noted that they finally arrived in Finland without being checked — because of the diplomatic tagging — and were delivered at Ahtisaari’s house. The briefcase cash totaled 40-million euros. The German agents also confirmed that Ahtisaari had many telephone conversations with Behgjet Pacolli. Furthermore, on February 28, 2007, at 23:47 hrs (local), the BND agents noted the arrival of a NATO KFOR (Kosovo Force) four-wheel drive vehicle carrying two women who were followed by Boria’s bodyguard. The women stayed in Ahtisaari’s quarters until 05:17 hrs next day, and left with the same car.The office of the UN Special Envoy for Kosovo responded to STT that “this is a silly story that comes from the press of Serbia (Bosnia & Herzegovina).

We have nothing to add”, said Remi Derlo, Ahtisaari’s spokesman based in Vienna. According to STT, the accusations where not commented on by the UN or by Ahtisaari himself. However, the President of the National Assembly of Serbia, Oliver Dulić, has made a formal inquiry into the allegations in order to confirm Ahtisaari’s involvement with Albanian organized crime.Meanwhile, on the date on which the accusations on Ahtisaari were published, June 21, 2007, the UN Security Council session discarded the US-UK proposal to suspend negotiations for 120 days and then apply the Ahtisaari plan for giving independence to Kosovo. Also, that same day the EU warned the Albanians in Kosovo not to take unilateral decisions/action because these would be characterized “irresponsible behavior”.

The GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs station in south-eastern Europe has conducted research in the Balkans and from secure sources it was revealed that the BND report does indeed exist, and that the information contained is not “Serbian fiction” but a reality. The research also revealed additional secure and confirmed information. Specifically, it was confirmed that the former KLA leader, Hakim Thaci (also known as “the snake” of KLA), had made a plan of “100 days” for Kosovo’s independence. It is foreseen that elections would be held in Kosovo, in November 2007; the Kosovo Parliament will have 120 seats from which 100 seats will be taken by Albanians, 10 seats by the Serbs, and 10 seats will be occupied by the remaining minorities in Kosovo. The election winner would be Hakim Thaci, winning 75 seats. The remaining 25 seats would be taken by Albanian parties in Kosovo.

They consider that the Serbs would not vote, hence the 10 Serbian seats would be taken again by representatives of Hakim Thaci.The first session of the Kosovo Parliament would, under the plan, then decide and announce Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence (UDI). According to highly-reliable sources, Thaci and his friends had taken their decisions unilaterally and despite the UN Security Council decision, regardless of what this could mean for the security of the region.Meanwhile, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources confirmed that the BND report also contained extensive additional information on the involvement in corrupt activities of other international community personalities involved in Kosovo. As a result, it was understood that, under the pressure of the emerging information/facts, the UN was now considering promoting the partition of Kosovo, rather than adopting the Ahtisaari plan for granting complete independence to Kosovo.
Posted by Alan Peters at 11:31 PM

4 comments:
Zhana said...
This kind of corruption is not a surprise. Serbs (especially those who live in Kosovo and Metohija) knew that for years (from the time when UN mission came to 'make peace', but the real reason was to make new Albanian country on the Serbian territory possible.The powerful world's administrators obviously think they are untouchable.
6:58 PM
Zbyszko said...
1. Perhaps Finns are very good people and do not take a bribery but Mr. Ahtisaari immigrate to Finland from Norway.2. It is not the first time that UN official in former Yugoslavia are accused for taking advantage from organized crime groups.3. It's interesting that Mr. Ahtisaari himself or the UN didn't sue the Fokus paper. It is old well know way to silence the accusation - don't respond to them.
6:44 AM
Wolfgang said...
But only in germenIEP - BND Study Kosovo 2007122 page pdfhttp://balkanforum.org/IEP-BND/iep0001.PDF
7:43 AM
SerbBlog.com said...
Sign a petition to demand of the UN & the Bush Administration a full and transparent investigation of the Ahtisaari Bribery Allegations!
1:52 PM

31.07.2007 17:02:28
Russia names diplomat to join Kosovo troika

( Reuters ) - Russia has appointed senior diplomat Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko to represent the country in negotiations on the future status of Serbia's Kosovo province, the Russian foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

"We can officially confirm the appointment," a foreign ministry spokeswoman said. Botsan-Kharchenko is the special Balkans envoy to Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

He will join one representative each from the European Union and the United States in a "Troika" which has been formed to try to broker an agreement on the future status of Kosovo.

Western powers back a proposal to set Kosovo on the path to independence from Serbia, but that was blocked in the United Nations Security Council by Russia. The "Troika" format was proposed as an alternative.

In a separate statement issued on Tuesday, the Russian foreign ministry said no "artificial" deadlines should be set for the completion of the talks.

That is likely to put Moscow at odds with the Western powers who sponsored the "Troika" plan, because they had said the talks should go on for not longer than 120 days.

"Pre-determining the outcome the mediators will reach, pushing the Ahtisaari plan (to set Kosovo on the path to independence) that the Serbs have rejected, setting artificial time limits on the negotiations -- all this is incompatible with the aim of reaching a compromise," said the statement.

"At the current, critical stage of the status talks process, practices such as these must be ruled out."

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority want independence from Serbia, but many Serbs see the province as their spiritual heartland.

Russia has backed the Serbians, saying giving Kosovo independence could set a precedent that could fuel separatist conflicts elsehwere in Europe.

But Western powers warn delaying a decision could be more dangerous, forcing Kosovo's Albanians to declare independence unilaterally.

"Trend" news agency - Russia names diplomat to join Kosovo troika

Gorbachev backs Putin actions Says authoritarian moves necessary

2007-07-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

Monday, July 30, 2007

By David Holley, Los Angeles Times

MOSCOW -- Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms played a major role in freeing the Soviet Union from totalitarianism, defended authoritarian moves by Russian President Vladimir Putin as necessary "to prevent the disintegration of the country."Mr. Putin has chosen "to use certain methods ... that were evenauthoritarian to some extent," the Nobel Peace Prize winner said in arecent interview. "But even though he used those methods sometimes, hecontinued to have the same goals -- the goals of moving towarddemocracy, toward market economics."

Mr. Gorbachev blamed tensions between Washington and Moscow on the"victory complex" of some U.S. leaders, and said Washington and Moscowshould tone down harsh rhetoric and work together to solve globalproblems.Asked what advice he would have for Mr. Putin and President Bush, Mr.Gorbachev replied: "First of all, to preserve the climate of trustthat emerged during the years of perestroika, when we were able towork together with the United States to discuss the issues andultimately to end the Cold War. I believe that this trust is now injeopardy."Mr. Gorbachev's reform policies of the late 1980s, known as"perestroika," played a major role in the collapse of the Soviet Unionand laid the groundwork for U.S.-Russian friendship in the 1990s.But in the past few years, tensions have grown again. Dissatisfactionin the United States has been fueled by a perceived rollback ofdemocracy in Russia, Moscow's alleged linkage of oil and gas exportcontracts to political demands on its neighbors, differences over howto deal with Iran's nuclear program, a dispute over the future ofKosovo and other issues.Russians have been angered by U.S. plans to install an antimissilesystem in Eastern Europe.

Washington says it is needed to defendEurope and North America, citing the possibility of missile attacks byIran. Moscow has expressed fears that the move would be a step toward a global missile-defense system aimed at devaluing Russia's andChina's nuclear deterrents, and also that the system could be modifiedfor offensive missiles that would be close to Russia's borders.Tensions have been stoked further by the radiation poisoning in London last year of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent turned fierce Kremlin critic. In a written statement prepared shortly before his death, Mr. Litvinenko accused Mr. Putin of ordering his killing, a charge the Kremlin has dismissed as "nonsense."The widespread perception in the United States is that the deterioration of U.S.-Russian ties has been caused by the Kremlin's actions. But Mr. Gorbachev said much of the blame for current tensions should go to what he described as a "victory complex" held by some top U.S. officials who believe that pressure exerted by then-PresidentRonald Reagan brought about defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War. He included Vice President Dick Cheney among this group."I believe that this victory complex is very dangerous," Mr. Gorbachev said. "The United States has really not achieved anything alone. I believe that only when the United States worked with others was it able to achieve anything. Where they acted alone the result was a real mess."

Mr. Gorbachev said he was encouraged, however, by the atmosphere of the Bush-Putin summit held in early July in Kennebunkport, Maine."The more difficult the situation is, the more dialogue there should be, so I am pleased that it seems to be beginning to change," he said."It seems now that perhaps with the moderating help of President Bush the father, the senior President [George H.W.] Bush, something is beginning to happen and something useful is resulting." Mr. Gorbachev expressed hope that the recent summit could lead to a compromise on the antimissile system that would ease Russia's concerns and bring international cooperation in this field. Another problem aggravating U.S.-Russian relations, Mr. Gorbachevsaid, is that Western journalists, analysts and politicians often fail to acknowledge the depth of Russia's problems in the 1990s, under then-President Boris Yeltsin, and the practical justifications for some of the nondemocratic methods used by Mr. Putin to re-establishthe authority of the Russian state after he became president in 2000.

In the late 1990s, "The country was really in dire straits," Mr.Gorbachev said. "People were living in poverty and there was chaos inthe country. ... So in this situation Putin was faced with thequestion of what kind of methods to use in order to prevent the disintegration of the country."Mr. Gorbachev did not spell out what sort of authoritarian-flavored steps he believed Mr. Putin had taken. But Mr. Putin has been criticized by democracy advocates for establishing state control over all nationwide television networks, ending the direct election of governors and establishing a pliable parliament with election rules that make it difficult for opposition forces to win seats. Although Mr. Gorbachev typically defends Mr. Putin in public comments,at the same time Mr. Gorbachev is the key political backer and an important financial supporter of the country's most fiercely independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, which frequently carries reporting and commentary sharply critical of Mr. Putin. Copies of the newspaper prominently are displayed in the lobby of the GorbachevFoundation, which studies social, economic and political issues.

Mr. Gorbachev portrays his backing of Novaya Gazeta as support for democracy, not an anti-Kremlin line. At the same time, his support forMr. Putin is not so one-dimensional as seen in much pro-Kremlin media. His argument is that what Mr. Putin is doing, with all its flaws, should be seen in its historical context."I believe that re-emphasizing the role of the state, consolidatingthe state, which is what Putin did, is justified," Mr. Gorbachev said."When the country was really lying on its back, when the country was in really bad shape, during the Yeltsin years, when half the population of the country, and even more, were living in poverty, the West was applauding Yeltsin," he added. With living conditions dramatically improved today, he continued, "Idon't know why the [foreign] media is so negative about Russia. "Are you, the reporters, talking to only one group of people whose thoughts all go in the same direction? Well, I would suggest that you talk to a larger group of people, to all kinds of people."

