What would Serbia sacrifice for Kosovo?

Ahmet,

this is encouraging to find that you support Jeremic in his suggestion that autonomy is a good compromise. It is clear that a compromise solution is possible in the upcoming negotiations regarding Autonomy of Serbia's province.

That is good news and it is clear that the win-win is about to be forged by the EU spearheading the negotiations to formulate supervised autonomy as the end status. The detail needs to be ironed out and thus the tlaks will be intensive with much to be negotiated but partition and dismemerment of the UN recognised & Sovereign State of Serbia is clearly off the agenda.

I think that this is actually a really clever approach. Overall sovereignty rightly remains with Serbia, but Kosovo is allowed to have certain rights pertaining to sovereignty such as representation on certain international bodies. This sounds like a step in the right direction.

The 'international community' obviously like this idea judging from the positive way that it's being reported. And it sounds as though there would be numerous concessions made by the Serbian side.

First, Minister Jeremic should know that the Government of Kosova already has the authority (given by UN) to open representative offices in foreign countries and we do not need Serbia's permission to do so.

Second, access to the WB and the IMF would certainly help the economy, but I am sure no Kosova Albanian would agree to give away independence for international financial assistance. You should all know that Kosova Albanians will never agree to live under Serbia in whatever shape or form and if someone tries to force us to do so then that will ultimately lead to instability.

It is illogical to assume that the international community can simply reintroduce Serbia to Kosova. Serbia left in 1999 and in practice there has been no sign of Serbian sovereignty in Kosova for 8 years now.

A solution such as the one Mr. Jeremic proposes maybe would have been possible before 1999 but it is simply not possible anymore.

The Kosova Albanians will not suffer Serbia’s nationalistic and radical policies and we will not fall victim to radical politicians that may take power in Belgrade sooner or later. Serbia is and will remain for some time to come a “radical” country wand we simply cant not stake our lives and accept your “broadest autonomy possible”.

Full independence and unrestricted sovereignty with internationally guranateed rights for ethnic minorities and religious sites is and will remain the only way forward. The sooner politicians in Belgrade realize this, the sooner we will all be able to move forward and establish a lasting peace in the region and finally join the European Union.

In the meanwhile and until Serbia comes to its senses, both us and you will remain isolated. You should know that although the Kosova Albanians suffer economically you will suffer far worse if you insist in keeping Kosova. Even if you succeed in keeping Kosova, which is highly unlikely, you will have to deal with 2 million Kosova Albanians who STILL want nothing to do with you and will boycott your state institutions and keep you in LIMBO.

Regardless of how smart Mr. Jeremic and other Serbs think they are by trying to give the impression that Serbia wants to compromise and that it’s the Kosova Albanians that are being unreasonable, the west by now has become familiar with your politics and the United States in particular knows exactly what you mean by “broadest autonomy in the world”.

Finally, you should all understand that at this time we are cooperating with the international community and agreeing to additional negotiations because a lot is at stake (independence), BUT if our demands are not met then we have nothing to lose.

First, at least the Serbs seem to be more flexible in their offer on Kosovo than the Albanians. While the Serb side ultimately remains the same - autonomy, they are at least willing to accept the consequences of a good chunk of their southern territory essentially being out of Belgrade's hands. This is far more flexibility I have seen than what's coming from Pristina, where officials yell demands from behind UN bureaucrats and US soldiers.

Second, while what Jeremic proposed would basically connect Serbia Proper and Kosovo Province by a few hairs, it makes one wonder why a clean break just isn't agreed to since Kosovo will have essentially 90% self-government. If virtual independence is good enough, why not actual?

Third, while many Albanians have said that autonomy can be revoked or abused as it was in the past, I think our Neo-Illyrians miss the idea that Milosevic and his kind are long dead and buried in the backyard. If such a condition was agreed upon by the international community, that autonomy would be so tightly bound to Serbian political development that the slightest abuse would immediately result in the nullification of such an accomodation. Plus, it also assumes that authoritarianism is right around the corner in Belgrade, which is delusional to say the least, if one thinks that.

To be perfectly honest, with no overt bias, Serbia seems more willing to compromise (at least when Tadic or Jeremic is speaking). Pristina officals still remind me of the French soldiers in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Victor,

you continue to manipulte and deceive but you never did reply to Walters post I suggest you read it again and reply or just stop with the blatant slur against the State of Serbia and its citizens - please re-read;

Victor you have held onto your Croatian past and nurtured it in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Vancouver, Madrid, Montevideo and the Vatican. People like you, Victor point fingers at others, while you omit irrefutable evidence about those who aided abetted and participated in dismantling of a nation for self-serving economic and political interests. One of your favorite methods, Victor, and that of Mr. Polt is to “speak softly and carry a big stick”. You, Victor, by your comments, hide the real perpetrators of the crimes in the Balkans– Croatia and NATO, by building a “Potemkin Village” of lies. You point with unsupported comments, at Mladic, Karadjic and Serbia while behind the façade you hide by omission how American Corporatism brought back the “tarnished Croatian soul” as a tool in the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia and its social economy. You are naïve if you minimize the CIA and Croat Diaspora complicity in this Balkan agenda.

Yesterday the CIA released declassified documents which show how this organization conspired to subvert International Law using dollar diplomacy, assassination, misinformation, lies, fear, and war in order to promote the American agenda. Victor, you are either naïve or unable to understand that American corporatism has conspired with the worst element of WWII nationalism to divide the Balkans into a number of artificial and barely viable entities by installing client regimes in the region. Victor, even you must be able to see that these new regimes including Serbia will be dependant on Western Economic and military power for survival. This is exactly what the great powers want but you have been poisoned by nationalism to see that. America wants to impose an ongoing [American Policy for the 21st Century] series of economic, cultural, and political arrangements which will seriously be detrimental to the working people in this region.

NATO and America has manipulated the affairs of this region by using narrow nationalism and remembered fear from the past. NATO is playing off one national group against the other and one geopolitical interest against another in the name of Globalization which only benefits the developed nations. America [NATO] manipulates local actors to be their Trojan Horses in order to achieve their design. What is scary Victor is that people like you and many who post here see this policy as benevolent in nature when the record, as revealed yesterday by the declassified CIA documents represents the harsh realities of Western [American] rehabilitation of Imperialism cloaked in their often spoken word “DEMOCRACY”

You, Victor are either unable to or refuse to answer the questions put to you and support your position with evidence. Your answer to everything is accusation of others and repetition of the same unsupported comments and “pointing in all directions”. Let me ask you one more time is the evidence of Austrian historian Freidrich Heer that I provide below false?

“Austrian historian Freidrich Heer noted in 1968 that what happened in NDH Croatia was the result of "archaic fanaticism and pre-historic times". Pavelic, he said, was "a singular murderer of the 20th Century". Victor you refused to respond to a previous comment which pointed to this revival where Pavelic today lauded as a hero of modern Croatia; his picture (and that of 19th Century Ustaše ideologue Ante Starcevic) adorns the T-shirts of a generation of Croatians who were unborn at the end of World War II.” You, Victor, I am sure saw a link to a Video sent by Jovan showing this at a recent concert in Croatia but as we expected you did not respond.

Let me also ask you Victor if this is what I write is false? During the 1991-1992 conflict Croatians remained in Serbia and did not leave and were not maltreated while there was a flood of Serbs fleeing from Croatia. Indeed, Victor “many Croatians have fled to Serbia after opposing the new Ustaše juggernaut of the Franjo Tudjman Government of Croatia that organizations such as the Association of Croatian Journalists have been set up in exile in Belgrade.” And yet you Victor tell us “Serbia should look at itself and ADMIT finally all the crimes and atrocities committed by so many Serbs against entire population” It is you Victor that needs to look at your posts that hides the attempted genocide of a whole people and how they reacted to it. In every post, Victor, you misrepresent the victims on all sides by not calling the oppressors criminals. Your misrepresentation of the events is not a result solely of accidental misinterpretation but of an orchestrated attempt to deceive people to see the world in terms of good guys and Serbs.

How was this misrepresentation manipulated to convince people like Victor not to look beyond their TV news feed via CNN from the Croat capital Zagreb, the Muslim Capital Sarajevo and the Albanian capital Tirana? Every night we were treated to comments by experts who represented NATO and the American point of view while any comment that came from Belgrade was treated as communist propaganda. I saw it all Victor, Serbian dead represented as Muslim or Croat casualties, Croat actors on Zagreb TV representing raped women from Bosnia, a KLA terrorist claiming that her family was all killed in Kosovo when in later testimony she said I did what I was asked to do, a crying Kosovo Albanian mother telling CNN Christiana Amanpour on a live feed that the Serbs have killed her husband but when Amanpour asked her small son where his daddy was he said that he was with UCK. This segment was never played on CNN again.

Victor you often bring up Srebrenica and Vukovar but refuse to look at how over “1,000 Serbs, mostly women, old people and children, were shot, knifed, axed or bludgeoned to death systematically, one-by-one, in two main centers; one the Borovo Footwear Factory, the other the Rowing Club of Vukovar. Many of the bodies were dumped into the Danube, left to float down to Belgrade. And in many instances, the Croats took pictures, or recorded the deaths”

Do you believe in International Law Victor if you do tell the people on this forum how you justify the systematic violation of International Law and aggression against Yugoslavia a sovereign state, a member in good standing of the UN and a signatory of almost all the treaties since WWI.. Tesla who was a good Serb and a good Croat once said ‘The present is theirs; the future, for which I really work, is mine”.

The Serbs know that their fathers and mothers brothers and sisters did not die just for Serbia they died for justice and brotherhood. You are right in one point Victor Serbia needs to reexamine their future so that this discouragement does not put them to sleep but stimulate them to champion justice every time. Serbs must reclaim old friends but not at the expense of their dignity. Serbs need to expose and discard false friends and make new ones. Serbs know that they are under attack not because they are Serbs but because they are David staring in the eye of Goliath who has demonized their good character. Serbia you have been attacked by all sides three times in the 20th Century and you are under attack now. You need to energize until your victory is won. Justice is on your side.
(Walter, Wednesday, 27 June, 2007, 19:00)
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/your_comment.php?nav_id=42068

Great Autonomy under Serbia its a scary thing once you analyse the history. First will come the colonisation than the autonomy striped than 99 all over again.
I'd rather have the UN in Kosovo all thought life than let the serbian radicals finish Milosevic's dream.
Slovenia and Croatia don't want anything at all to do with Serbia any more,Macedonia has learned not to go on their knees, Montenegro doesn't like serbian language. Why in Earth would they want to keep Kosovo?
This is a true scam for land. And no Mr. Vuk your great dream will not be accomplished on the backs of the people of the land. Ahtisaari's proposal is our negotiation! If you dont like it wait till 28'th of November

Ahmet,
"My post is #1 and no where in my coment can you find the name of this Jeremic,"

- given that the WHOLE article is about what Jeremic has to say regarding the talks whom else could you have been commenting upon? Your suggestion that "finally serbia relents" implies that you are happy with what Jeremic has to say and of coure you go on with your usual rhetoric but clearly you were content with the "compromise" message of Jeremic! Unless, you are suggesting that you never read the actual article until your second post at which point you realised that your 1st comment is clearly out of context and had no relevance what so ever to what Jeremic had to say regarding the negotiations and compromise by all?

With that, I can understand why the "negotiations" are going to be difficult and challenging and clearly why more then 120 days will be required! However, in the end the win-win compromise will be the only outcome that provides stability and respects international law. I will remind you that I said quite so time ago that there will be;
No Independence
No Unilateral declaration
No Illegal recognition
No Violence - NATO will act.

