Free Republic

International pressure on Serbia over the future of Kosovo and the surrender of war criminals is counter-productive and could lead to instability, Vuk Draskovic, Serbia’s foreign minister, warned on Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT “The humiliation of the people of Serbia must be stopped,” Mr Draskovic told the Financial Times while visiting Washington for the annual convention in the US of the National Prayer Breakfast to be hosted by President George W. Bush. Mr Draskovic echoed a warning delivered hours earlier by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, that independence for Kosovo would fuel demands for independence elsewhere, naming Georgia’s provinces of Abkhazia and South...

he US yesterday made the case for offering Serbia incentives to reach agreement in negotiations over the final status of Kosovo, while setting out the possibility of independence for the province if the ethnic Albanian majority accepted compromises to accommodate its Serbian minority. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state, told a Senate hearing the US was neither championing independence nor autonomy for Kosovo. But diplomats said his testimony was a clear signal the US looked favourably on independence, under certain conditions. In what diplomats also called a significant policy statement, Mr Burns made clear the US had no objection to independence...

Putin: Ally or Terrorist? by William F. Jasper Counting Vladimir Putin as an ally against terrorism ignores his career in the murderous KGB/FSB and his ongoing support for terrorist regimes and organizations. ‘‘Lena Goncharuk, aged 38, said that she was the only one to survive out of a group of six who were ordered out of the cellar where they had been hiding and shot at point blank range. Resting in her hospital bed, her voice barely rising above a whisper, she said she had survived only by pretending to be dead." So reported Paul Wood from the Chechen border...