Transformation Diplomacy in Venezuela

2007-07-29T08:29:00.001-07:00

While President Chavez desperately tries to make friends with anyone who is not interested in enacting Regime Change in his country...his policies for turning around his countries economic woes give the United States more hurdles in their over 100 year quest to dominate Latin America. This article is from Venezuela Analysis.com
www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=2104
The New Politics of Political Aid in Venezuela
Wednesday, Jul 25, 2007
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By: Tom Barry - Global Research
Five years after U.S.-funded groups were associated with a failed coup against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, the U.S. government's political aid programs continue to meddle in Venezuelan domestic politics. A new focus of the "democracy builders" in Venezuela and around the world is support for nonviolent resistance by civil society organizations.
In the name of promoting democracy and freedom, Washington is currently funding scores of U.S. and Venezuelan organizations as part of its global democratization strategy—including at least one that publicly supported the April 2002 coup that briefly removed Chávez from power.
When he first heard the news of the coup, the president of the International Republican Institute (IRI) praised those "who rose up to defend democracy," ignoring the fact that Chávez was the twice-elected president of Venezuela. Despite this declared support for a coup against a democratically elected president and for the opposition's blatant disregard for the rule of law, IRI still runs democratization programs in Venezuela that are underwritten by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The IRI, a supposedly nonpartisan institute established to direct U.S. democratization aid for which Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is chairman, is one of five U.S. nongovernmental organizations that channels funding from USAID to Venezuelan organizations and political programs. USAID also funds the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA) and three U.S. nongovernmental organizations: Freedom House, Development Alternatives Inc., and Pan-American Development Foundation.
The United States has supported democratization and human rights groups in Venezuela since the early 1990s, but funding for "democracy-building" soared after Chávez was elected president in 1998. Both USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which funds IRI and NDIIA, sharply increased their funding to Venezuela's business associations, its official labor confederation, human rights organizations, and political party coalitions.
USAID's Transition Initiative
Several months after the unsuccessful April 2002 coup in Venezuela, the U.S. State Department established an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas, using money from USAID. Operating out of the U.S. Embassy, OTI has two stated objectives, according to the agency: to "strengthen democratic institutions and promote space for democratic dialogue," and "encourage citizen participation in the democratic process."
USAID established OTI with the all-but-explicit intention of aiding efforts to oust President Chávez. According to USAID, the new office would "provide fast, flexible, short-term assistance targeted at key transition needs."
Although it did not spell out what would be the desired "transition," USAID warned that Chávez "has been slowly hijacking the machinery of government and developing parallel non-democratic governance structures." In its 2001 job description for the new OTI director in Caracas, USAID stated that the director's responsibilities would include "formulating strategy and initiating the new OTI program in close coordination with U.S. political interests" and "developing an exit strategy and operational closeout plan."
Rather than directly funding Venezuelan organizations and political parties, OTI channels USAID funding through U.S. nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that in turn fund scores of Venezuelan NGOs and political party projects. In its January-March 2007 report, USAID reported 139 subgrants to Venezuelan entities working in 19 of the country's 23 states.
OTI, which has directed an estimated $30 million in democratization aid to Venezuela, is not the only source of U.S. political aid. The office describes itself as part of a "comprehensive assistance program to shore up the democratic voices and institutions in Venezuela," such as the NED and other State Department initiatives, including "educational" trips to the United States for selected members of the Venezuelan media. As U.S. economic aid decreases, OTI is seeking local funding to complement its own programs, noting in its January-March 2007 report that it succeeded in leveraging $3.5 million in local contributions in the year's first quarter.
In its January-March appraisal of its "transition initiatives," OTI boasts: "The partnerships that have formed between NGOs and citizens eager to participate directly in their own governance attest to the success of the program ... that is filling an important need that is laying the groundwork for a sustainable democratic future."
Although the NGOs funded by the U.S. government insist they are independent, they closely coordinate their programs among themselves and with U.S. officials. In February 2007, OTI's "team leader" visited Venezuela to participate in "a strategic planning" session with the "five implementing partner organizations," according to USAID.
OTI has also been organizing a meeting with two dozen Venezuelan NGOs "that promote citizen participation in local democratic spaces." In its January-March evaluation of ongoing operations, OTI says that "given the political parties' growing appreciation of the importance of democratic spaces, the meeting will provide opportunities to discuss the synergistic overlap between civil society and political parties."
With OTI support, IRI and NDIIA offer "technical assistance for political parties," working directly "with political parties to improve their capabilities in constituency outreach and institutional development," according to USAID. Both institutes say they offer their services to both government and opposition parties—although apparently only the opposition parties avail themselves of this "democracy-building" aid.
Freedom House is best known for its widely cited Freedom in the World and Freedom of the Press reports. But it is not commonly known that Freedom House is a major recipient of U.S. government funding—directly from USAID or through the government-funded NED.
Relying almost exclusively on government funding for its overseas operations, Freedom House says it works "directly with democratic reformers on the front lines in their own countries" in Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, the former Soviet Union, and the Balkans. According to Freedom House, its overseas activity "acts as a catalyst for freedom by strengthening civil society, promoting open government, defending human rights, and facilitating the free flow of information."
With USAID funding, Freedom House sponsors a "Human Rights Defenders" program in Venezuela that it promotes as "facilitat[ing] the interaction of Venezuelan civil society with counterparts in Latin America to help them improve domestic human rights reporting and to expand protections for human rights." The "longer-term goal," says Freedom House, is "to assist groups who will strive to safeguard and improve the functioning of democratic institutions in Venezuela."
For its part, in early 2007 the Pan-American Development Fund provided funding to Venezuelan NGOs to "document the following activities: the constitutional reform process, discrimination based on political affiliation, and persecution of human rights practitioners." Meanwhile, Development Alternatives Inc. has focused on "training in democratic leadership and values, increasing citizen participation at the local level, and supporting NGO participation in international events."
"Destabilization Plan"—An "Action Agenda" for Democracy
In May 2007, Eva Golinger, Venezuelan-American author of The Chávez Code and a prominent critic of U.S. aid programs in Venezuela, accused Freedom House and other U.S. organizations receiving U.S. government funding of orchestrating a "destabilization plan" (see Venezuelanalysis.com, May 26, 2007). Golinger claimed Freedom House was designing a campaign of nonviolent resistance to the Chávez government.
Freedom House collaborates with the Belgrade-based Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (Canvas), which has singled out Venezuela along with Zimbabwe and Ukraine as principal targets for its training programs. Describing Canvas's approach to political transitions, the center's website says: "Mass political defiance has occurred in Burma, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Tibet in recent years. Although those struggles have not brought victory over dictators, they badly harmed the authority of those oppressive regimes both in the countries and in the international community."
At a May 2007 press conference in Caracas, Golinger noted that the clenched fist featured on the flyer for a protest against the closure of RCTV, the country's largest television station (accused by the government of having supported the attempted coup), is the same logo used in opposition campaigns in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine—it is also the symbol featured on the Canvas website.

Comparison of logos used by opposition movements in countries where the opposition received funding from the NED.Credit: Compiled by Chris Carlson
USAID and NED funding of NGOs in Venezuela reflects the U.S. government's conviction that the democratic process is badly flawed and that such political aid will contribute to a "transition" to more democratic governance—or at least, to a leader more acceptable to Washington. The focus on NGOs shown by recent democratization aid is also a reflection of a new trend in aid that regards NGOs' nonviolent resistance as the most effective instrument for moving dictatorships to democracies.
This new method of instigating regime change has been promoted by NED, Freedom House, Albert Einstein Institution, and the Council for a Community of Democracies. In recent years Freedom House prominently advocated nonviolent civil action to overturn dictatorial regimes. Its 2005 study, entitled "How Freedom is Won," concluded that 50 of the 67 "transitions to democracy over the previous third of a century" were driven in large part by "civil resistance, featuring strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and mass protests."
Freedom House Board Chairman Peter Ackerman, who is also the founding chairman of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and coauthor of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict, is a leading proponent for international funding of NGOs engaged in nonviolent organizing against non-democratic states. Freedom House, according to a March 2007 address given by Ackerman, is "making every effort to improve the substance and scalability of training tools" for civil society groups engaged in nonviolent action.
Another prominent advocate of the U.S. government funding nonviolent resistance is Mark Palmer, a State Department official who played a key role in founding NED and who now serves as the vice-chairman of Freedom House. In his June 8, 2006 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, entitled "Promotion of Democracy by Nongovernmental Organizations: An Action Agenda," Palmer called for the "radical strengthening of our primary frontline fighters for freedom"—namely, NGOs.
Palmer, who was instrumental in the creation of the Council for a Community of Democracies, lamented the fact that U.S. NGOs and "their governmental and private funders" have not made the funding of foreign NGOs involved in building "national movements" their primary objective. He advocated a major increase in government funding for "NGO programs focused on dictatorships."
Current U.S. funding of an array of NGOs and community groups in Venezuela, including training and consultation offered by organizations such as Canvas and the Albert Einstein Institution, raises concerns that the overriding objective may not be so much the advance of freedom, democracy, and human rights, but rather the furthering of U.S. strategic interests.
By including a democratic state such as Venezuela among the targets of national movement building, the independence and integrity of "democracy builders" in the United States can be called into question. Chávez supporter Golinger, for example, advised Venezuelans: "For the defense of the nation, it would be wise to end the actions of groups like Freedom House and the International Republican Institute, which serve as a front for the State Department and the CIA, and which operate openly in the country."
Democracy and Intervention
There is little doubt that democracy is being put to the test in Venezuela. With a history of democratic governance since 1958, Venezuela has had a relatively stable democratic tradition. But a large part of that stability resulted from a pattern of elections in which well-established parties of the elite alternated in power. By breaking that pattern, Hugo Chávez disrupted that vaunted stability and at the same time made politics more inclusive. For the first time, the country's rural poor and urban workers had a voice in government.
Winning several highly contested elections since 1998 by impressive majorities, Chávez has earned legitimacy as a democrat. However, in his drive to consolidate his bases of support and to usher in "21st-century socialism," he has sparked widespread concerns from human rights and press freedom organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders, that his government is riding roughshod over the democratic process of governance.
Questions about the integrity of U.S. democratization aid are now being used by the Venezuelan government to press its National Assembly to pass a new law that would subject all NGOs that receive foreign funding to governmental scrutiny and approval. If such an intrusive measure is instituted, at least part of the blame will lay with Washington and will constitute part of the antidemocratic legacy of U.S. democratization strategy.
It's past time for the U.S. democratizers to shut down their operations in Venezuela and make their exit. By intervening in Venezuela through NGOs, Washington lends credence to claims by Chávez and others who charge that the U.S. government is pursuing a policy of regime change in Venezuela.
The first step toward a more constructive foreign policy toward Venezuela should be an expression of support for the country's self-determination in its political and economic affairs. Concerns about the state of democracy, media freedom, or human rights in Venezuela could then be expressed through normal diplomatic channels without fueling suspicion that the United States and its shadow institutions are part of a campaign to undermine the elected Venezuelan government.
As things stand, however, Washington and its phalanx of democracy-building NGOs are not just raising concerns, but are also operating to influence internal politics inside Venezuela. Washington would not permit foreign countries and their agents to inject themselves into its own political process; it should assume no right to do unto others what it would not have done to itself.
Tom Barry is a senior analyst with the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy and a contributor to Right Web (http://www.blogger.com/).
Original source / relevant link: Global Research

Transformation Diplomacy Gets Support from Lantos and Congress

2007-07-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

This piece of legislation will give the Congressional Validity for the United States to continue in its Regime Building and unlawful intervention in other countries affairs, including Serbia. Now the state department is trying to co opt the term multilateral diplomacy...which is what they really do not support.

