Posted on 12/30/2004 3:29:06 PM PST by Alex Marko
A prime minister who is accused of involvement in war crimes.
RAMUSH HARADINAJ is, at just 36, Europe's youngest prime minister. He may also be its most controversial. That is hard to credit, as he sits calmly in his spacious office in Kosovo's capital, Pristina. His neatly pressed blue shirt, red silk tie and buffed brogues are in stark contrast to the mud-spattered camouflage he wore six years ago, when he was a senior commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought a vicious war against the troops of Yugoslavia's (and Serbia's) former president, Slobodan Milosevic.
It is Mr Haradinaj's time in the KLA in 1998-99 that causes disquiet. Vociferous Serbs, including Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, claim that Mr Haradinaj was implicated in war crimes in Kosovo. The Serbs have issued warrants for his arrest, and have called on Kosovo's UN bosses to annul his appointment. Investigators from the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague have questioned Mr Haradinaj in Pristina. But the prime minister dismisses all charges as Serb fabrications.
In fact, the charismatic Mr Haradinaj, who hails from the Decane region of western Kosovo, could prove to be just the right man for the job. The KLA was disbanded after NATO and the UN intervened in the province in June 1999, chasing out Mr Milosevic's tanks and gunmen. Kosovo then became a UN protectorate, but it is still technically part of Serbia and Montenegro, the loose union that replaced Yugoslavia in 2003.
Mr Haradinaj duly swapped his camouflage for a business suit, forming his own political party, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), in April 2000. In October's elections the AAK took nine seats, enabling it to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrat Party, or LDK, the party of Kosovo's president, Ibrahim Rugova. Mr Haradinaj became prime minister in early December. Kosovo's UN bosses termed his appointment “democracy at work”. The secretary-general of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said only that it was “a complicated situation”.
Mr Haradinaj is clever and tough enough to have survived both war against the Serbs and the infighting endemic to Kosovo's violent politics. That may help him to rein in his more hotheaded supporters, and so stave off any danger of a repeat of last March's anti-Serb violence, in which 19 people died and nearly a thousand were injured. He is also astute enough to pay heed to western interests.
The downside is that Mr Haradinaj's appointment has incensed the government in Belgrade, diminishing any chances of dialogue. And he risks being indicted by The Hague tribunal; the chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has former KLA leaders in her sights as she prepares to issue final indictments (the agreed deadline for which falls this weekend). Were Mr Haradinaj sent to The Hague, there might be violence by disgruntled ethnic Albanians, especially in his home region.
Talks on the final status of Kosovo are due to begin in 2005, if the province's 1.8m ethnic Albanians and 100,000 Serbs can show progress towards internationally required standards of governance. The UN's secretary-general, Kofi Annan, has said that the economy (unemployment stands at 55%) and security are the two main problems. Kosovo's ethnic Albanians want independence; Serbia is against. The province's UN proconsul, a no-nonsense Dane named Soren Jessen-Petersen, insists that this matter is for the UN and western governments to decide. One official says that Kosovo knows exactly what it has to do before final-status talks can begin; he insists that the talks will not happen if it fails. So it remains essential that Kosovo's people measure up—and that the hotheads keep their cool even if their war-hero-turned-prime-minister is arrested.
Photos and his war crimes.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:-iUtbr6ifRQJ:www.kosovo.com/ramush.html+%22RAMUSH+HARADINAJ%22&hl=en
Here are some snippets of information against the KLA...
United States Senate Republican Senate Comm.-" The KLA made its military debut in February 1996 with the bombing of several camps housing Serbian refugees from wars in Croatia and Bosnia [Jane's Intelligence Review, 10/1/96]. The KLA (again according to the highly regarded Jane's,) "does not take into consideration the political or economic importance of its victims, nor does it seem at all capable of seriously hurting its enemy, the Serbian police and army. Instead, the group has attacked Serbian police and civilians arbitrarily at their weakest points. It has not come close to challenging the region's balance of military power" [Jane's, 10/1/96]."
"By late 1997, the Tehran-sponsored training and preparations of the Liberation Army of Kosovo (UCK -- Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves -- in Albanian, OVK in Serbian), as well as the transfer of weapons and experts via Albania, were being increased." by Yossef Bodansky, Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy (London), February 1998. Bodansky is Director of the House Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. This report was written in late 1997, before the KLA's offensive in early 1998.]
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/fr033199.htm
Interpols Criminal Intelligence Division Testimony to Congress on Narco-trafficking and Extremist Groups Links(KLA) http://www.theantidrug.com/pdfs/rmutschke.pdf
I can go on and on and on about Drug trafficking, Prostitution rings, and Arms deals between the KLA and middle eastern groups. I work on a related committee that deals with them. And as an albanian, i am disgusted with the KLA. THey should not be rewarded.