The sooner all the Serbian citizens accept the state they are in the sooner much required economic development will take place. Of course in the talks that are to take place it will require a great deal of compromise on behalf of the Govt. of Serbia to start utilising its position to put across it's position that this is an inclusive message - something that as I have read and agree with alluded by Mike in this regard.

It's time for all to be represented and for all to think out of the 'conflict' box to find the solution that respects human rights and international law!

Finally serbia relents on Kosova issue. There is no other way and they know it. Only clean divorce rather than messy one.I know many of you will respond and tell m ethat we are not getting our Indepndence is only we are giving you a bone to make you happy, but beleive me is the serbs who have to get used the idea that Kosova is lost for ever.

Here w go again Kate with your wishful thinking. Vuk said that kosova will be allowed also to have reps. in other countries that means Ambassadors, what else could it mean.Anyway we don't care what VUK has to say just like the previous VUK the drashkoviq , which i have not heard of him for long time since he lost his job.

I have been thinking about examples from around the world which could be adapted to solve the Kosovo deadlock. The best one I have come across so far is the American Indian Nations Reservation system. This gives limited sovereignty and mostly self governance to Native Americans within the reservations. Large areas of Kosovo could be reorganised as Reservations giving the K.Albs a form of sovereignty and self governance without a change in borders.

Of course the details would have to be hammered out but the precedent is already set by the US reservations model. For further info see link http://www.infca.org/tribes/IRA.htm

I have no desire to respond to anything that princip writtes, but I have to since he addressed me.
My post is #1 and no where in my coment can you find the name of this Jeremic, that Princip is claimung that I am supporting.
My second coment is # 7 and that is where i mention the name VUK(TWICE). So, my question is how can princip say such thing if I did not even mention the guys name.

"After all, no one is INSANE to suggest for Kosovo to go back in time & accept the unacceptable." Olf, that is exactly what you (Albanians) are doing! You want to go back in time to the Ottoman Empire when your people had (because of converting to Islam) a special ruling status over the non complying Christian Serbs (or as Albanians called them "slaves, serfs". The only difference this time is that your people learned how difficult it is to "rule over" the Serbs and set out to just get rid of them (ethnic cleansing). Land for peace does not work! If Serbia gives up Kosovo, then that will just give the Albanians a greater appetite for more. Just look at Israel, they gave up the sinai, Gaza, parts of the West bank, withdrew from southern lebanon and what peace did they gain from that? They just got more war & violence because the Arabs are not interested in peace, they are interested only in driving the Jews into the sea. So it is with the Albanians, they just want the Serbs gone, period. NO LAND FOR PEACE!!!

In an exclusive BBC interview, Vuk Jeremic said it could be given "the widest possible autonomy in the world" to meet Albanian independence demands. The work is done. It's now hard time for two independent states to learn how to exist together and guarantee past atrocities don’t happen anymore, NEVER!

I have a question. What would be the situation if Serbia, Albania and all the other countries were already with-in the EU? I think this situation would already be decided. My point being that in order to have true peace throughout the world, the world has to be one nation. This would solve many problems in the world such as the terrorist problem. It would be easy to find them if every country in the world was with one organization.

It's obvious that all sides are coming round to the idea of partition. Just a question of where the line will be!!

Jeremic is Harvard-educated and clearly understands the importance of bargaining politics. He's trying to make offers that have the intention of 'polluting' the independence option.

It simply won't work. Serbia's had plenty of time in the 1990s to make us such offers. The resolution of the status will be in accordance to the situation on the ground: it will legitimize some sort of a partition with an entity-like authority for the Serbian minority, while recognizing Kosovo as an independent nation within its 1974 borders.

What the Serbs in these discussions appear to fail to understand is that the 120 days of 'negotiations' are an attempt to buy time in order to forge as great a consensus between European states as possible. That's the only sticking point in the western stance.

Modern-day politics is awash with examples of bending international rules for the ends of the powerful actors. Russia is clearly isolated on this. Plus, I don't buy the argument that its recent gas revenue has transformed the country's might into what it used to be. It takes decades to modernize its army and economic infrastructure to be able to compete with the advanced western democracies.

Anyway, the only reason why we have the 120 days of negotiations is simply due to the lack of European consensus - which Russia exploited very well. But, make no mistake: Europe will not allow Russia to set its foreign policy. A common EU foreign policy is a key goal of the Union, and with that guiding principle in mind, it will be compelled to recognize Kosovo outside of the UN - if need be.

So, its simple: during 120 days the EU will gather a critical number of its members to go ahead with recognition outside the UN. The West, if it wisihes so, CAN claim without remorse that the Resolution 1244 has already been invalidated given the dissolution of Yugoslavia/Serbia-Montenegro Union (what matters in law is interpretation!). Thus, it signalls to the Kosovo Parliament to provide the legal cover by approving a resolution that invites an EU mission to replace the UN. The West will claim that this will be a sufficient legal cover for this operation to occur.

Even if the EU as a whole is unable to recognize Kosovo at first, that need not be the case forever. So, by the end of this year or eventually early into next year (but even if it takes until summer of next year - which doesnt really matter), Kosovo declares independence unilaterally, north of Kosovo claims it joins Serbia. Washington recognizes the whole of Kosovo, key EU states follow suit. The EU will be faced with a major international crisis of its reputation, thus be compelled within a matter of weeks to formulate a joint position to recognize us as a Union. So will it be - there's no other choice. The costs of credibility to the Union are too high to let its own project in Kosovo fail spectacularly. This act by EU will pave the way for the EU mission to enter Kosovo and replace the UN.

The north of Kosovo will continue to behave as if part of Serbia. But when the times comes for joining the EU, north of Kosovo will be left out much like the northern Cyprus unless it explicitly acknowledges the national political authority of Prishtina. Thus, in the medium term, Kosovo will preserve its territorital integrity.

By the time Kosovo is about to join the EU, many countries would have recognized Kosovo: US, EU, NATO, Islamic countries, OECD countries...etc. Kosovo will be a member of all major western membership institutions, but the UN. That can wait. It's likely that by that time even Russia will be willing to recognize us, which marks the ground for a final UN resolution to put the lid to this issue.

The whole process will take awhile, but no doubt independence is inevitable.

In the meantime, Vuk Jeremic can continue doing his job. His ideas might be considered 'interesting,' but his blufs will be appropriately dealt with.

I'd be interested to write a year from now to see what some Serbs will have to say about their much-belated sense of compromise. Compromise was possible in the 1990s. Not after your government slaughtered thousands of Kosovars. Too little, too late. The train is moving, independence is coming.

Let's see who's right. Time will tell.

Jack,

Quite the contrary, i read most comments very carefully, although we all sometimes chose to ignore the subject of the discussion.

I perfectly understood your point and from what i understand on the organizational structure of the American Indian reservations, these structures are nothing more than self-governing enclaves with substantial authorities to run their own internal affairs.

So if i understand you correctly, you would like to separate Kosova into Serbian parts and Albanian parts and have the Albanian parts obtain the status of a reservation.

This is worse than "the best autonomy in the world" offered by Mr. Jeremic as it would lock Kosova into a state of continuous conflict and animosity.

Furthermore, there were 13 months of negotiations and they resulted in the Ahtisari package. The additional 4 months of negotiations will simply serve to convince some European countries on the hopelessness of further negotiations and convince them to recognize Kosova when the time comes.

The mandate of the Unity Group (Kosova negotiators) begins and ends with the Ahtisari Package and i can promise you that the Kosova Assembly will not give them the authority to discuss anything else.

As far as the Kosova Albanians are concerned, the negotiations ended with the Ahtisari Package.

Everyone i have spoken with is absolutely convinced that independence is the inevitable outcome of this whole process and Kosova remaining under Serbia is inconceivable too the Kosova Albanians.

Jack, what we want is not only to govern ourselves, it is for Serbia to leave once and for all both practically and theoretically. That is the most basic principle of the Kosova Albanians and a principle they will not violate whatever the consequences.

These negotiations will not result in a compromise because compromise with our former oppressors is not possible.

Our demands for independence are not aimed at punishing Serbia or creating Greater Albania, our efforts are aimed at creating a better future for our children without fear from MUP or paramilitaries. While you read about Arkan, Seselj and MUP on the newspapers, I was forced from my hope by them and made to walk for 2 days in the freezing cold to the Albanian border.

This all happened because some politicians in Belgrade decided to revoke our autonomy. Who says they won’t do it again?

My children and other Kosovar Albanian children will not suffer your elected leaders or your nationalistic mindset.

Kosovo is already functioning as a independent state and could never i mean NEVER be a part of Serbian repression ever again.
Serbian can try all the short-cuts and go around things ,and hope there is a string to catch but in the end they only lying to themself and there nation.

I would call this PART 1 of What would Serbia Sacrifice for Kosovo , a little improved since 1999.
I would like to be more patient and wait for further sacrifices that Serbia is prepared to offer, I am sure there are plenty of them to come still
I am pretty confident that failed Serbian politicians got the message in Washington from Mrs. Rice, However they are trying to get the best deal they can.
As fro K-Albania’s they are very right and deserve the Independence.

Serbian porters, Nick has given you a very descriptive explanation of the situation in Kosova. After all, now one is insane to suggest for Kosova to go back in time and accept unacceptable, Serbia for their country.

Your article sub-header says:
"Ban supports compromise"

...but in the body of the article nowhere did I see that Ban supports compromise. Isn't that a bit misleading?

He says that he hopes for an agreement, but that does not mean that it would be a compromise. An agreement is not necessary a compromise.

Nick,

I too am not too keen of such a solution as it implies a lack of freedom of movement and is in my perspective a failure for human rights for the ethnic-Albanians to be placed in ghettos just as much as it is a travesty that this is what is the case for the non-Albanians South of the Ibar!

There is one point I would disagree with you on;
"Reservations in the US were a product of ethnic cleansing, so in fact your comment promotes the continuation of Milosevic's policies. "
- given that you accept it was a concept of a result of the US policy it is a continuation of the US policy adopted by Milosevic is what you are really stating. However, sadly ethnic cleansing has been around much longer then the US and I would pin it on them either!

Dardan, I think in this instance any truly lasting agreement will need to be a compromise which must be agreed by all parties - there is no way a win-lose solution could be lasting and clearly the Ahtisaari bribed independence plan has failed so the obvious thing is compromise.

1. Call it what you like - the international community et al. will always call it by it's one and only true name - KOSOVO i METOHIJA. Calling a donkey a horse doesn't make it a horse.

2. Serbs can "relent" as you so cleverly put it as much as they like - the one thing they won't give is the one thing Albanians want.

3. It's good that KOSOVO i METOHIJA will be able to deal with financial institutions on their own. It's basically a money-pit and Serbia, since it doesn't currently run an area of it's own country, shouldn't have to pay for it!

4. "Great Autonomy" cannot possibly be the goal of a country which suffered terrorism by a minority and simply defended itself all internally and within its own sovereign borders.

5. KNOW THIS. You can have all the autonomy or semi-independance you wish - just remember the Serbian flag will always fly over it's land no matter who lives on it currently. And if it's not physically - then certainly spiritually and mentally.

When they don't get what they want they'll go crazy with frustration! But no matter - now that there are UN troops in the Serb region, if they ever try that terrorism rubbish like they did in the 90's this time they won't get away with it. Only then will the world truly see what's what and who's who!

Jack,

So what you are basicly saying is that you want to lock us up in reservations and create a multitude of enclaves?

Reservations in the US were a product of ethnic cleansing, so in fact your comment promotes the continuation of Milosevic's policies.

Your example shows exactly what and how Serbs view us Kosova Albanians and yet again prove how impossible it is for our two people to live together in one state.

Kosova is already independent and if you want to create reservations then you are welcome to try.

Your comment shows precisely how little you know of Kosova Albanian society and culture, or the living conditions in Kosova.