Congress Passes Lantos, Wolf Legislation to Promote Democracy, Human Rights Abroad

Washington, DC - Congress has passed legislation co-authored by Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) to strengthen and secure America's commitment to the expansion of freedom and the protection of human rights around the world.
The legislation passed by the House today (H.R. 1) and the Senate last night, which implements the remaining recommendations of the 9-11 Commission, also includes provisions of the ADVANCE Democracy Act of 2007. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation was co-authored by Lantos and Wolf in the House and Senators Joseph Lieberman (I/D-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) in the Senate.
"Promoting democracy and protecting human rights are core aspects of the American moral compass, and these aims are crucial to our national security interest," Lantos said. "With this legislation, we take another step toward ensuring that we focus on the long-term, difficult work of fostering budding democracies and those who support them around the world."
The ADVANCE Democracy Act requires the State Department to develop new, written strategies for the promotion of democracy in all countries that are currently non-democratic or transitioning to democracy. These strategies will help ensure that America's democracy promotion efforts are carefully tailored to the unique, long-term challenges presented by each country, and that they are focused on more than just holding elections, but on building democratic institutions and fostering democratic values.
"The passage of this important legislation heralds a new era in the worthy effort of democracy promotion around the world," said Congressman Wolf, who co-chairs the Congressional Human Rights Caucus with Lantos. "The core values on which our country is founded - freedom of thought, of conscience, of religion - are affirmed as we promote the right of all persons to chart their own political destiny. I believe strongly that emphasizing democracy promotion through requisite training and funding of our foreign service appropriately reflects the priority that democracy promotion holds in our nation's foreign policy."
Page 1 of 2 The ADVANCE Democracy Act also authorizes the creation of a new position at the State Department, known as Democracy Liaison Officers. These positions will be filled by experts in democracy promotion who can be dispatched by the Secretary of State to U.S. missions overseas. The Act also provides for enhanced training for members of the Foreign Service in democracy promotion and human rights.
"The values of freedom, democracy, and justice have been at the bedrock of American foreign policy since the founding of our republic," said Senator Lieberman. "Presidents from Wilson to Roosevelt, and Harry Truman to John F. Kennedy have argued that America's vital interests are best secured when we help others find their own voice of freedom. The ADVANCE Democracy Act sends a clear and unmistakable message to the world that the self-evident truth, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, knows no borders, and that the United States stands with those who struggle for freedom."
"At a time when some have questioned America's democracy efforts, this bill affirms that the promotion of freedom is an enduring element of American foreign policy," said Senator McCain. "The expansion of democracy and freedom is inseparable from the long term security of the United States and is intimately bound with the values Americans hold dear," he added. "We must, I believe, promote democracy, the rule of law and social modernization just as we promote the sophistication of our weapons and the modernization of our militaries. The ADVANCE Democracy Act will strengthen America's ability to do just that."
The ADVANCE Democracy Act also:
Affirms that the policy of the United States to promote freedom and democracy in foreign countries as a fundamental component of American foreign policy;
Establishes a Democracy Fellowship Program that will enable State Department officers to gain democracy promotion expertise;
Calls for the establishment of an ADVANCE Democracy Award, to be awarded annually to State Department personnel who have made outstanding achievements in promoting democracy;
Calls for strengthening cooperation between and among democratic and democratic transition countries by authorizing a new State Department Office for Multilateral Democracy Promotion.

New Kosovo talks only under mandate of Security Council

2007-07-25T03:25:00.000-07:00

Belgrade, July 24, 2007 - Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said today addressing Serbian parliament members that new negotiations on the future status of Kosovo-Metohija can be conducted only under the mandate of the Security Council and that the only possible basis for those negotiations is Resolution 1244.
The Serbian government's official website brings the speech of Vojislav Kostunica in full:"Esteemed parliament members,I am convinced that this is the best moment for Serbian parliament to review the previous and determine the future policy of Serbia in resolving our most important state and national issue, and that is the issue of the future status of the province of Kosovo-Metohija.This Serbian parliament session is held several days after an important, and maybe as it will later turn out to be, crucial event that took place in the Security Council. Namely, after a long battle which lasted since the UN Secretary-General appointed Martti Ahtisaari international mediator, the US and European co-sponsors of the resolution on independent Kosovo decided to withdraw their proposal from the Security Council.There is no need to doubt that the proposed draft resolution aimed to secure the beginning of the process of an independent Kosovo-Metohija. Therefore, it is clear that the withdrawal of the resolution from the Security Council represents a significant victory of Serbia and is a result of the common policy of Serbia and Russia, whose aim is the protection of the UN Charter and defence of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state. We can say with certainty that with this victory, the first phase of the defence of Kosovo-Metohija is complete.
Vojislav Kostunica addresses Serbian parliamentBut we know very well, esteemed parliament members, that an even more difficult battle is ahead of us and even greater tribulations, in order to keep Kosovo-Metohija within Serbia's borders. But if we look back and see what we have managed to do in the past several years just because we have been united, then there is a hope that with joint forces, composed of entire Serbia, we still can achieve our greatest national and state goal.Just as this is the right place for saying this, thus Serbian parliament is the right place from which I want to call on all citizens of Serbia, all institutions and all social, economic and cultural organisations, and of course all political parties, to show true patriotism and unity in just efforts to keep Serbia in its internationally recognised borders.I call on true patriotism because Serbia does not want to take away anything from anyone, but to keep what belongs to her under the UN Charter, the Serbian Constitution and democratic values and rules that are applied throughout the world. We have the strongest weapon and that is law and justice. During the past period we have seen what efforts the politics of force made in favour of independent Kosovo, but in the end force remained powerless before the arguments of law and justice.This is the right occasion to remind ourselves of several important facts which marked the first phase of the negotiating process which is complete. You will remember that in early February, when elections were not completed, let alone new government formed, Ahtisaari brought to Belgrade, as he said, a fair proposal on independent Kosovo. You will also remember that Ahtisaari insisted on coming precisely in early February because the negotiating process allegedly had to be completed by the end of June. Today is July 24 and owing to a sensible, consistent, patient and determined common policy of Serbia's state institutions we are at the beginning of a new negotiating process for resolution of the province's future administration. For this new page in the fight for Kosovo, Serbian parliament must, with its resolution, establish continuation of the policy that will be based precisely on the sensibility, consistency, patience and determination expressed so far.It is natural to expect that Martti Ahtisaari will not take part in the new negotiating process and that his role ended with the withdrawal of the resolution that was based on his plan from the Security Council. With this Ahtisaari's era is finally over and his plan is now part of the past.On the eve of new negotiations, most important of all is to establish a platform for the talks that could lead the two sides to a compromise solution. The only real road in establishing the basis for negotiations leads us to the UN Resolution 1244. The essential elements of Resolution 1244 represent the only possible basis for successful negotiations.
This Resolution has three key elements: the first is that sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia are explicitly confirmed, the second that the solution is in the essential autonomy for the province and the third, which is especially important, that independence of Kosovo-Metohija is not mentioned anywhere in the Resolution. Starting from these three essential elements of Resolution 1244, Serbia will play a constructive part in the new negotiating process.It goes without saying that new negotiations can be conducted only under the mandate of the Security Council because only this supreme UN body has the mandate to make decisions on the future status of the province. The role of the Contact Group has been very important in the process so far in directing the negotiations. Besides, the Security Council approved "the guiding principles" of the Contact Group as a kind of guideline for the talks. The Contact Group had been working unanimously until Ahtisaari made a plan on the province's independence, which the Contact Group did not adopt. Serbia expects the Contact Group to be active, but that the entire new negotiating process is held under the clear mandate of the Security Council. It is natural and logical that only on the basis of a compromise solution reached by the two sides can the new resolution of the Security Council be adopted. In the new process of negotiations it is especially important that all things are called by their proper names. And that means that there is no Kosovo-Metohija issue since what is in question is an inalienable and inseparable part of Serbia. There is another point – the open question of the Albanian ethnic minority in the province and it is necessary that, through constructive dialogue, a proper solution is found for this issue. It is a historical fact that the Albanian peoples have already exercised their right to self determination, then when the state of Albania was created. In any case, nowhere in the world has a single ethnic minority the right to self determination and to break up an internationally recognised country. The question is to which extent any country could manage to safeguard its borders if every ethnic minority in Europe and the world began to exercise self determination. Saying that the Albanian ethnic minority is a special minority and has special rights, just as Serbia is a special country and can be broken up, and asserting that such an event will never happen anywhere again, is the certain beginning of undermining the very fundaments upon which the peace and stability of the existing international order rests.Serbia calls on European states which have developed systems of autonomy for their ethnic minorities to tell us: “We have thus resolved the question of our ethnic minorities, why does Serbia not adopt such a model?” And we instantly and in advance give the answer that Serbia is ready to accept any form of autonomy which exists today in Europe. Who may challenge the fact that this is the European way of resolving the problem of the status of the Albanian ethnic minority in Kosovo-Metohija?
Honourable members, it is important that we mention the two kinds of threats being made by Albanian separatists. The first is their favourite threat that they will resort to extreme violence if they are not granted independence and that in fact innocent victims will themselves be responsible for this violence. The international community which has taken full responsibility to secure peace in the province is obligated to react firmly and clearly to this brutal blackmail by Albanian separatists.The other threat is the announcements made by Albanian separatists that they will unilaterally declare independence. The tradition of empty threats of declaring independence is a long one in Kosovo-Metohija and it is clear that the Serbian government will instantly annul such an illegal act. We cannot, unfortunately rule out the possibility that a certain number of countries acknowledge the unilaterally declared independence of the province. We have seen such announcements, so far ambiguous, coming from certain countries. We ask, honourable members of parliament, what would in fact the recognition of a unilateral declaration of the independence of Kosovo-Metohija mean? It would mean that when advocates of the use of force see that their plan cannot get necessary legal legitimacy in the Security Council, they simply decide to violate the decision of the Security Council. That would not be just a violation of the Security Council decision but directly undermine the authority of an international organisation and send an open message that the use of force is opposing the valid order outlined in the UN. In other words, in this dangerous scenario it would come to the creation of new rules according to which any aim that might not be approved by the Security Council through the regular manner could be realised through other means, at the cost of direct invalidation of institutions and UN rules. It is our duty while there is still enough time, to patiently and persistently explain that the decision on the future regulation of the province cannot be brought anywhere except in the Security Council, and that that solution must be in accordance with the UN Charter. Not a single state, no matter how powerful, can allow its policies to have precedence over the UN. And any recognition of unilateral independence of Kosovo-Metohija would not mean anything but use of force. Let this House today clearly and firmly state that Serbia in advance rejects the use of force as well as any recognition of unilateral independence which would stem from such legal aggression. All countries which wish to have normal and friendly relations with Serbia will have to, when it comes to our country, respect the UN Charter and the Security Council resolutions which guarantee the inviolability of the internationally recognised borders and territorial integrity of Serbia. It would be particularly important that NATO countries, which took military action against Serbia without the approval of the Security Council, strictly follow the rules of the UN Charter and the Resolution 1244, so that in no manner should the air strikes against Serbia be connected with the attempt to declare the province independent. Our citizens should know that advocates of an independent Kosovo-Metohija among the international community are conducting a merciless fight in order to realise their aims. That is how the usual objection has been made that Serbia knows what it doesn’t want but does not what it does want, and that Serbia has not presented a single solution for the province. The truth is that we, as opposed to the Albanian side whose entire platform is based on the word independence, have offered a clear and concrete solution in the form of substantial autonomy for Kosovo-Metohija. This solution, developed in detail, is the platform of the state negotiating team which was adopted at the beginning of 2006.That is why Serbia demands and once again expects the international community to listen very carefully and consider our proposal for resolving the future status of the province. The time has come for real negotiations, and if there is good will a solution may indeed be found which could satisfy the basic interests of the Albanian side and Serbia. We can and must reach such a solution also because the peace and stability of the entire region is at stake. Honourable members, I call upon you to support the resolution proposed which establishes the policy for resolving the future regulation of our southern province. Only here in the national parliament may we unite and transcend all party differences when it comes to the question of preserving Kosovo-Metohija within the borders of Serbia. Unity within parliament has brought forth great results and has played a huge role in every success which we have achieved until now. I especially remind you that the invaluable support of our allies in the fight for Kosovo-Metohija will, in good measure, depend also on our unity. Thus we are additionally obliged to do everything in our power to ensure that Serbia succeeds in safeguarding its internationally recognised borders. Serbia today in its parliament confirms that Kosovo- Metohija is built deep into the foundations of the state of Serbia, and that Kosovo-Metohija is the collective name for our national existence, culture, faith, our history and our future. Honourable members of parliament, if Kosovo-Metohija were meant to be independent, someone before us would have decided to grant it independence. This generation cannot and will not give Kosovo-Metohija away, and if we do not give it away, we may be certain that Kosovo-Metohija shall always be in Serbia. Thank you,” concludes the speech by the Serbian Prime Minister.

