Holbrooke Says Violence in Kosovo Was Inevitable

Reuters via Yahoo ^ | March 23, 2004 | Evelyn Leopold

[wonders]

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites), said on Tuesday that violence in Kosovo was predictable because the international community failed to move on the final status of the Serbian province.

Holbrooke, a veteran Balkans trouble-shooter, said in an interview that the European Union (news - web sites), the United Nations and the United States needed to be prepared to go directly to Kosovo's status "but only if the violence subsides on both sides."

Clashes between Albanian and Serb communities last week left 28 people dead and 870 injured.

Holbrooke said he had warned Harry Holkeri, the chief U.N. envoy in Kosovo, during a visit to Pristina last October that if the delay continued, the violence would escalate and "we could have a West Bank retaliatory cycle."

"Unfortunately Holkeri did not take action to accelerate the status talks because he did not seem to realize that time was not on his side," said Holbrooke, who negotiated the 1995 end to the Bosnia war. He was speaking to Reuters by telephone during a trip to San Francisco.

Kosovo is legally a province of Serbia, but has been a U.N. protectorate since June 1999 after 11 weeks of NATO (news - web sites) bombing forced out Serb troops to end their repression of Albanians during an Albanian separatist uprising.

Its unresolved final status is the subject of bitter dispute between independence-seeking Albanians and Serbs who say the province could be granted autonomy, but only within Serbia and Montenegro sovereignty.

Holbrooke said discussions over refugee returns, water rights, electricity and other issues inevitably were related to the status of the province.

The current policy was to have "talks about talks" in March 2005 on the final status. "So on the condition that the violence subsides, the process should accelerate," he said.

"The United States abandoned the issue as soon as the Bush administration took over, subordinating it to a low level in the bureaucracy," said Holbrooke, who served under former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites).

"The European Union made a series of mistakes and Harry Holkeri did not understand the situation," he said.

But he stressed that "Albanians are only hurting their long-cherished goal, which is independence, by what amounts to reverse ethnic cleansing." He said that a satisfactory solution needed "ironclad" guarantees for the Serb minority.

[wonders]

Odious man.

[stylin_geek]

And the "victory" won in Kosovo by President Clinton and the U.N. is an amazing success story, whereas Iraq, after one year, is a "quagmire?"

[wonders]

Agreed, except it should be "Clinton and NATO", not "Clinton and UN". They got UN to come in afterward and help babysit the mess. (The '99 bombing campaign was in violation of the UN Charter -- no UN approval of it. It was also in violation of the NATO Charter, but that didn't stop them. Go figure.)

[wonders]

Add to *balkans

[Spotsy]

Did the Bush Team drop the ball in the Balkans too? /sarcasm

[ChicagoHebrew]

Holbrooke is right. Just as it's ridiculous for liberals to whine about violence in Iraq, conservatives shouldn't bitch about problems in Kosovo. Fact is, world problems don't get solved overnight.

[Makedonski]

NATO started bombing in violation of UN charter and NATO charter.

Clinton did not have UN authorization for an attack on a sovereign state (i.e. Yugoslavia).

It was thought that the bombing would last a week at the most.

However the Serbs held on for 3 months of bombing with relative minimal damage to their forces (13 tanks in TOTAL destroyed and 2000 military casualties).

So the US proposed a 200000 army to go in from Hungary and that would have been a bloodbath.

Russian / Finnish negotiators proposed a peace plan that involved the UN.

So the UN was asked to make things look right and proper.

A UN force went in but UN handled the civilian part only where the military part was NATO.

NATO mission KFOR main task was to REJECT an EXTERNAL SERB attack on KOSOVO.

What ever happend inside Kosovo was UN problem.

So since then 1500 Serbs got killed over a period of 5 years and NOT A SINGLE PERSON has been arrested for any of that.

[cwb]

Not only that, but I think this gives Bush more than enough evidence that the UN could never handle the bigger job in Iraq. Someone should get this over to Kerry's desk:)

[VOA]

Holbrooke Says Violence in Kosovo Was Inevitable

Kosovo (the Balkans mess) is just another object-lesson on why Americans
should never feel like we owe Old Europe the friggin' time of day.

[wonders]

Good summary! I'd only add that the Russian-brokered plan was exactly what Milosevic had agreed to prior to the bombing campaign.

[wonders]

Whatever your opinion of the UN, NATO is actually in charge of peacekeeping in Kosovo. So any criticisms of the "peacekeeping" in Kosovo should be mainly be levelled at NATO.

[duckln]

...forced out Serb troops to end their repression of Albanians during an Albanian separatist uprising.

Which was it? Were Serbia troops sent in to repress the Albanians or fight Islamists anarchists?

The Albanians were no more repressed in Kosovo than they were in Serbia proper or Albania itself.

Holbrook, is detestable, as was team Albright, Sandy Berger, Bill Cohen and a host of others from 'Chicago'. The latter sold out to an 'octopus' that is also squeezing it's tenacles around Israel. Go figure.

[getoffmylawn]

"Unfortunately Holkeri did not take action to accelerate the status talks because he did not seem to realize that time was not on his side," said Holbrooke, who negotiated the 1995 end to the Bosnia war."

Interesting choice of words from Holbrooke. Since Nato first rolled into Kosovo I've said, "Time is on the Serbs' side." They just need to be patient and cover up when the Albanians attack. It's just a matter of time until the KLA turns on Nato and starts attacking them like they used to attack the police in Kosovo.

Take a guess which way Holbrooke would vote on the independence issue for Kosovo. You think he'd go for autonomy, partition or a full blown ethnicly pure Albanian Kosovo?

[Chi-townChief]

Holbrooke was always a butt wipe for Clinton.

[stylin_geek]

Why shouldn't conservatives complain about Kosovo?

There was absolutely no reason, for the U.S. to be involved in Kosovo. Yet the left is strangely quiet regarding the dismal failure that Kosovo has been. And we've been there several years.

Yet these same liberals are crying "foul!" in regards to Iraq, yet we have serious national interests in Iraq, not to mention the mass slaughter of Iraqis that has been prevented by the ouster of Saddam.