Ok Chief!

Ahmet - You were responding to an article quoting Jeremic and about Jeremic's ideas. Therefore it was a fair assumption by Princip that if you liked the proposal you were in favour of what he said.

I felt very encouraged by that as well. At least things seem to be going in a realistic direction.

Jack:


In contrary The Kosovo Government has already done so by providing extra land for the protected zones of the Serb Orthodox Churches in KS , which I would call Reservates. Serbs are religio-nostalgic to their orthodox areas , like indians in US were for their hunting and traditional style of living. Albanians of Kosovo are looking ahead to join the EU and it seems thay are not so nostalgic about past history.

I am sorry Kate, but niether on the first coment nor on the second coment where I mention the name of Vuk(twice) , I did not in any way show any support at all, but if you feel like twisting things around it is your proragotive. as matter of fact on second coment I said who cares what VUK has to say. end of story fromy side.

Nice try, Mr. Jeremic! But, of course NO, as long as we don’t have our army, our Police, our national bank, our borders controlled by our customs officers, etc. etc. it is out of question. All of you know very well that Kosovas path towards independence is irreversible. Even buying in time, would not help Serbia and its people, nor Kosova and its people (including Serb minority), what actually are Serbian politicians doing right now. Prolongation of independence, though possible at this time, would surely worsen the situation in Kosova, what for Serbia sounds well, but surely not for Serb minority living in Kosova. First of all will worsen economical situation, which is already just a step before explosion, will worsen security situation (everyone knows what that exactly means) not only in Kosova but surely in the region (Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro), will lose all hopes of all region to ever join the EU, NATO and other regional and world structures. YOU ALL KNOW THAT, BUT STILL PRETENDING YOU WANT TO “KEEP” KOSOVA, AT LEAST ON THE PAPER.
The only thing that keeps Kosovas politicians and people refrain from one sided move is exactly destabilization of our country and the region, what is not in our interest at all, otherwise, we would not have what to talk about in this forum today!

«Vuk Jeremic said it could be given "the widest possible autonomy in the world"».

I've never heard before of such a status. The Serbs know now that it is finished with Kosovo, no matter what they come forward with, no matter what the Russians say, and they use this kind of rhetoric to save the face. This would be hard on the people's morale to lose Kosovo after losing so much during the war; after losing even the fairly good reputation the Serbs had. All this is gone, they know, and they lost the Krajina, they now Kosovo is going.

THEY HAD A DREAM of a Serb State, of a Greater Serbia, where all Serbs would be together and happy, and because of weak leaders, they have lost everything, and they are pointed at by Europe and the world as a nation who attempted a genocide against another nation for the only purpose of taking their lands and building a NEW STATE.

Serbia has a long way to come before its own status in the world is accepted and recognized.

No Nick.
Typically for this site you have reacted and taken umbrage without considering what has been written.

Firstly and for the umpteenth time, I have no genetic, cultural or political connection to the Balkans but did work in Kosovo for several years. So my opinions are not Serbian.

Secondly, I am not advocating anyone being locked up anywhere. In fact the majority of native Americans choose not to live on a reservation.

Thirdly, I was promoting the idea as an existing model which could be adapted and not set a precedent(this being the main concern of the majority of countries and concerned citizens of the world such as myself) which could domino other countries.

Finally, The basic model provides for devolution of governance(including certain aspects of sovereign powers) to a minority ethnic group within defined areas of a country without a change of national borders.

This would give each side a majority of what they want. Also if the K.Albs cleverly negotiate the borders of the devolved areas to exclude places such as Obilic A&B then the responsibility(and cost) to upgrade the infrastructure will fall on Belgrade.

There are no fences or walls around American reservations and the reservations police and govern themselves. I think this is the basis of an elegant and sustainable solution.

Nick, contemplate the fact that you may not get independence or may be offered a supervised independence which is so constrained as to be unworkable(such as BiH). I understand that you want "INDEPENDENCE" but you must also consider alternative solutions because who ever EVER got 100% of what they wanted from a multi-party negotiation?

Mike,
Just keep in mind that K-Albanian side has made a lot of concessions already by agreeing to the Ahtisari’s plan which means a much watered down independence and a very powerful ethnic minority representation in the Kosovas policies which on its own can create abig headache for any governing body in the fiture.

And what if Washington says, "We support belgrade's offer"? What piece on the Kosovo chess board would Pristina move then?

To Mike,
"Third, while many Albanians have said that autonomy can be revoked or abused as it was in the past, I think our Neo-Illyrians miss the idea that Milosevic and his kind are long dead and buried in the backyard."
Just to remind you Mr Mike that the Milosevic kind of men are still living in peace in Serbia, like Mladic, Karacic and many, many others alike, so nice try to blind the world, but finaly Serbia's mask of manipulating with the facts is gone forever. The world knows her true face now.

This is good for two reasons.

1: It shows willingness to compromise. The Kosovo Albanians and their 'protectors' cannot in return offer fig-leaves, otherwise it just shows them in their true light, i.e. lots of talk, but no action;

2: Allowing Kosovo to take money from the WB and IMF, as long as Serbia is not the guarantor is perfect. The Kosovo albanians will have to be fiscally 'prudent' and make do with what they can manage, rather than blame everyone else for their ills.

NICK writes “This all happened because some politicians in Belgrade decided to revoke our autonomy. Who says they won’t do it again?” Your autonomy was revoked like it would have been in any nation where terrorists are destabilizing and killing people indiscriminately. Human rights groups have accused the KLA whom you support of serious human rights violations, including compelling Serb villagers to leave their homes. From January 1st 1998 to August 30 1998 there were 1126 KLA attacks, among them police targets in 616 cases and civilian targets in 510 cases. In those fights 30 Serb and Montenegrin civilians were killed, 47 Albanians who were not loyal to the KLA, 3 Roma, 1 unidentified person and 95 civilians wounded. During this period 208 civilians were kidnapped (157 Serbs and Montenegrins, 42 Albanians who were not loyal to the KLA, and 6 Roma.

Every country will suspend civil liberties, autonomy and introduce special procedures to deal with insurrections. Some countries introduce marshal law and curfews to deal with criminal elements like the KLA. The fact that you walked for two days is regrettable. We all know who benefited from that walk. KLA political agenda and NATO’s propaganda machine needed the refugees to justify the bombing of Yugoslavia. This was very convenient from NATO governments' point of view. so they manufactured it.

As I followed events in Yugoslavia it did not take long for me and any other person who questions to see how NATO and their allies manufactured events and blamed them on the Serbs. These events were than used by NATO to justify further aggression against Yugoslavia and Serbia in particular. One just needs to ask who benefited from these events which were staged for Western consumption. War and propaganda are partners and tears and shivering of refugees as well as killing of civilians is more effective than bullets. Serbs know this and NATO knows this but the difference was that NATO controlled threes events and their media used it. A picture is worth a thousand words and soldiers.

When Yugoslavs were blamed by NATO for committing these acts they were under extreme international pressure to play the diplomatic card since any act by them would make their position critical. NATO knew this and that is why we had the breadline massacre followed by bombing of JNA positions, Srebrenica followed by expulsion of 300 thousand Serbs from Krajina, Racak and the refugee columns followed by bombing of Serbia and a dozen other staged events which were followed by more aggression by NATO. The primary NATO goal became maintaining its credibility and they used these staged events to show the Western public that they were the good guys. On my TV screen in Western Canada the events were interpreted for the public by predominantly military experts, statesmen, ministers and diplomats from NATO countries. No one asked the Serbs their opinion. In Canada for example those that lied the most like Louise Arbour were promoted while those like Canada’s ambassador to Belgrade Joe Bissett who wanted to tell Canadians the real story were fired.

Looks like Mr. Jeremic already knows outcome; since he urges US to restrain itself from stating it publicly.
On the other side – he shows immaturity when threatening US about the Serbia’s support on declaring Kosova independent. Immaturity overcomes any good taste at his instructions to that same factor on what it should do towards Serbia’s social criteria! Most probably he is not aware of his potential, seems that he has swamped positions! What I’m pointing to is; Serbia actually needs more serious and pragmatic politicians. Who will be able to identify time and space in more appropriate manner.

Something new here; Kate sounds more happy today, anticipating more sympathy from International Community over the fact that Serbia "allows" Kosova to have certain rights. Her happiness (my guess) is based on Mr. Jeremic’s “generosity”. I understand, same time suggest her to browse more than one book. my suggestions aren’t baseless, believe me Kate – but while reading your comments I realized that your knowledge over the past and current Kosovo’s facts are (unfortunately) very limited. I feel I am more privileged (simultaneously read stances of Albanians, Serbians and Internationals) to say the follows: Serbia isn’t in position to assert conditions to anyone. You should be happy of the fact it is a part in negotiations at all, since it has been the source of all disaster through 90’s over ex-Yu. It doesn’t show much progress in its relation towards neighborhood even today, unfortunately.

"Just to remind you Mr Mike that the Milosevic kind of men are still living in peace in Serbia, like Mladic, Karacic and many, many others alike, so nice try to blind the world, but finaly Serbia's mask of manipulating with the facts is gone forever. The world knows her true face now."

That's only part of the story US of A. Please point out, other than Tomislav Nikolic, where anyone in the current Serbian government would EVER return to the brutal tactics and sultanistic practices of Milosevic. Tadic? Jovanovic? Kostunica? Hardly. I suggest you update your assessment of Serbia's political development since 2000. As your name attests, you can easily find unbiased and critical information on Serbia right here in the good ol' US of A. This website is a great example: a Serb-moderated news site that allows people like you and I to post our thoughts, argue over details, and compete over who's history is accurate. I'm not suggesting Serbia is all sunshine and rainbows, but I do think we need to better assess how far Serbia has come since 2000 and how far it can still go before we liken anything today to politics of the 1990s.

ArtG, what you believe are concessions by the Ahtisaari Plan, I feel are non-negotiable obligations. Following the Ahtisaari Plan gets you in the door to the negotiating table, but it seems it's not enough. No doubt the Serbs will be a powerful ethnic minority, but that's the reality on the ground.

And speaking of reality on the ground, C's money quote:
"The resolution of the status will be in accordance to the situation on the ground: it will legitimize some sort of a partition with an entity-like authority for the Serbian minority, while recognizing Kosovo as an independent nation within its 1974 borders."

I'm more than happy to accomodate and work with that as this seems the most logical step forward. However, any "Northern" Kosovo will undoubtedly get into the EU along with the rest of Kosovo. I see no Northern Cyprus similarity here unless northern Kosovo tries to declare itself its own country.

" have been thinking about examples from around the world which could be adapted to solve the Kosovo deadlock. The best one I have come across so far is the American Indian Nations Reservation system. This gives limited sovereignty and mostly self governance to Native Americans within the reservations. Large areas of Kosovo could be reorganised as Reservations giving the K.Albs a form of sovereignty and self governance without a change in borders"


Right then the Albanians can open up casinos and charge $1.99 for breakfast buffet.Get real Kosovo is not America.It will require its own set of precidents.

Thumbs up from me for Sasha K.
As I was reading your post from top and when I got to the bottom when you talk about serbia flag, you really did put a nail in coffin with the following coment: "And if it's not physically - then certainly spiritually and mentally". I love it becasue you are honest man and admit the reality, therefore I propose this to be chosen the coment of the Year and receive an Award.

'Get real Kosovo is not America.It will require its own set of precidents.'
(Jovan z, 3. August 2007 03:06)

Why don't you get real bre!

I clarified some points in my second post. i.e.
'Thirdly, I was promoting the idea as an existing model which could be adapted and not set a precedent(this being the main concern of the majority of countries and concerned citizens of the world such as myself) which could domino other countries.