Kosovo: Back to Square One

2007-07-25T03:13:00.000-07:00

by Srdja Trifkovic

The United States government and its West European partners have given up on calling a U.N. Security Council vote on their joint resolution supporting Kosovo’s independence. They will initiate direct talks between Belgrade and Pristina instead, as Serbia and Russia have demanded all along. U.S. Ambassador at the UN Zalmay Khalilzad said there would be four months of negotiations between the parties under the auspices of the Contact Group. “We hope that during the course of those negotiations, the parties will come to an agreement,” Khalilzad said; but no one is saying what would happen if no agreement is reached after those 120 days.
In other words, we are back at Square One on Kosovo—exactly where we had been at the end of 2005, before Marti Ahtisaari started his ill-fated mission to gerrymander an independent “Kosova.”
It would be amusing and instructive to compile a collection of quotes made since that time by assorted politicians, pundits, bureucrats, academics and legislators to the effect that Kosovo’s independence is inevitable and imminent. Amusing, because so many luminaries—Tom Lantos, Joseph Lieberman, Nicholas Burns, Daniel Serwer and Richard Holbrooke, among others—were so obviously wrong; and instructive because their single-minded push for Kosovo’s independence is turning into yet another foreign policy disaster for the United States.
But old habits die hard. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Daniel Fried went to Belgrade last month to tell the Serbs that the game was up:
Kosovo will be independent. That is not simply an opinion; it is also a statement of where we think the result will be. Serbia’s leaders need to get beyond denial. They need to stop telling the Serbian people that it will not happen. They need to tell the Serbian people the truth which is that Milosevic lost Kosovo when he went to war with NATO and committed atrocities against the Kosovars. I will tell the truth if the Serbian leaders cannot, and that truth is that Serbia will not rule in Kosovo any more than Hungary will rule in the Vojvodina. It’s gone. It’s over.
Fried’s shrill tone, bordering on hysteria, reflected weakness, rather than strength; it brought to mind Goebbels’s famous Totalen Krieg speech in the aftermath of Stalingrad. In a similar vein, at the end of June President George W. Bush was in Tirana, telling his enthusiastic hosts that America has made up her mind on this issue (“our support is solid, firm”); and only last week Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said, “We are committed to an independent Kosovo and we will get there one way or another.”
The time has come to shake Bush, Fried, Rice et al from their pseudo-reality and explain to them what they dare not tell themselves: “we” will not get there this year, or next, or any other, any more than “we” did in 2006. In other words, it is time to tell them that Kosovo will NOT be independent. That is not simply an opinion; it is also a statement of diplomatic and political reality. America’s leaders need to get beyond denial. They need to stop telling themselves and the world that it will happen. They need to tell the American people the truth which is that Bush lost his Kosovo gambit when he turned it into a test of Russian resolve, after all the atrocities his predecessor committed against the Serbs. Chronicles will tell the truth if the U.S. Administration leaders cannot, and that truth is that their proteges will not rule in Kosovo any more than America will rule in Vietnam. It’s gone, Mr. Fried, it’s over.
It is by now evident that independence will not be steamrolled through the Security Council, and no feasible scenario to bypass the UN is on the horizon. The time has come for some real negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina—with no time limits and no preordained outcomes.
What the advocates of Kosovo’s independence fail to grasp is that for the first time in two decades a great power is able, willing, and even determined to support and meaningfully defend a Serbian position in the mosaic of post-Yugoslav disputes. That power is Russia, and Putin’s motivation is not Orthodox or Slavic solidarity. It has little to do with Kosovo per se, or Serbia as such, and a lot to do with Russia’s return to the world stage as a self-confident great power that has had enough of American faits accomplis and dictates typical of the Yeltsin era.
Throughout those two decades the United States’ position has been admirably consistent. As Doug Bandow points out, successive administrations’ policy amounted to the question “What the Serbs want?” and, upon hearing the reply, a firm and unrelenting decision that they cannot have it and never will have it.
Franjo Tudjman’s ethnic cleansing of hunderds of thousands of Serbs from the Krajina was thus aided and abetted by the U.S. on the grounds that Croatia had the right to protect her sovereignty and territorial integrity against Serbian separatism. Islamic fundamentalist Alija Izetbegovic was supported on the absurd pretext that he wanted to build a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, liberal-democratic Bosnia-Herzegovina. Albanian terrorists, war criminals and church-burning, dope-smuggling pimps were supported in Kosovo on the grounds that they had the right to self-determination.
UNDERSTANDING PUTIN’S GRIEVANCES
The Soviet Union came into being as a revolutionary state that challenged any given status quo in principle, starting with the Comintern and ending three generations later with Afghanistan. Some of its aggressive actions and hostile impulses could be explained in light of “traditional” Russian motives, such as the need for security; at root, however, there was always an ideology unlimited in ambition and global in scope. At first, the United States tried to appease and accommodate the Soviets (1943-46), then moved to containment in 1947, and spent the next four decades building and maintaining essentially defensive mechanisms—such as NATO—designed to prevent any major change in the global balance.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been trying to articulate her goals and define her policies in terms of national interests: peace and prosperity at home, stable domestic institutions, secure borders, friendly neighbors. The old Soviet dual-track policy of having “normal” relations with America, on the one hand, while seeking to subvert her, on the other, gave way to naïve attempts by Boris Yeltsin’s foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev to forge a “partnership” with the United States.
By contrast, the early 1990’s witnessed the beginning of America’s strident attempt to assert her status as the only global “hyperpower.” This ambition was inimical to post-Soviet stabilization and kept Washington from entertaining the suggestion that Russia might have legitimate interests in her own post-Soviet backyard. The United States adopted her own dual-track approach. When Mikhail Gorbachev’s agreement was needed for German reunification, President George H.W. Bush gave a firm and public promise that NATO wound not move eastward. Within years, however, Bill Clinton expanded NATO to include all the former Warsaw Pact countries of Central Europe.
Another round of NATO expansion came under George W. Bush, when three former Soviet Baltic republics were admitted—and the process is far from over. Last April Mr. Bush signed the Orwellian-sounding NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007, which extends U.S. military assistance to such aspiring NATO members as Georgia and the Ukraine. The rationale for NATO’s continued existence was found in the nebulous (and revolutionary) concept of “humanitarian intervention” used against the Serbs in 1999. Further expansion, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, is “mandatory—historically mandatory, geopolitically desirable.”
In the wake of September 11, President Bush talked Russia into sanctioning the U.S. military’s presence in Central Asia and the Caucasus, but then, in the name of the “War on Terror,” tried to make that presence permanent. In 2002 President Bush unilaterally abrogated the ABM Treaty. His goal was to push forward elements of the U.S. anti-ballistic-missile system closer to Russia’s borders, with the spurious claim that radar stations in Poland or Bohemia will protect the West from Iran’s ICBMs.
The collapse of Russia’s state institutions and social infrastructure under Yeltsin, accompanied by a hyperinflation that reduced the middle class and pensioners to penury, was a trauma of incomparably greater magnitude than the Great Depression. Yet its architects—Anatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov—were hailed in Washington as “pro-Western reformers,” and their political factions and media outlets were duly supported by the U.S. taxpayers, by way of a network of quasi-NGOs.
The wholesale robbery of Russian resources by the Moscow oligarchs and the fire sale of drilling concessions to the oligarchs’ Western cohorts became a contentious issue in U.S.-Russian relations only a decade later, with the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Those spewing furious allegations of “Putin’s revenge” and “heavy-handedness” against the Yukos boss disregarded the fact that, quite apart from his political ambitions, Khodorkovsky was guilty of fraud and tax evasion on a massive scale.
While never missing an opportunity to hector Russia on democracy and criticize her human-rights record, the United States has been notably silent on the discriminatory treatment of large Russian minorities in the former Soviet republics In Latvia and Estonia, the Russians are subjected to arguably the worst treatment of any minority group by a member of the European Union or (with the exception of Turkey) of NATO. The demonstrations in Estonia against the government’s provocative removal of a Russian World War II memorial from Tallinn were but a symptom of a deeper malaise. As Anatol Lieven of the New America Foundation wrote recently, Latvia and Estonia “have been allowed by the West flagrantly to break promises made before independence.”
Washington apparently still views Russia as a state with limited sovereignty even within her post-Soviet borders. Chechnya is the obvious example: The White House routinely condemns Russian “violations” while demanding “dialogue” and studiously refraining from designating the Chechen child-slayers as “terrorists”; but no other aspect of Russia’s domestic policies, from education (“ethnocentric”) and immigration (“restrictive”) to homosexual rights (“appalling”) and jurisprudence (“corrupt”), has escaped scathing criticism. On the eve of his G-8 meeting with Putin last May, Mr. Bush declared that “reforms that were once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development.”
On current form, things will remain the same, or perhaps become worse, no matter who comes to the White House in 2008. Richard Holbrooke, the Democrats’ perennially designated secretary of state, wants a firm response to “a series of Russian challenges to the stability of Europe” — such as the refusal to accept Kosovo’s independence. He descries Putin’s “increasingly authoritarian, often brutal, policies,” yet cautions that, “until President Bush weighs in strongly with Putin (as President Bill Clinton did a decade ago with Boris Yeltsin), there is a serious risk Moscow will not get the message.”
MOSCOW STRIKES BACK
Far from being deterred by Mr. Bush’s apparent commitment to Kosovo’s independence, Russian President Vladimir Putin sees it as a God-sent chance to embarrass Mr. Bush and show the world that Russia can no longer be treated with the mix of disdainful arrogance and the way it was treated under Yeltsin. With the Administration’s options diminishing, Putin’s are increasing.
On the diplomatic front, Russia can and will veto any resolution presented to the Security Council that is based on Ahtisaari’s moribund plan and that assumes independence as the final outcome. Resolution 1244 cannot be legally bypassed, and it is unequivocal about Serbia’s sovereignty. If the European Union (under American pressure) tries to bypass the UN, however, Putin can retaliate by playing his energy card. According to a respected Russian analyst,
The Russians would cut supplies if provoked. Kosovo really is that big an issue to them. If they gave in on this, all of Putin’s efforts to re-establish Russia as a great power would be undermined. Putin wants to remind Germany in particular—but also other former Soviet satellites—that thwarting Russia carries a price. If the European Union were to unilaterally act against Russian wishes, Putin would have to choose between appearing as if he is all talk and no action, and acting. Putin would choose the latter.
According to the same source, Putin also has a military option. Contrary to popular belief, the Russians retain increasingly effective military units. The Russian military retains an excellent core, particularly in its airborne regiments. The Russians could fly a regiment of troops to Belgrade, use Serbian trucks to move to the administrative line dividing Kosovo from the rest of Serbia, and threaten to move into Kosovo to take their place in KFOR.
The Europeans would protest, but they would not react. Western Europe is heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, and it cannot afford to follow Washington into an open-ended confrontation over a peripheral issue. Signals from Moscow indicate that challenging Kosovo’s independence militarily would prompt Russia to call NATO defense capabilities into question, which could leave the Europeans even more fractured. “Do not assume that the Russians would not dare try such a move,” the Russian source insists: “The Russians are itching for an opportunity to confront the West—and win. In the case of Kosovo, should they choose to make an issue of it, they have the diplomatic, economic and military options to force the West to back down. Condoleezza Rice has said that Kosovo will never be returned to Serbian rule. Putin would love to demonstrate that it doesn’t matter what the U.S. secretary of state wants.”b
In short, Kosovo is an asymmetric issue. Mr. Bush cares about it only as it relates to U.S. “credibility.” Accepting the assurances of inherited Clintonite bureaucrats of Mr. Burns’s ilk that the Serbs would cave in and that the Russians would budge may well prove to have been the second greatest blunder of his presidency.
If push comes to shove, Mr. Bush will face Moscow all alone. There is a great deal of dissent in Europe, from Madrid to Athens to Bucharest and Bratislava, but not even those Europeans who are nominally pro-independence—notably Germans—would not sacrifice a single day’s supply of natural gas over Albanian claims. By contrast, for Serbia this is an existential issue and for Russia it is a litmus test of her ability to be once again a great power, and to be seen and respected as one, after the dreadful Yeltsin interlude.
A NEW U.S. PARADIGM URGENTLY NEEDED
It is not prudent for the United States to insist that Kosovo should and will become independent—as President George W. Bush did in Tirana last June, followed by Dr. Rice and her aides on an almost daily basis—even as it is obvious that Russia will veto any attempt to achieve that goal through the United Nations’ Security Council, and even as the European Union is increasingly reluctant to participate in any scheme to bypass the UN. Statements by American officials that Kosovo’s independence is “inevitable” are a classic case of irresponsible policy-makers painting themselves into a corner on a peripheral issue, and then claiming that the issue had morphed into a test of American resolve.
A responsible leadership in Washington would never allow Kosovo to become such a test for three reasons.
1. Quite apart from historic, cultural, moral and legal aspects, the issue of who controls the southern Serbian province is perfectly irrelevant to American interests. It is a small, land-locked piece of real estate, of dubious “objective” value, away from all major Balkan transit corridors, and not nearly as rich in natural resources as both Serbs and Albanians like to imagine. If Kosovo were to disappear tomorrow, no ordinary American would be able to tell the difference.
2. The change of Kosovo’s status against the will of Belgrade, in addition to being a clear violation of the Law of Nations, would set a precedent potentially detrimental to U.S. interests. To enable an ethnic minority to secede from an internationally recognized state on the grounds of that minority’s numerical preponderance in a given locale would open Pandora’s box of claims all over the world, not least among Russian speakers in the Crimea, parts of Estonia and Latvia, northern Kazakhstan, and eastern Ukraine. It could also affect the future of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and perhaps even California, when Mexicans achieve simple majority in those states. (On current form the question is indeed “when,” not “if.”) State Department officials Nicholas Burns and Daniel Fried still insist that no precedent would be set by creating an independent Kosovo, but they cannot control reality and their assurances are nonsensical.
3. The likely cost of persevering will exceed any conceivable benefits of such policy to the United States. The Muslim world will not be appeased by Kosovo today any more than it was appeased by Bosnia a decade ago. America will not earn any brownie points among the world’s “Jihadists of all color and hue” (Rep. Tom Lantos) for creating a new Muslim state in the heart of Europe. Albanian “gratitude” would prove as valuable to America today as it has been, over the years, to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Communist China. On the other hand, the failure to create an independent, internationally recognized Kosovo would be yet another sign that Mr. Bush has no clothes and that America has no sureness of touch. Furthermore, favoring the imposition of a “solution” from the outside against the will of one of the parties could set a dangerous long-term precedent for Israel.
The U.S. policy is not sensible. It panders to the aspirations of a small and primitive, yet shrewdly opportunistic nation with territorial pretensions against all of her neighbors. Mr. Bush’s histrionics in Tirana were greeted almost as enthusiastically as Benito Mussolini, Nikita Khrushchev, and Chou En-Lai had been greeted by the Albanians over the decades. As Nicholas Stavrou noted in The National Herald, Mr. Bush fits into the Albanians’ talent for choosing patrons who fulfill three criteria: they must be big enough, far enough, and willing to offend the interests of Albania’s neighbors.
It is plainly irrational to insist on Kosovo’s independence, with all the risks such policy entails, while the United States faces so many other “unfinished businesses” around the globe. The list is well known, and depressing. Iraq is a disaster, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Afghanistan is a lesser calamity only when compared to Iraq. Any solution to the challenge presented by Iran will depend on Washington’s ability to have Russia on its side as a partner, which is impossible if Moscow’s concerns over Kosovo are treated as illegitimate. Russia is also an essential partner in helping control Kim Jong Il and devising a sustainable long-term energy policy for the Western world.
Geopolitical and pragmatic arguments notwithstanding, the most important reason the United States should not support Kosovo’s independence is, and always has been, cultural and civilizational; but trying to explain that to the chief executive who is fanatically supportive of a blanket amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens in the United States is as futile as trying to reform Islam.
Share This Kosovo: Back to Square One
