Posted on 06/06/2004 4:23:53 AM PDT by Jane_N
MOSCOW, June 6 (Itar-Tass) - Russia deems it necessary to take tough measures against masterminds of mass rioting and looting in Kosovo, said on Sunday Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko in connection with the killing on Saturday of a 17-year-old Serbian youth, Dimitrie Popovic, in Gracanice.
According to the diplomat, “the event is another crime, spearheaded against the Serbian community in Kosovo”. “Resolutely denouncing acts of violence against Serbian population, we demand that the UN Mission and KFOR should take urgent and efficient actions to put things in order,” Yakovenko stressed.
“The list of necessary moves is known. These are collection of weapons from population, disbanding organizations of gunmen and tough measures against masterminds and participants in looting of Serbian areas.”
”We witnessed quite recently mass violence which resulted in an ethnic purge of the Serbian population in the province,” the spokesman noted. “Russia resolutely denounced acts of terrorism and demanded that international missions and temporary bodies of Kosovo self-government take urgent measures to normalize the situation and to eradicate reasons for Albanian extremism. However, our called passed unheeded.”
In Yakovenko’s opinion, “it is very important now to prevent this case from turning into a new spiral of ethnic tensions in the province”. “Responsibility for this will also rest with the leaders of the Albanian community in Kosovo,” he underlined.
“The March events and the new tragic incident show how deep-rooted is ethnic intolerance in society, and many years will be needed to eradicate this intolerance,” the diplomat claimed. “We are convinced that consistent and full implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1244 is the only way to establishing confidence in the province.”
It is senseless to speak of any approach to high democratic standards, the more so, to fix periods of assessing their implementation as far as reasons for ethnic hatred persist in Kosovo and innocent people die of hands of armed extremists,” Yakovenko stated.
The same story as reported by CBS http://cbsnewyork.com/international/Russia-Kosovo-ai/resources_news_html
Russia calls for a tough response against those attacking Kosovo's Serb minority
Sunday June 06, 2004
MOSCOW (AP) Russia's Foreign Ministry condemned the killing of a Serb teenager in Kosovo and said Sunday the U.N.-run province should take tougher measures against the organizers of attacks against ethnic Serbs.
The 16-year-old Serb was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting Saturday in a Serb enclave about eight miles east of Kosovo's capital, Pristina. U.N. police identified the suspects in the shooting as ethnic Albanians.
The attack was likely to further inflame already high tensions between the ethnic Albanian majority and the Serb minority.
``The incident is just another link in a chain of crimes aimed against the Serbian community in Kosovo,'' said Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko.
He called on the U.N. mission and KFOR, NATO's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, to ``take urgent and effective measures to establish order.''
``It is very important now to prevent this case from turning into a new spiral of interethnic tension in the region,'' he said.
Russia is sympathetic to the Serbs, sharing their Orthodox religion and Slavic roots.
Kosovo's Serbs have been targeted by ethnic Albanian extremists in revenge attacks since mid-1999, when the United Nations and NATO took control of the province after an alliance air war that ended a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
In early March, Serbs took to the streets to protest a similar shooting of a teenager blamed on ethnic Albanians. That incident led to two days of deadly ethnic clashes that spread throughout the province Kosovo's worst violence since the war ended.
Good. That's something Russia can do instead of going to Iraq.
Very very good news. Another coffin nail for islam. Thanks Mr Putin. Give 'em heaps!
I think you would like to read this.
How about a new approach?
UN diplomats are positive that “peacekeeping” forces - lightly armed and spread woefully thin - can not only bring peace to an area, but instill peace and love within the populace.
How about rotating these diplomats - not soldiers - as peacekeepers through the various “peaceful” conflict zones? There won’t be enough to go around, so their numbers could be augmented by peace activists.
They can occupy body bags as well as soldiers.
Still the same old Tassers
"In early March, Serbs took to the streets to protest a similar shooting of a teenager blamed on ethnic Albanians. That incident led to two days of deadly ethnic clashes that spread throughout the province Kosovo's worst violence since the war ended."