Finally, The basic model provides for devolution of governance(including certain aspects of sovereign powers) to a minority ethnic group within defined areas of a country without a change of national borders.'

An ADAPTION of this existing model would provide for the 'more than autonomy less than independence' situation which the Serbian govt keep banging-on about. Have you seen anywhere else an explanation of how the 'more than autonomy less than independence' pledge could be formatted? No I didn't think so. You can't create policy on a soundbite.

Many Albanian posters on this site have rightly asked what the Serbian govt mean by 'more than autonomy less than independence' and how it would be implimented. I am merely offering a possible scenario to go with Belgrades favourite catchphrase.

Zorane

no K-Albanian posting mentiones the Ottoman Empire. Your positng havs just proved the point of who is going FFW and who REW.

Walter,

The KLA did not even exist in 1989 when the autonomy was revoked. Please read carefully before responding.

The fact that you believe a campaign as masive as the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia was launched on the basis of missunderstanding and fabrications is ridiculous.

What interest would NATO have possibly had in bombing Serbia? Please explain to me WHY did NATO bomb Serbia?

NICK: You ask a question which I have answered several times before on this post. I live in British Columbia Canada just north of Seattle Washington USA. In 1999 there was a WORLDS TRADE ORGANIZATION meeting in Seattle where a major protest took place against this organization’s ‘GLOBALIZATION policies. In that same year, precisely at that time NATO attacked Yugoslavia most of the protesters did not grasp the connection between this attack and this meeting. The people on the left and the right saw this war as humanitarian as you see it and did not see it as expansion of NATO into other wars such as the ones now raging in Iraq and Afghanistan.

First you need to ask why does the west need NATO when USSR and the Warsaw Pact no longer exist. You need to remember NATO was created as an anti USSR defensive alliance. The other thing that you need to look at is America’s Policy for the 21st Century which calls for moving its military bases to the Balkans, controlling world resources and possessing the strongest military force in the world to protect her status as the only superpower. They tell you it is all about democracy but this is just nonsense when you see that they support and sell billions in military goods (Saudi Arabia for example 63 billion) to world’s most vile dictators.

Now that the USSR is gone what do we do with this NATO military industrial complex which provides millions of jobs for its members particularly the USA since USA supplies all the weapons for its members? NATO had to convince voters in USA and Canada for example that our tax dollars are well spent supporting this military organization. NATO needed to find something that the taxpayer in Canada and America would support. Events in Yugoslavia were stage managed for that purpose. First of all International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) destabilized the Yugoslav economy once they did that ethnic groups were encouraged in the blame game as to whose fault it was for the economic collapse.

NATO did not bother to correct the economic situation but used it to support Slovenia and Croatia in their drive to break he federation. The policy Germany, Britain and later USA followed went against international law and treaties to which Yugoslavia was a member. The problem for NATO was not Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, the problem was Serbia. Serbs more than most others nation groups wanted for Yugoslavia to remain as a single nation where socio economic capitalism remained. Milosevic wanted that also so NATO had to get rid of him. He was blamed for every atrocity that followed. If NATO wanted Yugoslavia to remain they would not have trained the Croat, Muslim and Albanian military while denying that they were doing just that.


In Kosovo, we were told that “Sometimes the only way to stop bad men from doing bad things is with force. This scenario is “straight out of a classic Western movie: "bad men" must be stopped from doing "bad things", presumably by "good men" -- and women, of course. A "new era in world politics"? Or the same old story? According to Diana Johnstone The fictional saga of Yugoslavia in the 1990s goes something like this: Yugoslavia was a "prison of peoples" where the Serbs oppressed all the others. It was destroyed by the rise of an evil leader, Slobodan Milosevic, who set out to create a "Greater Serbia" by eliminating other peoples in a process called "ethnic cleansing". Those other peoples sought to escape, by creating their own independent states. The Yugoslav army, actually Serbian, invaded them. In Bosnia, the invading Serbs tried to drive out the Muslims, who wanted to perpetuate an exemplary multi-ethnic society. The Serb ethnic cleansing killed 200,000 unarmed Muslims while the international community looked on and even prevented the Muslims from arming in self-defense. At Srebrenica, the United Nations allowed the Serbs to commit genocide. Only U.S. bombing forced Milosevic to come to the negotiating table at Dayton. The resulting agreement brought peace and democracy to multi-ethnic Bosnia. However, the international community had failed to save the Albanian majority in Kosovo from apartheid. In 1998 Madeleine Albright warned that NATO must intervene to keep Milosevic from "doing in Kosovo what he could no longer get away with in Bosnia" In January 1999 Serbian security forces massacred defenseless civilians in the Kosovo village of Racak, awakening the NATO governments to the need to act to stop genocide. After the turning point of Racak, the Serbs were summoned to peace negotiations in Rambouillet, in France. Milosevic stubbornly refused to negotiate. NATO had no choice but to start bombing Yugoslavia. Masses of Albanians were deliberately driven out according to a preconceived plan called "Operation Horseshoe". Finally, Milosevic gave in, and NATO liberated the Kosovars from their oppressors.” CONCLUSION: From “this day forward humanitarian intervention constitutes a principal mission for NATO, as the military arm of an international community henceforth committed to protection of human rights.”

ALMOST EVERYTHING IN THE ABOVE PARAGRAH IS FALSE EXCEPR THE CONCLUSION. You may dismiss my conclusions because you have read over and over again the thing that VICTOR repeats and many of you on the Albanian side believe it. I credit you for asking questions for that is the only way to the truth. News agencies and high profile lawyers as well as historians and intellectuals have challenged the dominant myth and this has been reported but the Media which NATO controls refuses to reverse their original reports because this would show their original mistakes so they pushed on comparing Serbs to Nazi Holocaust, and anyone attempting to “to return to reality was stigmatized as the equivalent of "Holocaust denial", and critics were dismissed as "revisionists" and "negationists", comparable to apologists for Nazi crimes.”

Back to NATO , USSR was gone and so was the arms race. America had to find a new reason to build weapons but why build them if you cant destroy them and make new ones a vicious cycle of production and replacement keeping the employed at work. “In the words of Madeleine Albright, "What's the point of having this superb military ... if we can't use it?" The use of military power had to be justified, however. There was to be no "conversion" of military industry to production of civilian goods. The only conversion was ideological: the identification of new enemies and threats”

I am not sure if you know that Yugoslavia was a major seller of weapons in direct competition with NATO countries. I think that they were 6th in the world in weapons sales. They sold these weapons to countries unfriendly to USA and NATO nations as well as to friendly ones. Just one example when Yugoslavia was fighting Croat succession they had a deal that the tank factory in Slavonia somewhere was off limits to bombing because they made tanks for sale to Kuwait at 1 million each. It was in NATO’s interest to get rid of this competition.

The elimination of socialism was another reason for dismemberment of Yugoslavia. United States wanted to impose its model of social, political, and economic organization on the world. Milosevic wanted a mix of public and private ownership. The IMF and the WB said no. Why do you thing Serbia, Venezuela and several other nations no longer deal with these organizations. These two organizations are controlled by USA and are used as instruments of her foreign policy. USA joined the United Nations only after they were given control of the IMF and the WB. U.S. through the WB and IMF implements "globalization" as it is being carried out by Western transnational corporations, protected by this superb military or NATO”. It is the WTO through the IMF and the WB that “set the rules and arbitrate between the dominant economic powers. These institutions severely limit the power of governments to protect public interests, whether citizens' welfare or the environment, from the demands of private business.”

You need to understand that market economy is very efficient but the nation states in a market economy cannot protect their citizens to earn a decent salary, get dental and medical care, educate their children and protect those that are simply not able to compete. Market economy is great for me because I was born with some brain cells, made some decent investments and my family is quite well off so in order for me to make more money you if you work for me will earn minimum wage, I will not provide you with medical care or any other protection that human dignity requires. This is a simple fact of Capitalism. What do people do that are not in my position? Some turn to crime, others turn to their nation group, religion and nationalism and blame their neighbor for their poverty, Yugoslavia was this, Iraq is this and so is Afghanistan and Albania. The other thing that poverty drives is crime. Both Serbs and Albanians have their share of this but it is poverty that leads to Mafia type organizations as you can see in Sicily, Albania, and Kosovo and I am sure in Serbia as well.

As Diana Johnstone writes and I agree with her “Yugoslavia became an enemy both as a discarded asset and as a potential alternative. When the Soviet Bloc collapsed, non-aligned Yugoslavia lost its value to the West as a strategic asset. As a nominally socialist country with considerable Third World relationships thanks to its leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement, Yugoslavia could be seen as a potential alternative model. If the country held together, it might stand in the way of Western plans for the region. Perhaps the potential Yugoslav "threat" was an illusion. But its disintegration settled the matter, and destroying the country provided a useful exercise for future operations”

NATO destroyed Yugoslavia to splinter the nation into small client states, demilitarize the country, moved USA bases to the Balkans, ended Yugoslav socialist system as it was in the way of globalization, provided NATO a reason to continue to exist and when this was over USA invented fear of terrorism, Yugoslav NATO invasion set a precedent for Iraq and Afghanistan and any other country on its hit list. The NATO nations stirred up hatred in Yugoslavia past and present, used propaganda, set up tribunals that they would not accept for their own nationals, and broke international law, treaties and agreement in order to serve their own interests.

Your petard is shooting blanks and usually people who have limited knowledge tend to accuse others of revisionism. Only those who have limited knowledge of history will claim that someone else’s imagination is at work. As I said several times this is standard knowledge of every Grade 12 history student in British Columbia and if they don’t know this information they are unlikely to pass their government exam. You would have left much of the exam blank Mr. Jack Blank and probably failed.

On the other hand, I do not wish to enure your approval on what I say since I can document everything that I write but I am sure if you research what I write you will not be any smarter but I am sure you will be more informed. KLA came into being in 1993 or there about. I am not sure where you get the date of 1989 but I can see from what you write that you don’t read much. Even back in 1989 intimidation by Kosovo Albanians of other ethnic groups went on, however, I have personal knowledge of it going back to WWI and 1974 when I first visited Yugoslavia. When my grandfather retreated across Kosovo and Albania in WWI half of his companions were killed by Albanians in the mountains before they reached the Greek island of Corfu. In 1974 my cousin had to leave because of intimidation when he attended the metallurgy school in Kosovo. For example, you can easily find in reliable historical documents Albanian participation in the SS division in WWII but you rather not since you don’t want to share this so you fabricate by omission. Mr. Blank if you want to be a historian you need to follow procedures and conventions that govern its practice, rules of argument and evidence. Historians gather evidence in archives, libraries, and museums. They organize it, interpret, and finally they compose their accounts. I try to do that and I expect your counter argument to be so organized. If you just call me names such as fabricator, and revisionist and say that I do this deliberately you only deceive yourself. Sometimes errors are made but those who claim that an error was made need to quote and show evidence of such error.

It has been eight years that Serbia could take some steps in order to somehow make K-Alb to feel that serbs are sorry for what they have done in Kosova. We didn't need any financial aid from Serbia to rebuild our burnt houses, but they could help on elucidating the fate of the missing, because I am sure the serbian army and state police have every possible record on the movement of people and the list of dead, burried, exhumated, transferred, burnt, etc.
There are some other technical issues (property records, pensional funds, etc) that Serbia has to give up one way or another, and which are the further negotiations issues to be disscused in the last 120 days.
There is no other compromise over the indeependence, that's why Albanians in Kosovo cannot accept any sacrifice from Serbia.

Walter,
I read your comments with amusement. You would have had a rather bright career writing revisionist history for the USSR before it imploded. You really have quite an imagination to come up with such detailed fabrications, however, you were hoisted by your own petard. If only you could keep you dates straight instead of bungling by claiming the KLA existed back in 1989 when Kosova's autonomy was revoked.