by Srdja Trifkovic
The United States government and its West European partners have given up on calling a U.N. Security Council vote on their joint resolution supporting Kosovo’s independence. They will initiate direct talks between Belgrade and Pristina instead, as Serbia and Russia have demanded all along. U.S. Ambassador at the UN Zalmay Khalilzad said there would be four months of negotiations between the parties under the auspices of the Contact Group. “We hope that during the course of those negotiations, the parties will come to an agreement,” Khalilzad said; but no one is saying what would happen if no agreement is reached after those 120 days.
In other words, we are back at Square One on Kosovo—exactly where we had been at the end of 2005, before Marti Ahtisaari started his ill-fated mission to gerrymander an independent “Kosova.”
It would be amusing and instructive to compile a collection of quotes made since that time by assorted politicians, pundits, bureucrats, academics and legislators to the effect that Kosovo’s independence is inevitable and imminent. Amusing, because so many luminaries—Tom Lantos, Joseph Lieberman, Nicholas Burns, Daniel Serwer and Richard Holbrooke, among others—were so obviously wrong; and instructive because their single-minded push for Kosovo’s independence is turning into yet another foreign policy disaster for the United States.
But old habits die hard. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Daniel Fried went to Belgrade last month to tell the Serbs that the game was up:
Kosovo will be independent. That is not simply an opinion; it is also a statement of where we think the result will be. Serbia’s leaders need to get beyond denial. They need to stop telling the Serbian people that it will not happen. They need to tell the Serbian people the truth which is that Milosevic lost Kosovo when he went to war with NATO and committed atrocities against the Kosovars. I will tell the truth if the Serbian leaders cannot, and that truth is that Serbia will not rule in Kosovo any more than Hungary will rule in the Vojvodina. It’s gone. It’s over.
Fried’s shrill tone, bordering on hysteria, reflected weakness, rather than strength; it brought to mind Goebbels’s famous Totalen Krieg speech in the aftermath of Stalingrad. In a similar vein, at the end of June President George W. Bush was in Tirana, telling his enthusiastic hosts that America has made up her mind on this issue (“our support is solid, firm”); and only last week Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said, “We are committed to an independent Kosovo and we will get there one way or another.”
The time has come to shake Bush, Fried, Rice et al from their pseudo-reality and explain to them what they dare not tell themselves: “we” will not get there this year, or next, or any other, any more than “we” did in 2006. In other words, it is time to tell them that Kosovo will NOT be independent. That is not simply an opinion; it is also a statement of diplomatic and political reality. America’s leaders need to get beyond denial. They need to stop telling themselves and the world that it will happen. They need to tell the American people the truth which is that Bush lost his Kosovo gambit when he turned it into a test of Russian resolve, after all the atrocities his predecessor committed against the Serbs. Chronicles will tell the truth if the U.S. Administration leaders cannot, and that truth is that their proteges will not rule in Kosovo any more than America will rule in Vietnam. It’s gone, Mr. Fried, it’s over.
It is by now evident that independence will not be steamrolled through the Security Council, and no feasible scenario to bypass the UN is on the horizon. The time has come for some real negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina—with no time limits and no preordained outcomes.
What the advocates of Kosovo’s independence fail to grasp is that for the first time in two decades a great power is able, willing, and even determined to support and meaningfully defend a Serbian position in the mosaic of post-Yugoslav disputes. That power is Russia, and Putin’s motivation is not Orthodox or Slavic solidarity. It has little to do with Kosovo per se, or Serbia as such, and a lot to do with Russia’s return to the world stage as a self-confident great power that has had enough of American faits accomplis and dictates typical of the Yeltsin era.
Throughout those two decades the United States’ position has been admirably consistent. As Doug Bandow points out, successive administrations’ policy amounted to the question “What the Serbs want?” and, upon hearing the reply, a firm and unrelenting decision that they cannot have it and never will have it.
Franjo Tudjman’s ethnic cleansing of hunderds of thousands of Serbs from the Krajina was thus aided and abetted by the U.S. on the grounds that Croatia had the right to protect her sovereignty and territorial integrity against Serbian separatism. Islamic fundamentalist Alija Izetbegovic was supported on the absurd pretext that he wanted to build a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, liberal-democratic Bosnia-Herzegovina. Albanian terrorists, war criminals and church-burning, dope-smuggling pimps were supported in Kosovo on the grounds that they had the right to self-determination.
UNDERSTANDING PUTIN’S GRIEVANCES
The Soviet Union came into being as a revolutionary state that challenged any given status quo in principle, starting with the Comintern and ending three generations later with Afghanistan. Some of its aggressive actions and hostile impulses could be explained in light of “traditional” Russian motives, such as the need for security; at root, however, there was always an ideology unlimited in ambition and global in scope. At first, the United States tried to appease and accommodate the Soviets (1943-46), then moved to containment in 1947, and spent the next four decades building and maintaining essentially defensive mechanisms—such as NATO—designed to prevent any major change in the global balance.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been trying to articulate her goals and define her policies in terms of national interests: peace and prosperity at home, stable domestic institutions, secure borders, friendly neighbors. The old Soviet dual-track policy of having “normal” relations with America, on the one hand, while seeking to subvert her, on the other, gave way to naïve attempts by Boris Yeltsin’s foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev to forge a “partnership” with the United States.
By contrast, the early 1990’s witnessed the beginning of America’s strident attempt to assert her status as the only global “hyperpower.” This ambition was inimical to post-Soviet stabilization and kept Washington from entertaining the suggestion that Russia might have legitimate interests in her own post-Soviet backyard. The United States adopted her own dual-track approach. When Mikhail Gorbachev’s agreement was needed for German reunification, President George H.W. Bush gave a firm and public promise that NATO wound not move eastward. Within years, however, Bill Clinton expanded NATO to include all the former Warsaw Pact countries of Central Europe.
Another round of NATO expansion came under George W. Bush, when three former Soviet Baltic republics were admitted—and the process is far from over. Last April Mr. Bush signed the Orwellian-sounding NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007, which extends U.S. military assistance to such aspiring NATO members as Georgia and the Ukraine. The rationale for NATO’s continued existence was found in the nebulous (and revolutionary) concept of “humanitarian intervention” used against the Serbs in 1999. Further expansion, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, is “mandatory—historically mandatory, geopolitically desirable.”
In the wake of September 11, President Bush talked Russia into sanctioning the U.S. military’s presence in Central Asia and the Caucasus, but then, in the name of the “War on Terror,” tried to make that presence permanent. In 2002 President Bush unilaterally abrogated the ABM Treaty. His goal was to push forward elements of the U.S. anti-ballistic-missile system closer to Russia’s borders, with the spurious claim that radar stations in Poland or Bohemia will protect the West from Iran’s ICBMs.
The collapse of Russia’s state institutions and social infrastructure under Yeltsin, accompanied by a hyperinflation that reduced the middle class and pensioners to penury, was a trauma of incomparably greater magnitude than the Great Depression. Yet its architects—Anatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov—were hailed in Washington as “pro-Western reformers,” and their political factions and media outlets were duly supported by the U.S. taxpayers, by way of a network of quasi-NGOs.
The wholesale robbery of Russian resources by the Moscow oligarchs and the fire sale of drilling concessions to the oligarchs’ Western cohorts became a contentious issue in U.S.-Russian relations only a decade later, with the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Those spewing furious allegations of “Putin’s revenge” and “heavy-handedness” against the Yukos boss disregarded the fact that, quite apart from his political ambitions, Khodorkovsky was guilty of fraud and tax evasion on a massive scale.
While never missing an opportunity to hector Russia on democracy and criticize her human-rights record, the United States has been notably silent on the discriminatory treatment of large Russian minorities in the former Soviet republics In Latvia and Estonia, the Russians are subjected to arguably the worst treatment of any minority group by a member of the European Union or (with the exception of Turkey) of NATO. The demonstrations in Estonia against the government’s provocative removal of a Russian World War II memorial from Tallinn were but a symptom of a deeper malaise. As Anatol Lieven of the New America Foundation wrote recently, Latvia and Estonia “have been allowed by the West flagrantly to break promises made before independence.”
Washington apparently still views Russia as a state with limited sovereignty even within her post-Soviet borders. Chechnya is the obvious example: The White House routinely condemns Russian “violations” while demanding “dialogue” and studiously refraining from designating the Chechen child-slayers as “terrorists”; but no other aspect of Russia’s domestic policies, from education (“ethnocentric”) and immigration (“restrictive”) to homosexual rights (“appalling”) and jurisprudence (“corrupt”), has escaped scathing criticism. On the eve of his G-8 meeting with Putin last May, Mr. Bush declared that “reforms that were once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development.”
On current form, things will remain the same, or perhaps become worse, no matter who comes to the White House in 2008. Richard Holbrooke, the Democrats’ perennially designated secretary of state, wants a firm response to “a series of Russian challenges to the stability of Europe” — such as the refusal to accept Kosovo’s independence. He descries Putin’s “increasingly authoritarian, often brutal, policies,” yet cautions that, “until President Bush weighs in strongly with Putin (as President Bill Clinton did a decade ago with Boris Yeltsin), there is a serious risk Moscow will not get the message.”
MOSCOW STRIKES BACK
Far from being deterred by Mr. Bush’s apparent commitment to Kosovo’s independence, Russian President Vladimir Putin sees it as a God-sent chance to embarrass Mr. Bush and show the world that Russia can no longer be treated with the mix of disdainful arrogance and the way it was treated under Yeltsin. With the Administration’s options diminishing, Putin’s are increasing.
On the diplomatic front, Russia can and will veto any resolution presented to the Security Council that is based on Ahtisaari’s moribund plan and that assumes independence as the final outcome. Resolution 1244 cannot be legally bypassed, and it is unequivocal about Serbia’s sovereignty. If the European Union (under American pressure) tries to bypass the UN, however, Putin can retaliate by playing his energy card. According to a respected Russian analyst,
The Russians would cut supplies if provoked. Kosovo really is that big an issue to them. If they gave in on this, all of Putin’s efforts to re-establish Russia as a great power would be undermined. Putin wants to remind Germany in particular—but also other former Soviet satellites—that thwarting Russia carries a price. If the European Union were to unilaterally act against Russian wishes, Putin would have to choose between appearing as if he is all talk and no action, and acting. Putin would choose the latter.
According to the same source, Putin also has a military option. Contrary to popular belief, the Russians retain increasingly effective military units. The Russian military retains an excellent core, particularly in its airborne regiments. The Russians could fly a regiment of troops to Belgrade, use Serbian trucks to move to the administrative line dividing Kosovo from the rest of Serbia, and threaten to move into Kosovo to take their place in KFOR.
The Europeans would protest, but they would not react. Western Europe is heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, and it cannot afford to follow Washington into an open-ended confrontation over a peripheral issue. Signals from Moscow indicate that challenging Kosovo’s independence militarily would prompt Russia to call NATO defense capabilities into question, which could leave the Europeans even more fractured. “Do not assume that the Russians would not dare try such a move,” the Russian source insists: “The Russians are itching for an opportunity to confront the West—and win. In the case of Kosovo, should they choose to make an issue of it, they have the diplomatic, economic and military options to force the West to back down. Condoleezza Rice has said that Kosovo will never be returned to Serbian rule. Putin would love to demonstrate that it doesn’t matter what the U.S. secretary of state wants.”b
In short, Kosovo is an asymmetric issue. Mr. Bush cares about it only as it relates to U.S. “credibility.” Accepting the assurances of inherited Clintonite bureaucrats of Mr. Burns’s ilk that the Serbs would cave in and that the Russians would budge may well prove to have been the second greatest blunder of his presidency.
If push comes to shove, Mr. Bush will face Moscow all alone. There is a great deal of dissent in Europe, from Madrid to Athens to Bucharest and Bratislava, but not even those Europeans who are nominally pro-independence—notably Germans—would not sacrifice a single day’s supply of natural gas over Albanian claims. By contrast, for Serbia this is an existential issue and for Russia it is a litmus test of her ability to be once again a great power, and to be seen and respected as one, after the dreadful Yeltsin interlude.
A NEW U.S. PARADIGM URGENTLY NEEDED
It is not prudent for the United States to insist that Kosovo should and will become independent—as President George W. Bush did in Tirana last June, followed by Dr. Rice and her aides on an almost daily basis—even as it is obvious that Russia will veto any attempt to achieve that goal through the United Nations’ Security Council, and even as the European Union is increasingly reluctant to participate in any scheme to bypass the UN. Statements by American officials that Kosovo’s independence is “inevitable” are a classic case of irresponsible policy-makers painting themselves into a corner on a peripheral issue, and then claiming that the issue had morphed into a test of American resolve.
A responsible leadership in Washington would never allow Kosovo to become such a test for three reasons.
1. Quite apart from historic, cultural, moral and legal aspects, the issue of who controls the southern Serbian province is perfectly irrelevant to American interests. It is a small, land-locked piece of real estate, of dubious “objective” value, away from all major Balkan transit corridors, and not nearly as rich in natural resources as both Serbs and Albanians like to imagine. If Kosovo were to disappear tomorrow, no ordinary American would be able to tell the difference.
2. The change of Kosovo’s status against the will of Belgrade, in addition to being a clear violation of the Law of Nations, would set a precedent potentially detrimental to U.S. interests. To enable an ethnic minority to secede from an internationally recognized state on the grounds of that minority’s numerical preponderance in a given locale would open Pandora’s box of claims all over the world, not least among Russian speakers in the Crimea, parts of Estonia and Latvia, northern Kazakhstan, and eastern Ukraine. It could also affect the future of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and perhaps even California, when Mexicans achieve simple majority in those states. (On current form the question is indeed “when,” not “if.”) State Department officials Nicholas Burns and Daniel Fried still insist that no precedent would be set by creating an independent Kosovo, but they cannot control reality and their assurances are nonsensical.
3. The likely cost of persevering will exceed any conceivable benefits of such policy to the United States. The Muslim world will not be appeased by Kosovo today any more than it was appeased by Bosnia a decade ago. America will not earn any brownie points among the world’s “Jihadists of all color and hue” (Rep. Tom Lantos) for creating a new Muslim state in the heart of Europe. Albanian “gratitude” would prove as valuable to America today as it has been, over the years, to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Communist China. On the other hand, the failure to create an independent, internationally recognized Kosovo would be yet another sign that Mr. Bush has no clothes and that America has no sureness of touch. Furthermore, favoring the imposition of a “solution” from the outside against the will of one of the parties could set a dangerous long-term precedent for Israel.
The U.S. policy is not sensible. It panders to the aspirations of a small and primitive, yet shrewdly opportunistic nation with territorial pretensions against all of her neighbors. Mr. Bush’s histrionics in Tirana were greeted almost as enthusiastically as Benito Mussolini, Nikita Khrushchev, and Chou En-Lai had been greeted by the Albanians over the decades. As Nicholas Stavrou noted in The National Herald, Mr. Bush fits into the Albanians’ talent for choosing patrons who fulfill three criteria: they must be big enough, far enough, and willing to offend the interests of Albania’s neighbors.
It is plainly irrational to insist on Kosovo’s independence, with all the risks such policy entails, while the United States faces so many other “unfinished businesses” around the globe. The list is well known, and depressing. Iraq is a disaster, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Afghanistan is a lesser calamity only when compared to Iraq. Any solution to the challenge presented by Iran will depend on Washington’s ability to have Russia on its side as a partner, which is impossible if Moscow’s concerns over Kosovo are treated as illegitimate. Russia is also an essential partner in helping control Kim Jong Il and devising a sustainable long-term energy policy for the Western world.
Geopolitical and pragmatic arguments notwithstanding, the most important reason the United States should not support Kosovo’s independence is, and always has been, cultural and civilizational; but trying to explain that to the chief executive who is fanatically supportive of a blanket amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens in the United States is as futile as trying to reform Islam.
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The Coming Conflict in the Arctic

