Free Republic

On Serbia and Madeleine Albright. 7/29/2006, Volume 011, Issue 44 SPARRING OVER SERBIA STEPHEN SCHWARTZ's "Free at Last" (July 24) left me greatly surprised and somewhat disappointed, both by the distortion of historical and political facts and by the argumentation based on malicious and trivial political comments. Describing Serbia as a "mafia state" is intentionally overlooking the well-known fact that the Milosevic regime met its end when the Serbian people, investing enormous effort and encountering the greatest possible risk, overthrew it in their bloodless revolution of October 2000. Serbian democratic authorities, in their crackdown on organized crime, and with the...

Rather than welcoming those talks, though, Mr. Kurti wants them stopped -- and he seems to have a large following. He doesn't want an internationally negotiated road map to independence, he wants a mass popular uprising -- bloody if necessary -- that will instantly free Kosovo not just from Serbia but from the UN's clutches. Dressed fashionably and surrounded by rapt followers, Mr. Kurti calmly denounced the United Nations Mission In Kosovo. "UNMIK made sense for the first two years, the postwar recovery stage, but when it came to the development stage, they failed us," he says. "And now UNMIK's...