Free Republic

Who Will Protect Kosovo’s Christians? by John Couretas, Director of Communications This week, Montenegro voted to end its union with Serbia, the last remaining alliance of the former Yugoslav federation. News accounts of the vote frequently add matter-of-factly that Kosovo, the Serb province placed under the administration of the United Nations in 1999, is next in line to gain its independence and probably by the end of the year. But anyone who cares about religious freedom, the rights of minorities, and the rule of law should be highly skeptical of an independent Kosovo. Since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign...

The former US general who commanded NATO's 1999 air war against Serbia predicted its southern province of Kosovo would become independent within months. Wesley Clark told Kosovo Albanian leaders in Pristina he had confidence in their "strong, positive and visionary proposals" to find a solution for Kosovo, which has been run by the United Nations and NATO since 1999. "I am confident that this issue will be solved very soon, and probably in few months, Kosovo will become independent and will respect the rights of all citizens," said Clark. "I believe that Kosovo will be welcomed into the family of...

NOVI SAD -- Bojan Pajtiæ said that the new Serbian constitution must guarantee autonomy for Vojvodina. Pajtiæ, President of the Vojvodina Executive Council, said that the region must receive clear guarantees for a functional autonomy within the charter of the next Serbian constitution. “Vojvodina must have guarantees for a legislative government, as well as the right to its own budget and properties.” Pajtiæ said at a two-day conference regarding regionalism and the models for Vojvodina’s autonomy, held by the Vojvodina Parliament. “Serbia cannot adopt a European constitution if it continues to ignore the demands of the Vojvodina citizens. We are...

24 May 2006 | 20:14 | FOCUS News Agency Banja Luka. The Muslims gave away a state to the Montenegrins because if they hadn’t taken a mass part in the referendum for the state status and hadn’t voted for its independence the country would not have received its independence, the leader of the Islamic community in Montenegro Rifat Fejzic stated cited by Serbian agency TANJUG. “The Muslims voted for Montenegro’s independence so that the Great Serbia and its ideas would come to an end,” he said and added that now “Montenegro has the great obligation to value that which the...

Serbia's navy left high and dry by the vote for independence By David Rennie, Europe Correspondent (Filed: 24/05/2006) Serbia is about to join the select club of former naval powers. Officers, who remember the heyday of the old Yugoslav navy - it boasted nearly 80 warships - are weighing their options following Sunday's independence referendum in Serbia's sister republic of Montenegro. The Yes vote means Serbia will lose its sea ports and naval bases. Gen Radosav Martinovic, a military adviser to the government of Montenegro, said that the Serbian navy would be lucky to end up with some patrol craft...

Montenegro's independence could open a Pandora's box for other separatist movements in Europe and the former Soviet Union, with some already claiming the right to follow the same path. Separatists in Spain's Basque and Catalan regions were among the first to welcome Montenegro's independence vote as a positive omen for their aspirations of loosening ties with Madrid. But Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos stressed the situations in his country and Montenegro were "politically, diplomatically, juridically" incomparable and that making such a comparison would represent a "great irresponsibility". His view was supported by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana,...

By h.b. Tue, 16 May 2006, 16:24 Spanish police have arrested 18 Albanian Kosovo’s whom they consider to be part of different cells of the same gang who have assaulted some 60 chalets in several provinces across the country. The arrests were made in Cádiz, Valencia, Alicante and Castellón, but the investigations have been based in Barcelona, Málaga, Madrid and Granada. The gang are said to have run over people with their cars, if they got in the way of their plans.

For a long time the proponents of Kosovo’s independence have acted as if the game was up, that all that remained was for the “international community” to settle on the formula for independence—and for Serbia to sign on the dotted line under pressure. Until recently, many old Balkan hands in the world’s capitals that matter expected that by the end of 2006 it would be all over. There are recent signs, however, that “it” won’t be over that soon, and that the outcome is by no means preordained. It did not look that way when the United Nations abandoned its...

Russian state-owned company Technopromexport has announced it will build a thermal power plant in Serbia within three years. The company Wednesday signed a contract with Serbia and Switzerland's Mentor Energy, company officials said. The construction of the plant, with two 450-megawatt blocks, is estimated to cost $877 million. Maja Gojkovich, mayor of the Serbian town Novi Sad, where the plant will be built, said the project will greatly benefit the economy of the town and the country, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. "It will provide work for 5,000 to 6,000 Serbs and guarantee orders for a number of Serbian...

Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women and children forced into prostitution). Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral part of the war on terror. Amazingly, that's what the international community seems to want to help establish in the Serbian province of Kosovo. When Kosovo was placed under United Nations administration and NATO military control at the end of the 1999 war, some hoped the province soon would meet...