2007-07-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

Russia and US to Square Off Over Arctic Energy Reserves

by Vladimir Frolov

Global Research, July 17, 2007
Russia Profile

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush spent most of their time at the “lobster summit” at Kennebunkport, Maine, discussing how to prevent the growing tensions between their two countries from getting out of hand.

The media and international affairs experts have been portraying missile defense in Europe and the final status of Kosovo as the two most contentious issues between Russia and the United States, with mutual recriminations over “democracy standards” providing the background for the much anticipated onset of a new Cold War. But while this may well be true for today, the stage has been quietly set for a much more serious confrontation in the non-too-distant future between Russia and the United States – along with Canada, Norway and Denmark.

Russia has recently laid claim to a vast 1,191,000 sq km (460,800 sq miles) chunk of the ice-covered Arctic seabed. The claim is not really about territory, but rather about the huge hydrocarbon reserves that are hidden on the seabed under the Arctic ice cap. These newly discovered energy reserves will play a crucial role in the global energy balance as the existing reserves of oil and gas are depleted over the next 20 years.

Russia has the world's largest gas reserves and is the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia, but its oil and gas production is slated to decline after 2010 as currently operational reserves dwindle. Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry estimates that the country’s existing oil reserves will be depleted by 2030.

The 2005 BP World Energy Survey projects that U.S. oil reserves will last another 10 years if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not opened for oil exploration, Norway’s reserves are good for about seven years and British North Sea reserves will last no more than five years – which is why the Arctic reserves, which are still largely unexplored, will be of such crucial importance to the world’s energy future. Scientists estimate that the territory contains more than 10 billion tons of gas and oil deposits. The shelf is about 200 meters (650 feet) deep and the challenges of extracting oil and gas there appear to be surmountable, particularly if the oil prices stay where they are now – over $70 a barrel.

The Kremlin wants to secure Russia's long-term dominance over global energy markets. To ensure this, Russia needs to find new sources of fuel and the Arctic seems like the only place left to go. But there is a problem: International law does not recognize Russia’s right to the entire Arctic seabed north of the Russian coastline.

The 1982 International Convention on the Law of the Sea establishes a 12 mile zone for territorial waters and a larger 200 mile economic zone in which a country has exclusive drilling rights for hydrocarbon and other resources.

Russia claims that the entire swath of Arctic seabed in the triangle that ends at the North Pole belongs to Russia, but the United Nations Committee that administers the Law of the Sea Convention has so far refused to recognize Russia’s claim to the entire Arctic seabed.

In order to legally claim that Russia’s economic zone in the Arctic extends far beyond the 200 mile zone, it is necessary to present viable scientific evidence showing that the Arctic Ocean’s sea shelf to the north of Russian shores is a continuation of the Siberian continental platform. In 2001, Russia submitted documents to the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf seeking to push Russia's maritime borders beyond the 200 mile zone. It was rejected.

