[Saduyre9de]

Kosovo MPs proclaim independence

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci (centre) shakes hands in parliament (17/02/08)
Albanian and American flags have been on prominent display

Declaration
Kosovo's parliament has unanimously endorsed a declaration of independence from Serbia, in an historic session.

The declaration, read by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, said Kosovo would be a democratic country that respected the rights of all ethnic communities.

The US and a number of EU countries are expected to recognise Kosovo on Monday.

Serbia's PM denounced the US for helping create a "false state". Serbia's ally, Russia, called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting.

Tens of thousands of people had thronged the streets of Kosovo's capital, Pristina, since the morning.


We have waited for this day for a very long time... from today, we are proud, independent and free"
Hashim Thaci
Kosovo Prime Minister
When news came of the declaration in parliament, the centre of the city erupted with fireworks, firecrackers and celebratory gunfire.

Red balloons decorated with the black Albanian eagle drifted across the sky.

Hundreds of Kosovo Albanians staged noisy celebrations in Brussels, outside the headquarters of Nato and the European Union.

In Belgrade, extra police took to the streets on a heightened state of alert for violent demonstrations. Several Serbian ministers travelled to Kosovo to show their support for the ethnic Serbian minority.

KOSOVO PROFILE
Population about two million
Majority ethnic Albanian; 10% Serb
Under UN control since Nato drove out Serb forces in 1999
2,000-strong EU staff to take over from UN after independence
Nato to stay to provide security


Kosovo's 10 Serbian MPs boycotted the assembly session in protest at the declaration.

Correspondents say the potential for trouble between Kosovo's Serbs and ethnic Albanians is enormous.

Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica blamed the US which he said was "ready to violate the international order for its own military interests".

"Today, this policy of force thinks that it has triumphed by establishing a false state," Mr Kostunica said.

"Kosovo is Serbia," Mr Kostunica said, repeating a well-known nationalist Serb saying.

Search for equality

The declaration was approved with a show of hands. No-one opposed it.

Unfortunately today Kosovo and Serbia are to become two dispensable chess-pieces of EU/NATO and Russia

"We have waited for this day for a very long time," Mr Thaci told parliament before reading the text, paying tribute to those who had died on the road to independence.

From today, he said, Kosovo was "proud, independent and free".

"The independence of Kosovo marks the end of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia," the prime minister said - Kosovo was a unique case that should not set a precedent.

He said it would be built in accordance with the UN plan drawn by former Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari - at the end of negotiations which did not produce a deal.

The international military and civilian presence - also envisaged by the Ahtisaari plan - was welcome, he added.

There should be no fear of discrimination in new Kosovo, he said, vowing to eradicate any such practices - and conveying a similar message in Serbian. President Fatmir Sejdiu had a similar pledge - also addressed in Serbian.

The declaration was then signed by all the MPs present.

Ode to Joy

Kosovo's top leaders are due to go to a sports hall later where the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra is expected to play Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

They are also due to sign their names on giant iron letters spelling out the word "newborn" which was to be displayed in Pristina.

More fireworks and street celebrations will follow.

Some ethnic Albanians, who make up the majority of Kosovo's population, earlier laid flowers on the graves of family members killed by Serbian security forces during years of conflict and division.

The BBC's Nick Thorpe in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica says local and UN police, as well as the Nato troops, are maintaining a high profile to reassure all the citizens of Kosovo that they have nothing to fear.

Limitations

The declaration approved by Kosovo's parliament contains limitations on Kosovan independence as outlined in Mr Ahtisaari's plan.

Kosovo, or part of it, cannot join any other country. It will be supervised by an international presence. Its armed forces will be limited and it will make strong provisions for Serb minority protection.

Recognition by a number of EU states, including the UK and other major countries, will come on Monday after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, says the BBC's Paul Reynolds.

The US is also expected to announce its recognition on Monday.

Three EU states - Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia - have told other EU governments that they will not recognise Kosovo, says our correspondent.

Russia's foreign ministry has indicated that Western recognition of an independent Kosovo could have implications for the Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The UN has administered Kosovo since a Nato bombing campaign in 1999 drove out Serb forces.

[invest7manager]

It would be great if the forum gets a visit from a Kosovo resident.

***Firefox Automatic Spell-Check accepts SERBIA as correctly spelled, but flags KOSOVO as a misspelled word. I guess that will change.

[lierro]

"The first sign of trouble in Kosovo came in the ethnic Serbian area of the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, where two hand grenades were thrown at international community buildings..."

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7249034.stm

[Finkevannon]

Red balloons decorated with the black Albanian eagle drifted across the sky. The photo shows an Albanian flag. Is Kosovo going to have the same? It's almost as though they intend to become one and the same.

[sisimelanyk]

^ my thoughts exactly - is Kosovo becoming it's own country - or will it be annexed by Albania?

After all, 90 percent of the residents are Albanian......

[DrunkMans]

Its own country.

[JohnVK]

If it becomes its own independent country, then Bush-Cheney have one more bomb target option. It is an exciting time to be an American.

[amberamuletuk]

February 19, 2008

Serbs in Kosovo Vow to Remain Part of Serbia

By DAN BILEFSKY

MITROVICA, Kosovo — A day after Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership declared independence from Serbia, 7,000 Serbs took to the streets of this divided city, waving Serbian flags, chanting “Kosovo is Serbia!” and burning an American flag covered with the words “The Fourth Reich.”