Mass of conflicting property claims since war leads many Kosovars to try solving disputes with guns. By Krenar Gashi in Pristina (Balkan Insight, 26 Apr 06) A bloody shootout in a town in Kosovo has come as an unwelcome reminder to many Kosovars of how many battles over real estate end in death. Two people were killed, including a deputy mayor, and eight others were injured, in the shooting on April 22, in Shtime/Stimlje, 25 kilometres from the capital Pristina. The Kosovo Police Service, KPS, confirmed nine arrests over the shootings in which Aziz Xhelili and Vezir Bajrami, a deputy...

7 May 2006 | 14:54 | FOCUS News Agency Sofia. The Sarajevo based newspaper Free Bosnia published on its title page pictures of killed Serbs in Sarajevo in 1992, Radio TV Serbia reports. The killed from the Sarjevo municipality of Novi Grad and from Ali Pasino Pole have been displayed on the pictures. The publication pointed that during the war in Sarjevo 850 Serbs were massacred while the official representatives of Republic Serbia claim that their number is several thousand, RTS reports.

WASHINGTON - Catholics in Bosnia-Herzegovina feel pressure, threats and discrimination from an unfair political system and from Muslims financially backed by Islamic countries, said the head of the Bosnian bishops' conference. Successful dialogue between Catholics and Muslims, which is solely "about coexistence," depends on the political situation, Cardinal Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo told Catholic News Service in a May 2 interview. During the 1992-1995 war for independence and up to today, radical influences from Eastern Islamic countries infiltrated into Bosnia, the cardinal said through a translator during a visit to Washington. Bosnian Muslims have access to funding and permits to...

Vocabulary of Denial By Boba Borojevic May 4, 2006 -- According to news reports, officials in Brussels have been working on producing new politically correct terminology in order to ban words and phrases that could cause offense. The Saudi based Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) and its 56 member states, for their part, are pressing ahead and requesting from the United Nations and European Union to take steps, including legal ones to ensure that the freedom of speech and expression does not interfere with the "respect for cultural diversity, religious beliefs and religious symbols." The aim is to "...

The bloody collapse of Yugoslavia shamed Europe. But those of us who live in the Balkans know particularly well that dismantling that artificial state involved a series of murderous ethnic and religious wars and cost at least 100,000 lives, while hundreds of thousands had to flee their homes. This is not to mention the physical devastation. Such appalling and widespread massacres and ethnic cleansing Europe had not seen since the defeat of Nazism. There is, however, one positive story from those dreadful years. It involves my own small but fiercely proud multi-ethnic country, Montenegro, which was wiped off the map...

Pristina. The debatable issues in connection to the border with Macedonia will be discussed after Kosovo’s status is determined, Kosovo’s Parliament Speaker Kol Berisa stated today cited by Macedonian agency Makfax.Kol Berisa pointed out it is also extremely important for Kosovo to have good relations with neighboring Macedonia because a lot of Albanians live there. He added the issue of the border with Macedonia will be discussed after Kosovo’s status is determined and that for Kosovo the contract between Belgrade and Skopje signed in 2001 is debatable.

Standing on the side of justice, as he said, and always with the victims, Austrian writer Peter Handke visited Kosovo several days ago. Standing at burnt homes of the Nikolices, Kostices, Bozanices and Bandices in the villages of Retimlje and Opterusa near Orahovac, Handke said: 'These are universes of pain. I do not have the right to speak. I shall keep silent, I have to keep silent. Thank you for making it possible for me to see this horror personally. This is not the 21st century'. Together with a group of domestic and foreign writers, Handke visited the most jeopardized...

"Since 1999, we saw the departure of the last remaining Jewish family out of Kosovo. Why is Washington shy at actually doing something to protect the minorities in Kosovo? Back in February, we spoke with Julia Gorin, a contributing commentator for the Jewish World Report and Front Page Magazine, about Kosovo and its links with the Islamic terror. The conversation eventually lended a front page cover for the Belgrade independent Weekly Telegraph, abut here we are transmitting it in its original, long format. Why does the US have an ambiguous position on the Kosovo status: it publicly supports a negotiated...

Today Kosovo - Tomorrow Israel and the West By Miroljub Jevtic, Ph.D. Negotiations regarding the future status of Kosovo have begun and it is increasingly clear that the overwhelming majority of the world media, not to mention the government of the United States and its allies, favor giving independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo, which since the 1999 war has been administered by the United Nations under NATO military control. In effect, the western world is in favor of detaching Kosovo from (Christian) Serbia by fiat of power and making it into an independent Muslim state. The main argument...

Released : Apr 12, 2006 9:32 AM COPENHAGEN, Denmark-Police in Denmark said Wednesday that a Bosnian prosecutor has charged two suspects held in Sarajevo with planning a terror attack against a European country. Danish police, who have cooperated with Bosnian investigators, said they had received a copy of the charges against Swedish citizen Mirsad Bektasevic and Turkish national Cesur Abdulkadir, who were arrested in Sarajevo in October. According to the charges, the planned attack was aimed at forcing a European country to withdraw its forces from either Iraq or Afghanistan, police spokesman Anders Linnet told The Associated Press. He said...