Great Autonomy under Serbia its a scary thing once you analyse the history. First will come the colonisation than the autonomy striped than 99 all over again.
I'd rather have the UN in Kosovo all thought life than let the serbian radicals finish Milosevic's dream.
Slovenia and Croatia don't want anything at all to do with Serbia any more,Macedonia has learned not to go on their knees, Montenegro doesn't like serbian language. Why in Earth would they want to keep Kosovo?
This is a true scam for land. And no Mr. Vuk your great dream will not be accomplished on the backs of the people of the land. Ahtisaari's proposal is our negotiation! If you dont like it wait till 28'th of November

I think that this is actually a really clever approach. Overall sovereignty rightly remains with Serbia, but Kosovo is allowed to have certain rights pertaining to sovereignty such as representation on certain international bodies. This sounds like a step in the right direction.

The 'international community' obviously like this idea judging from the positive way that it's being reported. And it sounds as though there would be numerous concessions made by the Serbian side.

I have been thinking about examples from around the world which could be adapted to solve the Kosovo deadlock. The best one I have come across so far is the American Indian Nations Reservation system. This gives limited sovereignty and mostly self governance to Native Americans within the reservations. Large areas of Kosovo could be reorganised as Reservations giving the K.Albs a form of sovereignty and self governance without a change in borders.

Of course the details would have to be hammered out but the precedent is already set by the US reservations model. For further info see link http://www.infca.org/tribes/IRA.htm

Finally serbia relents on Kosova issue. There is no other way and they know it. Only clean divorce rather than messy one.I know many of you will respond and tell m ethat we are not getting our Indepndence is only we are giving you a bone to make you happy, but beleive me is the serbs who have to get used the idea that Kosova is lost for ever.

First, Minister Jeremic should know that the Government of Kosova already has the authority (given by UN) to open representative offices in foreign countries and we do not need Serbia's permission to do so.

Second, access to the WB and the IMF would certainly help the economy, but I am sure no Kosova Albanian would agree to give away independence for international financial assistance. You should all know that Kosova Albanians will never agree to live under Serbia in whatever shape or form and if someone tries to force us to do so then that will ultimately lead to instability.

It is illogical to assume that the international community can simply reintroduce Serbia to Kosova. Serbia left in 1999 and in practice there has been no sign of Serbian sovereignty in Kosova for 8 years now.

A solution such as the one Mr. Jeremic proposes maybe would have been possible before 1999 but it is simply not possible anymore.

The Kosova Albanians will not suffer Serbia’s nationalistic and radical policies and we will not fall victim to radical politicians that may take power in Belgrade sooner or later. Serbia is and will remain for some time to come a “radical” country wand we simply cant not stake our lives and accept your “broadest autonomy possible”.

Full independence and unrestricted sovereignty with internationally guranateed rights for ethnic minorities and religious sites is and will remain the only way forward. The sooner politicians in Belgrade realize this, the sooner we will all be able to move forward and establish a lasting peace in the region and finally join the European Union.

In the meanwhile and until Serbia comes to its senses, both us and you will remain isolated. You should know that although the Kosova Albanians suffer economically you will suffer far worse if you insist in keeping Kosova. Even if you succeed in keeping Kosova, which is highly unlikely, you will have to deal with 2 million Kosova Albanians who STILL want nothing to do with you and will boycott your state institutions and keep you in LIMBO.

Regardless of how smart Mr. Jeremic and other Serbs think they are by trying to give the impression that Serbia wants to compromise and that it’s the Kosova Albanians that are being unreasonable, the west by now has become familiar with your politics and the United States in particular knows exactly what you mean by “broadest autonomy in the world”.

Finally, you should all understand that at this time we are cooperating with the international community and agreeing to additional negotiations because a lot is at stake (independence), BUT if our demands are not met then we have nothing to lose.

Ahmet,

this is encouraging to find that you support Jeremic in his suggestion that autonomy is a good compromise. It is clear that a compromise solution is possible in the upcoming negotiations regarding Autonomy of Serbia's province.

That is good news and it is clear that the win-win is about to be forged by the EU spearheading the negotiations to formulate supervised autonomy as the end status. The detail needs to be ironed out and thus the tlaks will be intensive with much to be negotiated but partition and dismemerment of the UN recognised & Sovereign State of Serbia is clearly off the agenda.

I would call this PART 1 of What would Serbia Sacrifice for Kosovo , a little improved since 1999.
I would like to be more patient and wait for further sacrifices that Serbia is prepared to offer, I am sure there are plenty of them to come still
I am pretty confident that failed Serbian politicians got the message in Washington from Mrs. Rice, However they are trying to get the best deal they can.
As fro K-Albania’s they are very right and deserve the Independence.

Serbian porters, Nick has given you a very descriptive explanation of the situation in Kosova. After all, now one is insane to suggest for Kosova to go back in time and accept unacceptable, Serbia for their country.

«Vuk Jeremic said it could be given "the widest possible autonomy in the world"».

I've never heard before of such a status. The Serbs know now that it is finished with Kosovo, no matter what they come forward with, no matter what the Russians say, and they use this kind of rhetoric to save the face. This would be hard on the people's morale to lose Kosovo after losing so much during the war; after losing even the fairly good reputation the Serbs had. All this is gone, they know, and they lost the Krajina, they now Kosovo is going.

THEY HAD A DREAM of a Serb State, of a Greater Serbia, where all Serbs would be together and happy, and because of weak leaders, they have lost everything, and they are pointed at by Europe and the world as a nation who attempted a genocide against another nation for the only purpose of taking their lands and building a NEW STATE.

Serbia has a long way to come before its own status in the world is accepted and recognized.

I have no desire to respond to anything that princip writtes, but I have to since he addressed me.
My post is #1 and no where in my coment can you find the name of this Jeremic, that Princip is claimung that I am supporting.
My second coment is # 7 and that is where i mention the name VUK(TWICE). So, my question is how can princip say such thing if I did not even mention the guys name.

Jack,

So what you are basicly saying is that you want to lock us up in reservations and create a multitude of enclaves?

Reservations in the US were a product of ethnic cleansing, so in fact your comment promotes the continuation of Milosevic's policies.

Your example shows exactly what and how Serbs view us Kosova Albanians and yet again prove how impossible it is for our two people to live together in one state.

Kosova is already independent and if you want to create reservations then you are welcome to try.

Your comment shows precisely how little you know of Kosova Albanian society and culture, or the living conditions in Kosova.

Ok Chief!

Jack:


In contrary The Kosovo Government has already done so by providing extra land for the protected zones of the Serb Orthodox Churches in KS , which I would call Reservates. Serbs are religio-nostalgic to their orthodox areas , like indians in US were for their hunting and traditional style of living. Albanians of Kosovo are looking ahead to join the EU and it seems thay are not so nostalgic about past history.

Ahmet,
"My post is #1 and no where in my coment can you find the name of this Jeremic,"

- given that the WHOLE article is about what Jeremic has to say regarding the talks whom else could you have been commenting upon? Your suggestion that "finally serbia relents" implies that you are happy with what Jeremic has to say and of coure you go on with your usual rhetoric but clearly you were content with the "compromise" message of Jeremic! Unless, you are suggesting that you never read the actual article until your second post at which point you realised that your 1st comment is clearly out of context and had no relevance what so ever to what Jeremic had to say regarding the negotiations and compromise by all?

With that, I can understand why the "negotiations" are going to be difficult and challenging and clearly why more then 120 days will be required! However, in the end the win-win compromise will be the only outcome that provides stability and respects international law. I will remind you that I said quite so time ago that there will be;
No Independence
No Unilateral declaration
No Illegal recognition
No Violence - NATO will act.

The sooner all the Serbian citizens accept the state they are in the sooner much required economic development will take place. Of course in the talks that are to take place it will require a great deal of compromise on behalf of the Govt. of Serbia to start utilising its position to put across it's position that this is an inclusive message - something that as I have read and agree with alluded by Mike in this regard.

It's time for all to be represented and for all to think out of the 'conflict' box to find the solution that respects human rights and international law!

I am sorry Kate, but niether on the first coment nor on the second coment where I mention the name of Vuk(twice) , I did not in any way show any support at all, but if you feel like twisting things around it is your proragotive. as matter of fact on second coment I said who cares what VUK has to say. end of story fromy side.

In an exclusive BBC interview, Vuk Jeremic said it could be given "the widest possible autonomy in the world" to meet Albanian independence demands. The work is done. It's now hard time for two independent states to learn how to exist together and guarantee past atrocities don’t happen anymore, NEVER!

Here w go again Kate with your wishful thinking. Vuk said that kosova will be allowed also to have reps. in other countries that means Ambassadors, what else could it mean.Anyway we don't care what VUK has to say just like the previous VUK the drashkoviq , which i have not heard of him for long time since he lost his job.

Kosovo is already functioning as a independent state and could never i mean NEVER be a part of Serbian repression ever again.
Serbian can try all the short-cuts and go around things ,and hope there is a string to catch but in the end they only lying to themself and there nation.

Ahmet - You were responding to an article quoting Jeremic and about Jeremic's ideas. Therefore it was a fair assumption by Princip that if you liked the proposal you were in favour of what he said.

I felt very encouraged by that as well. At least things seem to be going in a realistic direction.

Your article sub-header says:
"Ban supports compromise"

...but in the body of the article nowhere did I see that Ban supports compromise. Isn't that a bit misleading?

He says that he hopes for an agreement, but that does not mean that it would be a compromise. An agreement is not necessary a compromise.

Nice try, Mr. Jeremic! But, of course NO, as long as we don’t have our army, our Police, our national bank, our borders controlled by our customs officers, etc. etc. it is out of question. All of you know very well that Kosovas path towards independence is irreversible. Even buying in time, would not help Serbia and its people, nor Kosova and its people (including Serb minority), what actually are Serbian politicians doing right now. Prolongation of independence, though possible at this time, would surely worsen the situation in Kosova, what for Serbia sounds well, but surely not for Serb minority living in Kosova. First of all will worsen economical situation, which is already just a step before explosion, will worsen security situation (everyone knows what that exactly means) not only in Kosova but surely in the region (Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro), will lose all hopes of all region to ever join the EU, NATO and other regional and world structures. YOU ALL KNOW THAT, BUT STILL PRETENDING YOU WANT TO “KEEP” KOSOVA, AT LEAST ON THE PAPER.
The only thing that keeps Kosovas politicians and people refrain from one sided move is exactly destabilization of our country and the region, what is not in our interest at all, otherwise, we would not have what to talk about in this forum today!

Nick,

I too am not too keen of such a solution as it implies a lack of freedom of movement and is in my perspective a failure for human rights for the ethnic-Albanians to be placed in ghettos just as much as it is a travesty that this is what is the case for the non-Albanians South of the Ibar!

There is one point I would disagree with you on;
"Reservations in the US were a product of ethnic cleansing, so in fact your comment promotes the continuation of Milosevic's policies. "
- given that you accept it was a concept of a result of the US policy it is a continuation of the US policy adopted by Milosevic is what you are really stating. However, sadly ethnic cleansing has been around much longer then the US and I would pin it on them either!

Dardan, I think in this instance any truly lasting agreement will need to be a compromise which must be agreed by all parties - there is no way a win-lose solution could be lasting and clearly the Ahtisaari bribed independence plan has failed so the obvious thing is compromise.

Looks like Mr. Jeremic already knows outcome; since he urges US to restrain itself from stating it publicly.
On the other side – he shows immaturity when threatening US about the Serbia’s support on declaring Kosova independent. Immaturity overcomes any good taste at his instructions to that same factor on what it should do towards Serbia’s social criteria! Most probably he is not aware of his potential, seems that he has swamped positions! What I’m pointing to is; Serbia actually needs more serious and pragmatic politicians. Who will be able to identify time and space in more appropriate manner.