Here you will see a picture of KLA members with BEHEADED serbian civilians. How can you defend this?
http://www.kosovo.com/kladecapit.pdf
Alex, I quoted you directly from your previous post. If that's not what you meant, OK--më fal.
Nuk ka problem. Listen, i'm not against ordinary Kosovars, however, the KLA i have a big, big issue against. Post 9/11, as an american, i could never support a group with such shady ties. Kosovo(a) suffered under milosevic and his radical serbian national agenda, however, the KLA made a critical mistake linking up with middle eastern groups regardless of the situation. Now as and AMERICAN, i put the US and its foreign policy first. Kosovo i see as a contridiction to other more important problematic areas. They should have split in the early 90's when Croatia, slovenia and Bosnia did.
Dick Holbrooke:(sitting with KLA terrorist)
Mad Albright:(smooching with KLA terrorist)
KLA Terrorist Haradinaj is a Company's asset while at the same time being on W terrorist list as a leader of terrorist ANA in Macedonia.
Condie will have to showel truckloads of Clintonista manure from DOS Augie's stables.
Mirror mirror on the Wall,
Who is the biggest terrorist KLA supporter of them all?
C'mon, DTA--that picture is totally unfair. I NEVER eat apples.
Poisoned Apple (i.e. veiled support to terrorist cause) is meant to the unsuspecting Freepers.
>>>PS: i'd just like you to know that i, myself, am albanian and do not support the KLA in anyway shape or form.
This might very well be the case, however I am highly skeptical considering that your Albanian seems to be of gheg dialect while you claim to be an Albanian-American of tosk extraction. In addition you seem to have trouble "bending" nouns as anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of Albanian should be able to.
http://p083.ezboard.com/fbalkansfrm35.showMessageRange?topicID=591.topic&start=41&stop=53
Our buddy mabell here is known to have disguised himself as an Albanian before, using the same poor syntax as you.
i lived in a highly populated gheg speaking area in the US. I grew up with it, thats what i learned.
listen buddy, dont question my albanian heritage. I will be on an albanian radio program this sunday. Vet kam lind en amerike, nuk e di me skroj shum, per kuptoj edhe fol mire.
Your rhetoric is completely unconvincing to me, but we'll leave it at that for now. Truth has a way of revealing itself.
What radio program would that be?
"Kosovo expects independence in 2005,"
Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that this Sovereingty has been in the works for around 8 years now? What a quagmire.
Its been longer than that. There has been tensions between serbia and kosovo for a very long time. Mainly due to serbia taking away federal rights to kosovo off and on for 50 years.
"and there's nothing to indicate any Islamic terrorist action ever originated in Kosovo"
The Kosovo Liberation Army was/is a terrorist organization.
The KLA had links to Al Qaeda.
"after the Kosovar Albanians"
Strange you should mention them. They still do raids and terrorist attacks in neighboring Macedonia.
"both hemlines & alcohol consumption are high. After 9/11, mass demonstrations were held in sympathy for the USA and former KLA came to the consulate in Pristina to volunteer to fight with for us against the Taliban. "
I'm not saying that all, or even most Kosovar Muslims are terrorists. However, the KLA had links to Al Qaeda, and Muslim terrorists the world over came to fight the Serbs. Some of the heroes of the Kosovar Albanians are terrorists.
And anyway, moderate Muslim societies are easily infiltrated and controlled by hardliner terrorist Muslims [Iran, which before the revolution of 1979 was quite western, even selling oil to Israel] as an example.
And when the hardliners take control, all the moderate Muslims cringe, cooperate, and dont resist.
You are claiming I am Knez Marko?
"I also think that solutions short of independence can work--some sort of enhanced autonomy & an extended international military presence with no major Serb government or military presence in the province."
So in other words have the Belgrade govenment resonsible for only some areas of Kosovo policy. Like in what areas? Federal laws? Foreign policy? Have Kosovo be responsible for the majority of it's matters?
"Oddly, the very guys the Serbs hate most--Haradinaj & Thaci--are the ones most likely & able to sell a status short of independence. Unlike President Rugova who--while widely respected--is known for his pacifist stands, Thaci & Haradinaj are war leaders who are much more likely to be heeded if they accept a status short of independence and renounce further violence. And both are savvy enough to look at things like Security Council realities and act accordingly."
Maybe, but we should never be quick to trust them. How do we know that they won't stab us in the back someday, at least if they think it serves their interests? At least Rugova is completely trustworthy. I think that we should just have Belgrade and Pristina work out some sort of compromise that both sides can more-or-less live with. THat seems to be the only possible kind of solution for this kind of situation.
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