Now Russian scientists assert there is new evidence that Russia’s northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf. Last week a group of Russian geologists returned from a six-week voyage to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater shelf in Russia's remote eastern Arctic Ocean. They claimed the ridge was linked to Russian Federation territory, boosting Russia's claim over the oil- and gas-rich triangle.

The latest findings are likely to prompt Russia to lodge another bid at the UN to secure its rights over the Arctic sea shelf. If no other power challenges Russia’s claim, it will likely go through unchallenged.

But Washington seems to have a different view and is seeking to block the anticipated Russian bid. On May 16, 2007, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made a statement encouraging the Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention, as the Bush Administration wants. The Reagan administration negotiated the Convention, but the Senate refused to ratify it for fear that it would unduly limit the U.S. freedom of action on the high seas.

Lugar used the following justification in his plea for the United States to ratify the convention: “Russia has used its rights under the convention to claim large parts of the Arctic Ocean in the hope of claiming potential oil and gas deposits that might become available as the polar ice cap recedes due to global warming. If the United States did not ratify the convention, Russia would be able to press its claims without the United States at the negotiating table. This would be directly damaging to U.S. national interests.” President Bush urged the Senate to ratify the convention during its current session, which ends in 2008.

The United States has been jealous of Russia’s attempts to project its dominance in the energy sector and has sought to limit opportunities for Russia to control export routes and energy deposits outside Russia’s territory. But the Arctic shelf is something that Russia has traditionally regarded as its own. For decades, international powers have pressed no claims to Russia’s Arctic sector for obvious reasons of remoteness and inhospitability, but no longer.

Now, as the world’s major economic powers brace for the battle for the last barrel of oil, it is not surprising that the United States would seek to intrude on Russia’s home turf. It is obvious that Moscow would try to resist this U.S. intrusion and would view any U.S. efforts to block Russia’s claim to its Arctic sector as unfriendly and overtly provocative. Furthermore, such a policy would actually help the Kremlin justify its hardline position. It would certainly prove right Moscow’s assertion that U.S. policy towards Russia is really driven by the desire to get guaranteed and privileged access to Russia’s energy resources.

It promises to be a tough fight.

Global Research Articles by Vladimir Frolov
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6344

Containing Russia: Back to the Future?

2007-07-21T17:14:00.000-07:00

(Just as Draza Mihailovic was betrayed by the West, so Is Russia facing the same betrayel: and that is why Putin suspended the CFE treaty)
This article was written by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergie Lavrov.

Influential political forces on both sides of the Atlantic appear intent on starting a debate about whether or not to "contain" Russia. The mere posing of the question suggests that for some almost nothing has changed since the Cold War.

What is a return to containment meant to achieve at a time when Russia has abandoned ideology and imperial aspirations in favor of pragmatism and common sense? What is the purpose of containing a country that is successfully developing and thereby naturally strengthening its international position? What is the point of containing a country that aspires to things as basic as international trade?

It should be no surprise that Russia today is making use of its natural competitive advantages. It is also investing in its human resources, encouraging innovation, integrating into the global economy, and modernizing its legislation. Russia wants international stability to underpin its own development. Accordingly, it is working toward the establishment of a freer and more democratic international order.

The new advocacy of containment may stem from a substantial gap between Russian and U.S. aspirations. U.S. diplomacy seeks to transform what Washington considers "nondemocratic" governments around the world, reordering entire regions in the process. Russia, with its experience with revolution and extremism, cannot subscribe to any such ideologically driven project, especially one that comes from abroad. The Cold War represented a step away from the Westphalian standard of state sovereignty, which placed values beyond the scope of intergovernmental relations. A return to Cold War theories such as containment will only lead to confrontation.

In contrast to the Soviet Union, Russia is an open country that does not erect walls, either physical or political. On the contrary, Russia calls for the removal of visa barriers and other artificial hurdles in international relations. It espouses democracy and market economics as the right bases for social and political order and economic life.

Although Russia has a long way to go, it has chosen a path of development that entails unprecedented, and at times painful, changes. Russian society has reached a broad consensus that these changes should be evolutionary and free of upheavals. Ultimately, a mature democracy, with a vibrant civil society and a well-structured party system, will emerge from a higher level of social and economic development. This requires a substantial middle class, which cannot come into being overnight. It was only Russian tycoons who emerged overnight in the early 1990s -- and those times are definitely over.

Frictional Energy

Countries dependent on external sources of energy criticize Russia for assuming its naturally large role in the global energy sector. However, those countries should recognize that energy dependence is reciprocal, since hoarding is not a wise choice for an energy exporting country. That is why Russia has never failed to fulfill any of its hydrocarbon-supply contracts with importing countries. Russia does, however, consider energy to be a strategic sector that helps safeguard independence in its foreign relations. This is understandable given the negative external reactions to Russia's strengthened economy and enlarged role in international affairs, in which Russia lawfully employs its newly gained freedom of action and speech. It should not be criticized by those who frown on a stronger Russia.

The Russian government's energy policy reflects a global trend toward state control over natural resources. Ninety percent of the world's proven hydrocarbon reserves are under some form of state control. Such state control of energy resources is offset, however, by the concentration of cutting-edge technology in the hands of private transnational corporations. Thus, there are incentives for cooperation between the parties, with each sharing the same objective of meeting the energy requirements of the world economy.

Russia is pursuing a foreign policy in striking contrast to the ideologically motivated internationalism of the Soviet Union. Today, Russia believes that multilateral diplomacy based on international law should manage regional and global relations. As globalization has extended beyond the West, competition has become truly global -- nothing less than a paradigm shift. Competing states must now take into account differing values and development patterns. The challenge is to establish fairness in this complex competitive environment.

The logical approach is for countries to focus on their competitive advantages without imposing their values on others. U.S. attempts to do the latter have weakened the West's competitive position. As Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the Research Institute of the German Society for Foreign Policy, has put it, U.S. policies in recent years have "damaged tremendously the image of the West" in Asia and Africa. He concludes that nothing, or almost nothing, has been done to make Western values attractive to Asian and African populations. Russia can hardly be held responsible for that.

In his speech in Munich earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated the obvious when he said that a "unipolar world" had failed to materialize. Recent experience shows as clearly as ever that no state or group of states possesses sufficient resources to impose its will on the world. Hierarchy might seem attractive to some in global affairs, but it is utterly unrealistic. It is one thing to respect American culture and civilization; it is another to embrace Americo-centrism.

The new international system has not one but several leading actors, and their collective leadership is needed to manage global relations. This multipolarity encourages network diplomacy as the best way for states to achieve shared objectives. In this system, the United Nations becomes pivotal, providing through its charter the means for collective discussion and action.

The Limits of Force

In the twenty-first century, delay in solving accumulated problems carries devastating consequences for all nations. One sure lesson is that unilateral responses, consisting primarily of using force, result in stalemates and broken china everywhere. The current catalog of unresolved crises -- Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Darfur, North Korea -- is a testament to that. Genuine security will only be achieved through establishing normal relations and engaging in dialogue. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hit the right note when he counseled that today's world should be based on cooperation rather than military deterrence.

Complex problems require comprehensive approaches. In the case of Iran, resolving differences should lie in the normalization by all countries of their relations with Tehran. Normalization would also help preserve the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Regarding Kosovo, independence from Serbia would create a precedent that goes beyond the existing norms of international law. Our partners' inclination to give way to the blackmail of violence and anarchy within Kosovo contrasts with the indifference shown to similar violence and anarchy in the Palestinian territories, where it has been tolerated for decades while a Palestinian state has yet to be established.

Eliminating the Cold War legacy in Europe, where the containment policy was dominant for too long, is especially pressing. Creating division in Europe encourages nationalist sentiments that threaten the unity of the continent. The current problems faced by the European Union, in particular, and European politics, in general, cannot be solved without Europe's maintaining constructive and future-oriented relations with Russia -- relations based on mutual trust and confidence. This ought to be seen as serving U.S. interests as well.

Instead, various attempts are being made to contain Russia, including through the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in violation of previous assurances given to Moscow. Today, supporters of NATO enlargement harp on the organization's supposed role in the promotion of democracy. How is democracy furthered by a military-political alliance that is producing scenarios for the use of force?

Meanwhile, some are promoting the extension of NATO membership to the countries that comprise the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as some sort of pass providing admittance to the club of democratic states whether these countries meet the democratic test or not. One cannot help wondering whether this initiative is being pursued for the sake of moral satisfaction or again to contain Russia.

As far as the CIS is concerned, Russia has the capacity to maintain social, economic, and other forms of stability in the region. Moscow's rejection of politicized trade and economic relations and its adoption of market-based principles testifies to its determination to have normalcy in interstate relations. Russia and the West can cooperate in this region but only by forsaking zero-sum power games.

The drive to place missile defenses in eastern Europe is evidence of the U.S. effort to contain Russia. It is hardly coincidental that this installation would fit into the U.S. global missile defense system that is deployed along Russia's perimeter. Many Europeans are rightfully concerned that stationing elements of the U.S. missile defense system in Europe would undermine disarmament processes. For its part, Russia considers the initiative a strategic challenge that requires a strategic response.

President Putin's offer to allow joint usage of the Gabala radar base in Azerbaijan, instead of those eastern European installations -- as well as his proposal, made when meeting with President George W.Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, in July, to create a regional monitoring and early warning system -- provides a brilliant opportunity to find a way out of the present situation with the dignity of all parties intact. As a starting point for a truly collective effort in this area, Russia is willing to take part, together with the United States and others, in a joint analysis of potential missile threats up to the year 2020.

The desire to contain Russia clearly manifests itself as well in the situation surrounding the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (or CFE Treaty). Russia complies with the treaty in good faith and insists only on the one thing that the treaty promises: equal security. However, the equal security principle was compromised with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact; meanwhile, NATO was left intact and then enlarged. In the meantime, attempts to correct the situation have come up against the refusal of NATO member countries to ratify the modernization of the treaty under various unrelated pretexts that have no legal justification and are entirely political. The lesson to be drawn from the CFE Treaty stalemate is that any element of global or European security architecture that is not based on the principles of equality and mutual benefit will not prove to be sustainable. After all, if we cannot adapt this old instrument to the new realities, is it not time to review the situation and start developing a new system of arms control and confidence-building measures, if we find that Europe needs one? Here again, frank discussion at Kennebunkport gave hope that there is way to move toward putting into force the adapted treaty.

Beyond The Cold War

It is time to bury the Cold War legacy and establish structures that meet the imperatives of this era -- particularly since Russia and the West are no longer adversaries and do not wish to create the impression that war is still a possibility in Europe. The path to trust lies through candid dialogue and reasoned debate, as well as interactions based on the joint analysis of threats. At the moment, however, without reasonable grounds, Russia is excluded from such joint analysis. Instead, it is urged to believe in the analytic abilities and good intentions of its partners.

Russians do not suffer from a sense of exceptionalism, but neither do they consider their analytic abilities and ideas inferior to those of others. Russia will respond to safeguard its national security, and in doing so will be guided by the principle of "reasonable sufficiency." Meanwhile, it will always keep the door open for positive joint action to safeguard common interests on the basis of equality. This is the only serious approach to national security concerns.

In his speech in Munich, President Putin invited all of Russia's partners to start a serious and substantive discussion of the current status of international affairs, which is far from satisfactory. Russia is convinced that a friend/enemy attitude toward it should be a thing of the past. If efforts are being undertaken to "counter Russia's negative behavior," how can Russia be expected to cooperate in areas of interest to its partners? One has to choose between containment and cooperation. This is relevant to Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization and the Asian Development Bank and to the unwarranted continuance of the 1970s Jackson-Vanik amendment, which denies Russia permanent normal trading relations with the United States.