Something new here; Kate sounds more happy today, anticipating more sympathy from International Community over the fact that Serbia "allows" Kosova to have certain rights. Her happiness (my guess) is based on Mr. Jeremic’s “generosity”. I understand, same time suggest her to browse more than one book. my suggestions aren’t baseless, believe me Kate – but while reading your comments I realized that your knowledge over the past and current Kosovo’s facts are (unfortunately) very limited. I feel I am more privileged (simultaneously read stances of Albanians, Serbians and Internationals) to say the follows: Serbia isn’t in position to assert conditions to anyone. You should be happy of the fact it is a part in negotiations at all, since it has been the source of all disaster through 90’s over ex-Yu. It doesn’t show much progress in its relation towards neighborhood even today, unfortunately.

First, at least the Serbs seem to be more flexible in their offer on Kosovo than the Albanians. While the Serb side ultimately remains the same - autonomy, they are at least willing to accept the consequences of a good chunk of their southern territory essentially being out of Belgrade's hands. This is far more flexibility I have seen than what's coming from Pristina, where officials yell demands from behind UN bureaucrats and US soldiers.

Second, while what Jeremic proposed would basically connect Serbia Proper and Kosovo Province by a few hairs, it makes one wonder why a clean break just isn't agreed to since Kosovo will have essentially 90% self-government. If virtual independence is good enough, why not actual?

Third, while many Albanians have said that autonomy can be revoked or abused as it was in the past, I think our Neo-Illyrians miss the idea that Milosevic and his kind are long dead and buried in the backyard. If such a condition was agreed upon by the international community, that autonomy would be so tightly bound to Serbian political development that the slightest abuse would immediately result in the nullification of such an accomodation. Plus, it also assumes that authoritarianism is right around the corner in Belgrade, which is delusional to say the least, if one thinks that.

To be perfectly honest, with no overt bias, Serbia seems more willing to compromise (at least when Tadic or Jeremic is speaking). Pristina officals still remind me of the French soldiers in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Jeremic is Harvard-educated and clearly understands the importance of bargaining politics. He's trying to make offers that have the intention of 'polluting' the independence option.

It simply won't work. Serbia's had plenty of time in the 1990s to make us such offers. The resolution of the status will be in accordance to the situation on the ground: it will legitimize some sort of a partition with an entity-like authority for the Serbian minority, while recognizing Kosovo as an independent nation within its 1974 borders.

What the Serbs in these discussions appear to fail to understand is that the 120 days of 'negotiations' are an attempt to buy time in order to forge as great a consensus between European states as possible. That's the only sticking point in the western stance.

Modern-day politics is awash with examples of bending international rules for the ends of the powerful actors. Russia is clearly isolated on this. Plus, I don't buy the argument that its recent gas revenue has transformed the country's might into what it used to be. It takes decades to modernize its army and economic infrastructure to be able to compete with the advanced western democracies.

Anyway, the only reason why we have the 120 days of negotiations is simply due to the lack of European consensus - which Russia exploited very well. But, make no mistake: Europe will not allow Russia to set its foreign policy. A common EU foreign policy is a key goal of the Union, and with that guiding principle in mind, it will be compelled to recognize Kosovo outside of the UN - if need be.

So, its simple: during 120 days the EU will gather a critical number of its members to go ahead with recognition outside the UN. The West, if it wisihes so, CAN claim without remorse that the Resolution 1244 has already been invalidated given the dissolution of Yugoslavia/Serbia-Montenegro Union (what matters in law is interpretation!). Thus, it signalls to the Kosovo Parliament to provide the legal cover by approving a resolution that invites an EU mission to replace the UN. The West will claim that this will be a sufficient legal cover for this operation to occur.

Even if the EU as a whole is unable to recognize Kosovo at first, that need not be the case forever. So, by the end of this year or eventually early into next year (but even if it takes until summer of next year - which doesnt really matter), Kosovo declares independence unilaterally, north of Kosovo claims it joins Serbia. Washington recognizes the whole of Kosovo, key EU states follow suit. The EU will be faced with a major international crisis of its reputation, thus be compelled within a matter of weeks to formulate a joint position to recognize us as a Union. So will it be - there's no other choice. The costs of credibility to the Union are too high to let its own project in Kosovo fail spectacularly. This act by EU will pave the way for the EU mission to enter Kosovo and replace the UN.

The north of Kosovo will continue to behave as if part of Serbia. But when the times comes for joining the EU, north of Kosovo will be left out much like the northern Cyprus unless it explicitly acknowledges the national political authority of Prishtina. Thus, in the medium term, Kosovo will preserve its territorital integrity.

By the time Kosovo is about to join the EU, many countries would have recognized Kosovo: US, EU, NATO, Islamic countries, OECD countries...etc. Kosovo will be a member of all major western membership institutions, but the UN. That can wait. It's likely that by that time even Russia will be willing to recognize us, which marks the ground for a final UN resolution to put the lid to this issue.

The whole process will take awhile, but no doubt independence is inevitable.

In the meantime, Vuk Jeremic can continue doing his job. His ideas might be considered 'interesting,' but his blufs will be appropriately dealt with.

I'd be interested to write a year from now to see what some Serbs will have to say about their much-belated sense of compromise. Compromise was possible in the 1990s. Not after your government slaughtered thousands of Kosovars. Too little, too late. The train is moving, independence is coming.

Let's see who's right. Time will tell.

Jack,

Quite the contrary, i read most comments very carefully, although we all sometimes chose to ignore the subject of the discussion.

I perfectly understood your point and from what i understand on the organizational structure of the American Indian reservations, these structures are nothing more than self-governing enclaves with substantial authorities to run their own internal affairs.

So if i understand you correctly, you would like to separate Kosova into Serbian parts and Albanian parts and have the Albanian parts obtain the status of a reservation.

This is worse than "the best autonomy in the world" offered by Mr. Jeremic as it would lock Kosova into a state of continuous conflict and animosity.

Furthermore, there were 13 months of negotiations and they resulted in the Ahtisari package. The additional 4 months of negotiations will simply serve to convince some European countries on the hopelessness of further negotiations and convince them to recognize Kosova when the time comes.

The mandate of the Unity Group (Kosova negotiators) begins and ends with the Ahtisari Package and i can promise you that the Kosova Assembly will not give them the authority to discuss anything else.

As far as the Kosova Albanians are concerned, the negotiations ended with the Ahtisari Package.

Everyone i have spoken with is absolutely convinced that independence is the inevitable outcome of this whole process and Kosova remaining under Serbia is inconceivable too the Kosova Albanians.

Jack, what we want is not only to govern ourselves, it is for Serbia to leave once and for all both practically and theoretically. That is the most basic principle of the Kosova Albanians and a principle they will not violate whatever the consequences.

These negotiations will not result in a compromise because compromise with our former oppressors is not possible.

Our demands for independence are not aimed at punishing Serbia or creating Greater Albania, our efforts are aimed at creating a better future for our children without fear from MUP or paramilitaries. While you read about Arkan, Seselj and MUP on the newspapers, I was forced from my hope by them and made to walk for 2 days in the freezing cold to the Albanian border.

This all happened because some politicians in Belgrade decided to revoke our autonomy. Who says they won’t do it again?

My children and other Kosovar Albanian children will not suffer your elected leaders or your nationalistic mindset.

"After all, no one is INSANE to suggest for Kosovo to go back in time & accept the unacceptable." Olf, that is exactly what you (Albanians) are doing! You want to go back in time to the Ottoman Empire when your people had (because of converting to Islam) a special ruling status over the non complying Christian Serbs (or as Albanians called them "slaves, serfs". The only difference this time is that your people learned how difficult it is to "rule over" the Serbs and set out to just get rid of them (ethnic cleansing). Land for peace does not work! If Serbia gives up Kosovo, then that will just give the Albanians a greater appetite for more. Just look at Israel, they gave up the sinai, Gaza, parts of the West bank, withdrew from southern lebanon and what peace did they gain from that? They just got more war & violence because the Arabs are not interested in peace, they are interested only in driving the Jews into the sea. So it is with the Albanians, they just want the Serbs gone, period. NO LAND FOR PEACE!!!

To Mike,
"Third, while many Albanians have said that autonomy can be revoked or abused as it was in the past, I think our Neo-Illyrians miss the idea that Milosevic and his kind are long dead and buried in the backyard."
Just to remind you Mr Mike that the Milosevic kind of men are still living in peace in Serbia, like Mladic, Karacic and many, many others alike, so nice try to blind the world, but finaly Serbia's mask of manipulating with the facts is gone forever. The world knows her true face now.

Thumbs up from me for Sasha K.
As I was reading your post from top and when I got to the bottom when you talk about serbia flag, you really did put a nail in coffin with the following coment: "And if it's not physically - then certainly spiritually and mentally". I love it becasue you are honest man and admit the reality, therefore I propose this to be chosen the coment of the Year and receive an Award.

It has been eight years that Serbia could take some steps in order to somehow make K-Alb to feel that serbs are sorry for what they have done in Kosova. We didn't need any financial aid from Serbia to rebuild our burnt houses, but they could help on elucidating the fate of the missing, because I am sure the serbian army and state police have every possible record on the movement of people and the list of dead, burried, exhumated, transferred, burnt, etc.
There are some other technical issues (property records, pensional funds, etc) that Serbia has to give up one way or another, and which are the further negotiations issues to be disscused in the last 120 days.
There is no other compromise over the indeependence, that's why Albanians in Kosovo cannot accept any sacrifice from Serbia.

Walter,

The KLA did not even exist in 1989 when the autonomy was revoked. Please read carefully before responding.

The fact that you believe a campaign as masive as the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia was launched on the basis of missunderstanding and fabrications is ridiculous.

What interest would NATO have possibly had in bombing Serbia? Please explain to me WHY did NATO bomb Serbia?

I have a question. What would be the situation if Serbia, Albania and all the other countries were already with-in the EU? I think this situation would already be decided. My point being that in order to have true peace throughout the world, the world has to be one nation. This would solve many problems in the world such as the terrorist problem. It would be easy to find them if every country in the world was with one organization.

It's obvious that all sides are coming round to the idea of partition. Just a question of where the line will be!!

Victor,

you continue to manipulte and deceive but you never did reply to Walters post I suggest you read it again and reply or just stop with the blatant slur against the State of Serbia and its citizens - please re-read;

Victor you have held onto your Croatian past and nurtured it in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Vancouver, Madrid, Montevideo and the Vatican. People like you, Victor point fingers at others, while you omit irrefutable evidence about those who aided abetted and participated in dismantling of a nation for self-serving economic and political interests. One of your favorite methods, Victor, and that of Mr. Polt is to “speak softly and carry a big stick”. You, Victor, by your comments, hide the real perpetrators of the crimes in the Balkans– Croatia and NATO, by building a “Potemkin Village” of lies. You point with unsupported comments, at Mladic, Karadjic and Serbia while behind the façade you hide by omission how American Corporatism brought back the “tarnished Croatian soul” as a tool in the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia and its social economy. You are naïve if you minimize the CIA and Croat Diaspora complicity in this Balkan agenda.

Yesterday the CIA released declassified documents which show how this organization conspired to subvert International Law using dollar diplomacy, assassination, misinformation, lies, fear, and war in order to promote the American agenda. Victor, you are either naïve or unable to understand that American corporatism has conspired with the worst element of WWII nationalism to divide the Balkans into a number of artificial and barely viable entities by installing client regimes in the region. Victor, even you must be able to see that these new regimes including Serbia will be dependant on Western Economic and military power for survival. This is exactly what the great powers want but you have been poisoned by nationalism to see that. America wants to impose an ongoing [American Policy for the 21st Century] series of economic, cultural, and political arrangements which will seriously be detrimental to the working people in this region.