Interesting to note that many western versions of this story include the above paragraph. If I remember correctly it was the accusations about Serb involvement in the drowning of 3 albanian boys (which were later proven false by UNMIK/KFOR) that sparked of the March violence and atacks against Serbs in Kosovo.
Thanks Jane. It is good to know Russia is involved.
Pan-Slavism was one of the root causes of the First World War. It was both a tool of, and a reason for the expansion of the Russian Empire into the Balkans and to the East and SouthEast. It was a driving force in the long standing conflict between the Russians and the Turks.
Pan-Slavism also put Russian in direct conflict with the Autro-Hungarian Empire. Hence the entire scheme of entangling European alliances dragged the continent into war, like a string of would be rescuers being dragged into an icy lake. But the Austrian Empire is long gone and Pan-Slavism today only leaves Russia in conflict with the present roiling jihad of Muslim peoples in the Balkans and along its southern borders.
Thus the promise, that Pan-Slavism (essentially a call to unity of race and culture) can serve as a bulwark against the expansion of Islam into southern Europe.
The problem, that at some point the underlying doctrines of Pan-Slavism will place it once again in conflict with the peoples of central Europe, is one that we may wish to see tabled. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I don't think this is pan-slavism but pan-Orthodoxy.
Both Russia and Serbia are emerging from years under atheist rule and trying to re-establish centuries of Orthodox Christianity. Both are fighting islamic wahabbism
in the process.
Damn I am getting so tired of reading the "western" medias version of the latest Serbian death in Kosovo and their association to the March riots in these articles. This is what they had on independent.co.uk (unfortunately I can't post the article on FreeRepublic due to some request from their editors but the url is: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=528972 so you can read the whole thing yourself if you want.
The part that gets me mad is the following:
"The Serb threat to resume road blocks on the main highway connecting Pristina to neighbouring Macedonia, meanwhile, is likely to raise tensions even further. After Serbs in nearby Caglavica blocked the main road in mid-March in protest against an earlier non-fatal drive-by shooting, Albanian nationalists stormed into the enclave to dissolve the road block by force.
The two days of chaos that followed saw Serb churches and houses burned not only in Caglavica but all over Kosovo. The riots dealt a severe blow to the UN's prestige in Kosovo, not to mention its stated goal of recreating a multicultural society. Mr Holkeri resigned shortly afterwards, citing ill health."
When will they stop demonizing the Serbs and blaming them for everything that happens in Kosovo? When will they realise that most of us know better and won't fall for that bulls**t? I am getting so fed up with this.
The Yugoslavians have had their chance. They suffered under the tyranny of the USSR, and we have liberated them, and now what have they done with their freedom? Gone back at it, slaughtering each other as though 50 years of Russian domination never happened.
Hand them over to Putin. The Russians have a legitimate interest in keeping the border states quiet. The verdammt Yugoslavians deserve nothing better any more than to be up their eyeballs in Russian tanks. They're a bunch of idiotic children, incapable of self-government,and they've proven it beyond any reasonable person's capacity for doubt.
As for USSR, sorry, but Yugoslavia and Albania, while communists, neutral and never part of Soviet bloc.
Serbs of Yugoslavia only rationals there, they also Christians and would welcome Russian tanks. Better then NATO backed Islamics like KLA and Afghans and Iranians. Who is idiots in reality?
Yugoslavia have no major problems till US & Germany break all diplomatic accord and recognize Slovania and Croatia and then give military monies to Islamics in Bosnia and KLA.
War On Terror bump!
Do you see anything wrong that related people feel solidarity and try to defend one another, be they Slavs, Orthodox (Greeks are the most supportive of villified Serbs and they are not Slavs), Jews or anyone else?
Why do our tax money support Muslim terrorists in Kosovo and Hague show trial of leader who tried to defend his country?
It was simply the facts of the matter that I wished to present. And, editorially, suggest that Pan-Slavism presents not just a 'problem' but a promise as well - particularly in context of the ever increasing war of Islam against the West.
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