U.S.-Russian relations still enjoy the stabilizing benefits of a close and honest working relationship between President Putin and President Bush. Both countries and both peoples share the memory of their joint victory over fascism and their joint exit from the Cold War, which unites them in its own right. Should equal partnership prevail in U.S.-Russian relations, very little will be impossible for the two nations to achieve. The challenges are many -- the struggle against international terrorism; organized crime and drug trafficking; the search for realistic climate protection; the development of nuclear energy while strengthening nonproliferation efforts; the pursuit of global energy security; and the exploration of outer space. Practical cooperation on these and other challenges should not be sacrificed on the altar of renewed containment.

At present, anti-Americanism is not as widespread in Russia as it is elsewhere. But a return to containment, and the bloc-based thinking that accompanies it, could trigger mutual alienation between Americans and Russians. The strains evident in the U.S.-Russian relationship call for a high-level working group charged with finding ways to further cooperation. The presidents of Russia and the United States support the idea of such a group, headed by the former statesmen Henry Kissinger and Yevgeny Primakov.

Both sides should demonstrate a broad-minded and unbiased vision, one that represents Russia and the United States as two branches of European civilization. Russia, the United States, and the European Union should work together to preserve the integrity of the Euro-Atlantic space in global politics. For as Jacques Delors has said, whenever this troika "is divided by differences, whenever each party plays its own game, the risk of global instability greatly increases."

So why not stand together and act in the spirit of cooperation and fair competition on the basis of shared standards and a respect for international law? At the Kennebunkport meeting in July, President Putin and President Bush demonstrated what teamwork can achieve. They agreed to look for common approaches to missile defense and strategic arms reductions, and they launched new initiatives on nuclear energy and nonproliferation. Russia and the United States have nothing to divide them; along with other partners, they share responsibility for the future of the world. It is not Russia that needs to be contained; it is those who would deprive the world of the benefits that will come from a strong U.S.-Russian partnership.

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Concerning Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov's Article for the Journal Foreign Affairs

An article of Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov was offered to the editors of Foreign Affairs in May for publication. The Russian minister had wanted to directly address the audience of this prestigious magazine to explain Russian foreign policy and our vision of contemporary international relations and of ways to ensure a positive direction in the evolution of bilateral Russian-American relations, including interaction in international affairs.

Another motive for this offer was the discussion started in the journal's pages on the theme of "containing Russia" by the publication of an article signed by Yulia Tymoshenko.

Editors at the magazine, citing their own requirements, subjected the article to heavy editing if not to say censorship. The article was cut by 40%, losing a considerable part of its original meaning. Some of the editors' corrections suggested that Sergey Lavrov subscribe, no more no less, to the certain foreign policy approaches of the current US administration that evoke our principled rejection. Having gone through all this and guided solely by the interests of strengthening Russian-American relations, we encountered a situation where the magazine's editors put forward an utterly farfetched and unacceptable demand for us. They insisted on adding to the article's title "Containing Russia: Back to the Future?" a subtitle: "Averting a new cold war" or "a conflict between Russia and America."

As a matter of fact, such a subtitle fundamentally runs counter to the key idea of the Russian minister's article, since Moscow presumes that there can be no talk of a new cold war and especially a conflict between our countries whatsoever. There are no objective grounds for this. The danger of Russian-American relations evolving according to a negative scenario lies elsewhere, notably in the separate existence of the Russian and American factors in global politics, which hardly meets the interests of our two countries and the international community as a whole. Whereas some attempt to intimidate Russia by alleging that the sole alternative to a "unipolar world" is chaos or a return to the cold war. By the way, it was about the danger of "estrangement" between Russia and the US that Henry Kissinger wrote back in March.

The editors' flat refusal to remove the sub-headline about a new cold war was the last straw, for they had submitted no intelligible explanations for their attempts to impose this sub-headline, ignoring the author's opinion.

As a result of the excruciating and sluggish exchanges with the editors, the likes of which could only be found in diplomatic history, it was deemed advisable to give up trying to place Sergey Lavrov's article in Foreign Affairs. This experience caused us to remember the worst features of the Soviet censorship past, which some in America seem to be trying to repeat.

It's a pity that the editors of the journal voluntarily or involuntarily played into the hands of those who want to prevent open, free and well-argued debates on international affairs and US foreign policy. Such closedness hardly meets the national interests of America, as all of its allies and friends, among whom Russia regards itself, understand them. This approach is fundamentally opposed to the openness that characterizes the relationship between Presidents Vladimir Putin and George Bush.

It should be noted that Foreign Affairs' partner the Russian journal Russia in Global Politics carried a full translation of the above-mentioned article signed by Yulia Tymoshenko, even though it is a quite meticulous inventory of the entire range of complaints about the new Russia and its foreign policy, dictated by traditional anti-Russian prejudices and stereotypes. This magazine also had room for such former members of the present administration as Thomas Graham, Richard Haas and Ronald Asmus, whose articles, like the article signed by Tymoshenko, did not have to go through censorship.

It's a great pity that a protective tendency makes itself felt in a part of the American media that narrows America's intellectual resource. We are convinced that the United States deserves better.

To show the Russian and American publics that there is nothing in the article of Sergey Lavrov that would be harmful for adult Americans to read, below is published its "sanitized" text in the English language, on which we failed to come to an agreement with the Foreign Affairs editors because of their refusal to remove the sub-headline they themselves had thought up. The original, "pre-censorship" text of the article will come out in the July-August issue of the journal Russia in Global Politics.

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Kosovo Independence Stalled In Its Tracks

2007-07-21T07:15:00.000-07:00

Even while Russian is embattled she stands up for her friends:

US, EU allies drop UN bid for Kosovo independence
07-21-2007, 01h55
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)

Roma children play near a wall covered with graffiti reading, "Self-Determination," in the town of Prizren, March 2007. The United States and its European allies Friday shelved a bid to secure independence for Kosovo through the UN Security Council in face of a Russian veto threat and said they would hand the issue back to a six-nation Contact Group.
(AFP/File)

The United States and its European allies Friday shelved a UN bid to secure independence for Kosovo in the face of a Russian veto threat and said they would hand the issue back to a six-nation Contact Group.

Western nations have been trying to push a draft resolution in the Security Council to implement key provisions of UN mediator Martti Ahtissari's plan to grant "supervised independence" to the breakaway Albanian-majority Serbian province.

But they ran into opposition from Moscow, Belgrade's key ally, which has said it would use its power of veto to block the move.

Friday, Washington and its European allies agreed to drop their efforts in the Security Council and turn the matter over to the six-nation Contact Group instead.

The draft would have endorsed new talks between Belgrade and Kosovo's Albanian separatists over a 120-day period under the aegis of the Contact Group on Kosovo -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States -- and the European Union "to determine whether common ground can be found."

In Moscow, Russia's foreign ministry welcomed the decision to send the issue back to the Contact Group.

"We consider that the annulment of a vote on a resolution is the logical result of our active position aimed at creating conditions to prolong talks in order to obtain an accord between Belgrade and Pristina," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

And Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin told reporters that Russia would attend a meeting of the Contact Group scheduled for next Wednesday in Vienna.

His US counterpart Zalmay Khalilzad however pointedly noted that although a member of the Contact Group, Russia had no right of veto in that process.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica hailed the decision by the Western sponsors to drop their draft resolution as an "important victory" for Belgrade and Moscow.

"A joint principle policy of Serbia and Russia has won an important victory in the UN Security Council by defending ... the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia," Kostunica said in a written statement.

He said it was a "victory of legacy over attempts to seize a large part of Serbia's territory."

But Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku expressed "regret" over the move at the Security Council, saying that handing the issue over to the Contact Group "would have an impact only if the process is unblocked."

The Kosovo daily Express meanwhile reported that Ceku had proposed to other Kosovo Albanian politicians to proclaim independence on November 28.

November 28 marks independence day in neighboring Albania but the date has been widely celebrated by the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo.

Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado, whose country holds the EU presidency, said it was important for the bloc to have to a "common position" on Kosovo.

"We are already faced with a difficult situation" which could be complicated if "the EU is unable to maintain a position of coherence and cohesion," he said.

Churkin said he had been prepared to use his right of veto had the draft, co-sponsored by Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States, been put to a vote.

The text would have turned over administration of the province from the United Nations to the European Union while maintaining a NATO presence.

French Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said: "The people of Kosovo should be given the opportunity to realize their political and economic development. We are determined to assist them in that aim in the period ahead.

"We believe that resolving Kosovo's status must be achieved as soon as possible."

The French envoy also said EU foreign ministers would discuss Kosovo at a meeting on Monday.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, after a NATO bombing campaign helped drive out Serb forces carrying out a brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population in the province.

© 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.

New Book: A Crime Against God and Humanity

2007-07-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime Against God And Humanity The American Council for Kosovo ^ Iseult Henry
Posted on 07/18/2007 4:36:46 PM PDT by Doctor13

NEW BOOK – available now from The American Council for Kosovo!

Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime against God and Humanity
by Iseult Henry
Old habits die hard: A yellow cross fixed by German NATO to the door of a Serbian house to show that Christians live there -- but not for long.
Finally, the truth is coming out about the Kosovo jihad and how it has been aided and abetted by NATO, the UN, and the EU. Thanks to Iseult Henry, maybe the shameful and ultimately suicidal support of the Kosovo jihadists by Western powers will finally be ended. -- Robert Spencer, director, Jihad Watch; author of the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad.
Our so-called adversary press, like the U.S. Government, has ignored the plight of Christians in Kosovo. Incredibly, the U.S. and the U.N. are destroying the sovereignty of Serbia in order to create a Muslim state in Europe. This book tells the story suppressed by our media that all Americans need to know. -- Cliff Kincaid, editor, Accuracy in Media.
When one spends nearly a decade writing in isolation about the countless and unending injustices against the Serbs, she forms a habit of second-guessing herself: Am I exaggerating? Am I biased? Could such unadulterated evil really be happening so one-sidedly? And how could the colossal hoax that brought us to it succeed so completely in this day and age? Surely I’ve gotten it all wrong somehow, and the rest of the world is right. Now, thanks to this book by Iseult Henry, we know the truth: the reality is even more unspeakable. With this account of the atrocities visited upon the Christians of Kosovo by the free world-sponsored Muslims of the Balkans, Henry delivers the book that thousands of dead Serbs screaming in silence have been waiting for. Not exactly screaming in silence, for as the author describes, at night the bells at the monastery of St. Uros toll with no one pulling their ropes, and lights appear from no source, sending us a message that despite our best efforts to do so, there is no hiding from our crimes against God and humanity--even in the Balkans. -- Julia Gorin, independent commentator.
More details at the link below:
Hiding Genocide in Kosovo
At a time when the Western powers – foremost among them the United States – prepare what they hope will be an endgame for their predetermined solution to the Serbian question, now comes a searing ray of truth that cuts through the fog of lies in which Kosovo has been shrouded. The work of “Iseult Henry,” the pen name of a current member of the international mission in Kosovo, Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime against God and Humanity is not a typical book of the current events or international affairs genre. Nor is it a journalistic exposé. It is simply a book of stories, true stories of what has taken place in Kosovo since the end of the 1999 war: shooting, beheading, burning, bomb attack, maiming, rape, abduction, torture, desecration, theft, mutilation, and harassment. While Western policymakers (the U.S., EU, UN, NATO, OSCE, etc.) delude themselves that they are buying the goodwill of the Muslim world by the sacrifice of a small Christian community in Kosovo, the perpetrators know this is yet another step toward Islamic dominance of all Europe. This is a struggle for the soul and future not just for Kosovo, not just for Serbia, but for an entire continent.
-- from the Publisher's Foreword by Jim Jatras, Director of The American Council for Kosovo.