NATO and America has manipulated the affairs of this region by using narrow nationalism and remembered fear from the past. NATO is playing off one national group against the other and one geopolitical interest against another in the name of Globalization which only benefits the developed nations. America [NATO] manipulates local actors to be their Trojan Horses in order to achieve their design. What is scary Victor is that people like you and many who post here see this policy as benevolent in nature when the record, as revealed yesterday by the declassified CIA documents represents the harsh realities of Western [American] rehabilitation of Imperialism cloaked in their often spoken word “DEMOCRACY”

You, Victor are either unable to or refuse to answer the questions put to you and support your position with evidence. Your answer to everything is accusation of others and repetition of the same unsupported comments and “pointing in all directions”. Let me ask you one more time is the evidence of Austrian historian Freidrich Heer that I provide below false?

“Austrian historian Freidrich Heer noted in 1968 that what happened in NDH Croatia was the result of "archaic fanaticism and pre-historic times". Pavelic, he said, was "a singular murderer of the 20th Century". Victor you refused to respond to a previous comment which pointed to this revival where Pavelic today lauded as a hero of modern Croatia; his picture (and that of 19th Century Ustaše ideologue Ante Starcevic) adorns the T-shirts of a generation of Croatians who were unborn at the end of World War II.” You, Victor, I am sure saw a link to a Video sent by Jovan showing this at a recent concert in Croatia but as we expected you did not respond.

Let me also ask you Victor if this is what I write is false? During the 1991-1992 conflict Croatians remained in Serbia and did not leave and were not maltreated while there was a flood of Serbs fleeing from Croatia. Indeed, Victor “many Croatians have fled to Serbia after opposing the new Ustaše juggernaut of the Franjo Tudjman Government of Croatia that organizations such as the Association of Croatian Journalists have been set up in exile in Belgrade.” And yet you Victor tell us “Serbia should look at itself and ADMIT finally all the crimes and atrocities committed by so many Serbs against entire population” It is you Victor that needs to look at your posts that hides the attempted genocide of a whole people and how they reacted to it. In every post, Victor, you misrepresent the victims on all sides by not calling the oppressors criminals. Your misrepresentation of the events is not a result solely of accidental misinterpretation but of an orchestrated attempt to deceive people to see the world in terms of good guys and Serbs.

How was this misrepresentation manipulated to convince people like Victor not to look beyond their TV news feed via CNN from the Croat capital Zagreb, the Muslim Capital Sarajevo and the Albanian capital Tirana? Every night we were treated to comments by experts who represented NATO and the American point of view while any comment that came from Belgrade was treated as communist propaganda. I saw it all Victor, Serbian dead represented as Muslim or Croat casualties, Croat actors on Zagreb TV representing raped women from Bosnia, a KLA terrorist claiming that her family was all killed in Kosovo when in later testimony she said I did what I was asked to do, a crying Kosovo Albanian mother telling CNN Christiana Amanpour on a live feed that the Serbs have killed her husband but when Amanpour asked her small son where his daddy was he said that he was with UCK. This segment was never played on CNN again.

Victor you often bring up Srebrenica and Vukovar but refuse to look at how over “1,000 Serbs, mostly women, old people and children, were shot, knifed, axed or bludgeoned to death systematically, one-by-one, in two main centers; one the Borovo Footwear Factory, the other the Rowing Club of Vukovar. Many of the bodies were dumped into the Danube, left to float down to Belgrade. And in many instances, the Croats took pictures, or recorded the deaths”

Do you believe in International Law Victor if you do tell the people on this forum how you justify the systematic violation of International Law and aggression against Yugoslavia a sovereign state, a member in good standing of the UN and a signatory of almost all the treaties since WWI.. Tesla who was a good Serb and a good Croat once said ‘The present is theirs; the future, for which I really work, is mine”.

The Serbs know that their fathers and mothers brothers and sisters did not die just for Serbia they died for justice and brotherhood. You are right in one point Victor Serbia needs to reexamine their future so that this discouragement does not put them to sleep but stimulate them to champion justice every time. Serbs must reclaim old friends but not at the expense of their dignity. Serbs need to expose and discard false friends and make new ones. Serbs know that they are under attack not because they are Serbs but because they are David staring in the eye of Goliath who has demonized their good character. Serbia you have been attacked by all sides three times in the 20th Century and you are under attack now. You need to energize until your victory is won. Justice is on your side.
(Walter, Wednesday, 27 June, 2007, 19:00)
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/your_comment.php?nav_id=42068

Mike,
Just keep in mind that K-Albanian side has made a lot of concessions already by agreeing to the Ahtisari’s plan which means a much watered down independence and a very powerful ethnic minority representation in the Kosovas policies which on its own can create abig headache for any governing body in the fiture.

1. Call it what you like - the international community et al. will always call it by it's one and only true name - KOSOVO i METOHIJA. Calling a donkey a horse doesn't make it a horse.

2. Serbs can "relent" as you so cleverly put it as much as they like - the one thing they won't give is the one thing Albanians want.

3. It's good that KOSOVO i METOHIJA will be able to deal with financial institutions on their own. It's basically a money-pit and Serbia, since it doesn't currently run an area of it's own country, shouldn't have to pay for it!

4. "Great Autonomy" cannot possibly be the goal of a country which suffered terrorism by a minority and simply defended itself all internally and within its own sovereign borders.

5. KNOW THIS. You can have all the autonomy or semi-independance you wish - just remember the Serbian flag will always fly over it's land no matter who lives on it currently. And if it's not physically - then certainly spiritually and mentally.

When they don't get what they want they'll go crazy with frustration! But no matter - now that there are UN troops in the Serb region, if they ever try that terrorism rubbish like they did in the 90's this time they won't get away with it. Only then will the world truly see what's what and who's who!

'Get real Kosovo is not America.It will require its own set of precidents.'
(Jovan z, 3. August 2007 03:06)

Why don't you get real bre!

I clarified some points in my second post. i.e.
'Thirdly, I was promoting the idea as an existing model which could be adapted and not set a precedent(this being the main concern of the majority of countries and concerned citizens of the world such as myself) which could domino other countries.

Finally, The basic model provides for devolution of governance(including certain aspects of sovereign powers) to a minority ethnic group within defined areas of a country without a change of national borders.'

An ADAPTION of this existing model would provide for the 'more than autonomy less than independence' situation which the Serbian govt keep banging-on about. Have you seen anywhere else an explanation of how the 'more than autonomy less than independence' pledge could be formatted? No I didn't think so. You can't create policy on a soundbite.

Many Albanian posters on this site have rightly asked what the Serbian govt mean by 'more than autonomy less than independence' and how it would be implimented. I am merely offering a possible scenario to go with Belgrades favourite catchphrase.

Zorane

no K-Albanian posting mentiones the Ottoman Empire. Your positng havs just proved the point of who is going FFW and who REW.

No Nick.
Typically for this site you have reacted and taken umbrage without considering what has been written.

Firstly and for the umpteenth time, I have no genetic, cultural or political connection to the Balkans but did work in Kosovo for several years. So my opinions are not Serbian.

Secondly, I am not advocating anyone being locked up anywhere. In fact the majority of native Americans choose not to live on a reservation.

Thirdly, I was promoting the idea as an existing model which could be adapted and not set a precedent(this being the main concern of the majority of countries and concerned citizens of the world such as myself) which could domino other countries.

Finally, The basic model provides for devolution of governance(including certain aspects of sovereign powers) to a minority ethnic group within defined areas of a country without a change of national borders.

This would give each side a majority of what they want. Also if the K.Albs cleverly negotiate the borders of the devolved areas to exclude places such as Obilic A&B then the responsibility(and cost) to upgrade the infrastructure will fall on Belgrade.

There are no fences or walls around American reservations and the reservations police and govern themselves. I think this is the basis of an elegant and sustainable solution.

Nick, contemplate the fact that you may not get independence or may be offered a supervised independence which is so constrained as to be unworkable(such as BiH). I understand that you want "INDEPENDENCE" but you must also consider alternative solutions because who ever EVER got 100% of what they wanted from a multi-party negotiation?

This is good for two reasons.

1: It shows willingness to compromise. The Kosovo Albanians and their 'protectors' cannot in return offer fig-leaves, otherwise it just shows them in their true light, i.e. lots of talk, but no action;

2: Allowing Kosovo to take money from the WB and IMF, as long as Serbia is not the guarantor is perfect. The Kosovo albanians will have to be fiscally 'prudent' and make do with what they can manage, rather than blame everyone else for their ills.

And what if Washington says, "We support belgrade's offer"? What piece on the Kosovo chess board would Pristina move then?

"Just to remind you Mr Mike that the Milosevic kind of men are still living in peace in Serbia, like Mladic, Karacic and many, many others alike, so nice try to blind the world, but finaly Serbia's mask of manipulating with the facts is gone forever. The world knows her true face now."

That's only part of the story US of A. Please point out, other than Tomislav Nikolic, where anyone in the current Serbian government would EVER return to the brutal tactics and sultanistic practices of Milosevic. Tadic? Jovanovic? Kostunica? Hardly. I suggest you update your assessment of Serbia's political development since 2000. As your name attests, you can easily find unbiased and critical information on Serbia right here in the good ol' US of A. This website is a great example: a Serb-moderated news site that allows people like you and I to post our thoughts, argue over details, and compete over who's history is accurate. I'm not suggesting Serbia is all sunshine and rainbows, but I do think we need to better assess how far Serbia has come since 2000 and how far it can still go before we liken anything today to politics of the 1990s.

ArtG, what you believe are concessions by the Ahtisaari Plan, I feel are non-negotiable obligations. Following the Ahtisaari Plan gets you in the door to the negotiating table, but it seems it's not enough. No doubt the Serbs will be a powerful ethnic minority, but that's the reality on the ground.

And speaking of reality on the ground, C's money quote:
"The resolution of the status will be in accordance to the situation on the ground: it will legitimize some sort of a partition with an entity-like authority for the Serbian minority, while recognizing Kosovo as an independent nation within its 1974 borders."

I'm more than happy to accomodate and work with that as this seems the most logical step forward. However, any "Northern" Kosovo will undoubtedly get into the EU along with the rest of Kosovo. I see no Northern Cyprus similarity here unless northern Kosovo tries to declare itself its own country.

" have been thinking about examples from around the world which could be adapted to solve the Kosovo deadlock. The best one I have come across so far is the American Indian Nations Reservation system. This gives limited sovereignty and mostly self governance to Native Americans within the reservations. Large areas of Kosovo could be reorganised as Reservations giving the K.Albs a form of sovereignty and self governance without a change in borders"


Right then the Albanians can open up casinos and charge $1.99 for breakfast buffet.Get real Kosovo is not America.It will require its own set of precidents.

NICK writes “This all happened because some politicians in Belgrade decided to revoke our autonomy. Who says they won’t do it again?” Your autonomy was revoked like it would have been in any nation where terrorists are destabilizing and killing people indiscriminately. Human rights groups have accused the KLA whom you support of serious human rights violations, including compelling Serb villagers to leave their homes. From January 1st 1998 to August 30 1998 there were 1126 KLA attacks, among them police targets in 616 cases and civilian targets in 510 cases. In those fights 30 Serb and Montenegrin civilians were killed, 47 Albanians who were not loyal to the KLA, 3 Roma, 1 unidentified person and 95 civilians wounded. During this period 208 civilians were kidnapped (157 Serbs and Montenegrins, 42 Albanians who were not loyal to the KLA, and 6 Roma.

Every country will suspend civil liberties, autonomy and introduce special procedures to deal with insurrections. Some countries introduce marshal law and curfews to deal with criminal elements like the KLA. The fact that you walked for two days is regrettable. We all know who benefited from that walk. KLA political agenda and NATO’s propaganda machine needed the refugees to justify the bombing of Yugoslavia. This was very convenient from NATO governments' point of view. so they manufactured it.

As I followed events in Yugoslavia it did not take long for me and any other person who questions to see how NATO and their allies manufactured events and blamed them on the Serbs. These events were than used by NATO to justify further aggression against Yugoslavia and Serbia in particular. One just needs to ask who benefited from these events which were staged for Western consumption. War and propaganda are partners and tears and shivering of refugees as well as killing of civilians is more effective than bullets. Serbs know this and NATO knows this but the difference was that NATO controlled threes events and their media used it. A picture is worth a thousand words and soldiers.

When Yugoslavs were blamed by NATO for committing these acts they were under extreme international pressure to play the diplomatic card since any act by them would make their position critical. NATO knew this and that is why we had the breadline massacre followed by bombing of JNA positions, Srebrenica followed by expulsion of 300 thousand Serbs from Krajina, Racak and the refugee columns followed by bombing of Serbia and a dozen other staged events which were followed by more aggression by NATO. The primary NATO goal became maintaining its credibility and they used these staged events to show the Western public that they were the good guys. On my TV screen in Western Canada the events were interpreted for the public by predominantly military experts, statesmen, ministers and diplomats from NATO countries. No one asked the Serbs their opinion. In Canada for example those that lied the most like Louise Arbour were promoted while those like Canada’s ambassador to Belgrade Joe Bissett who wanted to tell Canadians the real story were fired.

NICK: You ask a question which I have answered several times before on this post. I live in British Columbia Canada just north of Seattle Washington USA. In 1999 there was a WORLDS TRADE ORGANIZATION meeting in Seattle where a major protest took place against this organization’s ‘GLOBALIZATION policies. In that same year, precisely at that time NATO attacked Yugoslavia most of the protesters did not grasp the connection between this attack and this meeting. The people on the left and the right saw this war as humanitarian as you see it and did not see it as expansion of NATO into other wars such as the ones now raging in Iraq and Afghanistan.

First you need to ask why does the west need NATO when USSR and the Warsaw Pact no longer exist. You need to remember NATO was created as an anti USSR defensive alliance. The other thing that you need to look at is America’s Policy for the 21st Century which calls for moving its military bases to the Balkans, controlling world resources and possessing the strongest military force in the world to protect her status as the only superpower. They tell you it is all about democracy but this is just nonsense when you see that they support and sell billions in military goods (Saudi Arabia for example 63 billion) to world’s most vile dictators.

Now that the USSR is gone what do we do with this NATO military industrial complex which provides millions of jobs for its members particularly the USA since USA supplies all the weapons for its members? NATO had to convince voters in USA and Canada for example that our tax dollars are well spent supporting this military organization. NATO needed to find something that the taxpayer in Canada and America would support. Events in Yugoslavia were stage managed for that purpose. First of all International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) destabilized the Yugoslav economy once they did that ethnic groups were encouraged in the blame game as to whose fault it was for the economic collapse.

NATO did not bother to correct the economic situation but used it to support Slovenia and Croatia in their drive to break he federation. The policy Germany, Britain and later USA followed went against international law and treaties to which Yugoslavia was a member. The problem for NATO was not Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, the problem was Serbia. Serbs more than most others nation groups wanted for Yugoslavia to remain as a single nation where socio economic capitalism remained. Milosevic wanted that also so NATO had to get rid of him. He was blamed for every atrocity that followed. If NATO wanted Yugoslavia to remain they would not have trained the Croat, Muslim and Albanian military while denying that they were doing just that.


In Kosovo, we were told that “Sometimes the only way to stop bad men from doing bad things is with force. This scenario is “straight out of a classic Western movie: "bad men" must be stopped from doing "bad things", presumably by "good men" -- and women, of course. A "new era in world politics"? Or the same old story? According to Diana Johnstone The fictional saga of Yugoslavia in the 1990s goes something like this: Yugoslavia was a "prison of peoples" where the Serbs oppressed all the others. It was destroyed by the rise of an evil leader, Slobodan Milosevic, who set out to create a "Greater Serbia" by eliminating other peoples in a process called "ethnic cleansing". Those other peoples sought to escape, by creating their own independent states. The Yugoslav army, actually Serbian, invaded them. In Bosnia, the invading Serbs tried to drive out the Muslims, who wanted to perpetuate an exemplary multi-ethnic society. The Serb ethnic cleansing killed 200,000 unarmed Muslims while the international community looked on and even prevented the Muslims from arming in self-defense. At Srebrenica, the United Nations allowed the Serbs to commit genocide. Only U.S. bombing forced Milosevic to come to the negotiating table at Dayton. The resulting agreement brought peace and democracy to multi-ethnic Bosnia. However, the international community had failed to save the Albanian majority in Kosovo from apartheid. In 1998 Madeleine Albright warned that NATO must intervene to keep Milosevic from "doing in Kosovo what he could no longer get away with in Bosnia" In January 1999 Serbian security forces massacred defenseless civilians in the Kosovo village of Racak, awakening the NATO governments to the need to act to stop genocide. After the turning point of Racak, the Serbs were summoned to peace negotiations in Rambouillet, in France. Milosevic stubbornly refused to negotiate. NATO had no choice but to start bombing Yugoslavia. Masses of Albanians were deliberately driven out according to a preconceived plan called "Operation Horseshoe". Finally, Milosevic gave in, and NATO liberated the Kosovars from their oppressors.” CONCLUSION: From “this day forward humanitarian intervention constitutes a principal mission for NATO, as the military arm of an international community henceforth committed to protection of human rights.”

ALMOST EVERYTHING IN THE ABOVE PARAGRAH IS FALSE EXCEPR THE CONCLUSION. You may dismiss my conclusions because you have read over and over again the thing that VICTOR repeats and many of you on the Albanian side believe it. I credit you for asking questions for that is the only way to the truth. News agencies and high profile lawyers as well as historians and intellectuals have challenged the dominant myth and this has been reported but the Media which NATO controls refuses to reverse their original reports because this would show their original mistakes so they pushed on comparing Serbs to Nazi Holocaust, and anyone attempting to “to return to reality was stigmatized as the equivalent of "Holocaust denial", and critics were dismissed as "revisionists" and "negationists", comparable to apologists for Nazi crimes.”

Back to NATO , USSR was gone and so was the arms race. America had to find a new reason to build weapons but why build them if you cant destroy them and make new ones a vicious cycle of production and replacement keeping the employed at work. “In the words of Madeleine Albright, "What's the point of having this superb military ... if we can't use it?" The use of military power had to be justified, however. There was to be no "conversion" of military industry to production of civilian goods. The only conversion was ideological: the identification of new enemies and threats”

I am not sure if you know that Yugoslavia was a major seller of weapons in direct competition with NATO countries. I think that they were 6th in the world in weapons sales. They sold these weapons to countries unfriendly to USA and NATO nations as well as to friendly ones. Just one example when Yugoslavia was fighting Croat succession they had a deal that the tank factory in Slavonia somewhere was off limits to bombing because they made tanks for sale to Kuwait at 1 million each. It was in NATO’s interest to get rid of this competition.

The elimination of socialism was another reason for dismemberment of Yugoslavia. United States wanted to impose its model of social, political, and economic organization on the world. Milosevic wanted a mix of public and private ownership. The IMF and the WB said no. Why do you thing Serbia, Venezuela and several other nations no longer deal with these organizations. These two organizations are controlled by USA and are used as instruments of her foreign policy. USA joined the United Nations only after they were given control of the IMF and the WB. U.S. through the WB and IMF implements "globalization" as it is being carried out by Western transnational corporations, protected by this superb military or NATO”. It is the WTO through the IMF and the WB that “set the rules and arbitrate between the dominant economic powers. These institutions severely limit the power of governments to protect public interests, whether citizens' welfare or the environment, from the demands of private business.”

You need to understand that market economy is very efficient but the nation states in a market economy cannot protect their citizens to earn a decent salary, get dental and medical care, educate their children and protect those that are simply not able to compete. Market economy is great for me because I was born with some brain cells, made some decent investments and my family is quite well off so in order for me to make more money you if you work for me will earn minimum wage, I will not provide you with medical care or any other protection that human dignity requires. This is a simple fact of Capitalism. What do people do that are not in my position? Some turn to crime, others turn to their nation group, religion and nationalism and blame their neighbor for their poverty, Yugoslavia was this, Iraq is this and so is Afghanistan and Albania. The other thing that poverty drives is crime. Both Serbs and Albanians have their share of this but it is poverty that leads to Mafia type organizations as you can see in Sicily, Albania, and Kosovo and I am sure in Serbia as well.

As Diana Johnstone writes and I agree with her “Yugoslavia became an enemy both as a discarded asset and as a potential alternative. When the Soviet Bloc collapsed, non-aligned Yugoslavia lost its value to the West as a strategic asset. As a nominally socialist country with considerable Third World relationships thanks to its leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement, Yugoslavia could be seen as a potential alternative model. If the country held together, it might stand in the way of Western plans for the region. Perhaps the potential Yugoslav "threat" was an illusion. But its disintegration settled the matter, and destroying the country provided a useful exercise for future operations”

NATO destroyed Yugoslavia to splinter the nation into small client states, demilitarize the country, moved USA bases to the Balkans, ended Yugoslav socialist system as it was in the way of globalization, provided NATO a reason to continue to exist and when this was over USA invented fear of terrorism, Yugoslav NATO invasion set a precedent for Iraq and Afghanistan and any other country on its hit list. The NATO nations stirred up hatred in Yugoslavia past and present, used propaganda, set up tribunals that they would not accept for their own nationals, and broke international law, treaties and agreement in order to serve their own interests.

Walter,
I read your comments with amusement. You would have had a rather bright career writing revisionist history for the USSR before it imploded. You really have quite an imagination to come up with such detailed fabrications, however, you were hoisted by your own petard. If only you could keep you dates straight instead of bungling by claiming the KLA existed back in 1989 when Kosova's autonomy was revoked.

Your petard is shooting blanks and usually people who have limited knowledge tend to accuse others of revisionism. Only those who have limited knowledge of history will claim that someone else’s imagination is at work. As I said several times this is standard knowledge of every Grade 12 history student in British Columbia and if they don’t know this information they are unlikely to pass their government exam. You would have left much of the exam blank Mr. Jack Blank and probably failed.

On the other hand, I do not wish to enure your approval on what I say since I can document everything that I write but I am sure if you research what I write you will not be any smarter but I am sure you will be more informed. KLA came into being in 1993 or there about. I am not sure where you get the date of 1989 but I can see from what you write that you don’t read much. Even back in 1989 intimidation by Kosovo Albanians of other ethnic groups went on, however, I have personal knowledge of it going back to WWI and 1974 when I first visited Yugoslavia. When my grandfather retreated across Kosovo and Albania in WWI half of his companions were killed by Albanians in the mountains before they reached the Greek island of Corfu. In 1974 my cousin had to leave because of intimidation when he attended the metallurgy school in Kosovo. For example, you can easily find in reliable historical documents Albanian participation in the SS division in WWII but you rather not since you don’t want to share this so you fabricate by omission. Mr. Blank if you want to be a historian you need to follow procedures and conventions that govern its practice, rules of argument and evidence. Historians gather evidence in archives, libraries, and museums. They organize it, interpret, and finally they compose their accounts. I try to do that and I expect your counter argument to be so organized. If you just call me names such as fabricator, and revisionist and say that I do this deliberately you only deceive yourself. Sometimes errors are made but those who claim that an error was made need to quote and show evidence of such error.