A small clutch of radicals stood at the bridge leading to the Albanian side of the city shouting, “Kick, Shout, Kill the Albanians!” Old men and women wept, some expressing disbelief that Kosovo was no longer theirs. A NATO military helicopter hovered overhead. Armed police formed a human shield to keep the protesters from trying to cross to the other side of the bridge, where crowds of Albanian onlookers looked on defiantly.

Mitrovica is divided between Albanians, who live south of the Ibar River, and Serbs, who live to the north. The city has long been a flashpoint for violence in Kosovo, a territory of two million people, where the 125,000-strong Serb minority ekes out an existence in isolated enclaves surrounded by Albanians, who make up 95 per cent of Kosovo’s population.

An explosion went off Monday night in the northern part of Mitrovica, near the building where United Nations police and mediation offices are located, Agence France-Presse reported. Police said there were no injuries and that damage was confined to a few shattered car windows.

The Serbian-dominated northern part of Kosovo already has parallel institutional structures and the majority of Serbs there do not recognize the authority of the Kosovo government. The ability of NATO’s 16,000 peacekeepers to maintain peace could help determine whether Kosovo will hold together.

As Kosovo’s jubilant ethnic Albanians continued to celebrate, concerns were growing that the Serbian-dominated north could boil over into violence, break off and bring about the partition of Kosovo. Conversely, analysts warned of the risks if Kosovo’s Albanians, newly emboldened by independence, tried to assert authority over the north, which accounts for 15 percent of Kosovo’s territory. “Mitrovica has for long time been the critical area in the south Balkans where things are going to come to a head,” said Misha Glenny, a leading Balkans expert based in London. “Whetever the outcome of Kosovo’s independence, everyone knows we are heading for de facto partition, but no one is willing to admit it.”

In a sign that Serbia was already asserting its authority in the north of Kosovo, reports emerged Monday that some Serbian policemen had begun to desert the multi-ethnic Kosovo police force to give their allegiance to Belgrade. The police force in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, denied this.

Even as Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders pledged to protect the rights of the Serbian minority, Serbs in Mitrovica Monday said they would never join the “false state” and would remain part of Serbia . They said they had put their faith in Moscow, which vehemently rejects Kosovo’s independence.

“If the Albanians try to cross the bridge, we demand from the Serbian Army to use all available means to stop them,” Marko Jaksic, the Kosovo Serbs’ hard-line leader, told the protesters. “America is no longer the single world power. The Russians are coming. As long as there is Russia and Serbia, there will never be an independent Kosovo,” he said.

Serbian officials in Mitrovica said they had been encouraged by Belgrade to ignore the independence declaration and remain in Kosovo to keep the northern part of the territory under de facto Serbian control. “They will offer us a lot of money to sell our houses, but we will never leave — never!” Mr. Jaksic said, as the crowd raised three fingers in a sign of Serbian unity.

In the Albanian part of Mitrovica, most residents heeded police warnings to stay inside. Bislim Bislimi, an unemployed 28-year-old ethnic Albanian, said it was unjust that Albanians could not move freely on their own territory. “We live here and we can’t even walk to the other side of the bridge,” he said. “It belongs to us.”

While the demonstrations in Mitrovica were calm by Balkan standards, violence erupted nearby. An explosion early Monday destroyed a United Nations car in Zubin Potok, a village about six miles northwest of Mitrovica, local police said. No injuries were reported. Another explosion on Sunday rocked a United Nations building near Mitrovica, causing minor damage but no injuries.

In a move that threatened to heighten tensions further, Serbia’s Interior Ministry filed criminal charges in a Serbian court on Monday against the three Kosovar leaders who were instrumental in proclaiming independence: President Fatmir Sejdiu, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and parliament Speaker Jakup Krasniqi. It was symbolic, since Kosovo does not recognize the legal jurisdiction of Serbian courts.

Meanwhile, in Belgrade, 7,000 protesters gathered in Republic Square waiving Serbian flags and chanting anti-Albanian slogans. A small band of hooligans attacked the Turkish Embassy with bricks and stones, as reports emerged that Ankara would recognize an independent Kosovo.

Monday’s march followed demonstrations on Sunday in which rioters stoned the American Embassy and attacked the mission of Slovenia, which currently holds the rotating European Union presidency. Both countries backed Kosovo’s secession.

Ljubica Gojgic, a leading Serbian commentator, said that if Kosovo’s independence declaration was recognized by the West, it would embolden Serbian nationalists while making it difficult for those who advocate closer ties with Europe to have their voices heard.

On Monday, Serbian defiance also spilled over to Bosnia, where the international community maintains a fragile unity between Bosnia’s two entities, the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation, each with their own parliament and police force.

The main opposition Bosnian Serb party called Monday for the independence of the Serb-run half of Bosnia, citing Kosovo as a precedent. A march by several thousand people in Banja Luka, capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic, turned violent as protesters threw stones at the American, French and German consulates.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company


A landlocked country the size of Connecticut, with a disgruntled minority.

[ImmimiFruff]

..... so when does the new Balkan war start?

[alanamosteller]

Serbia already agreed to sort the matter out without violence. I'd be more worried about this becoming another issue with Russia.

[AlexanderDrew]

Last Updated: BBC News Tuesday, 19 February 2008, 14:47 GMT

Kosovo Serbs burn border points


There have been no reports of any injuries so far

Kosovo Serbs have set fire to two border crossings to protest against Kosovo's declaration of independence.

The attacks took place at the northern Jarinje and Banja crossings, manned by United Nations and Kosovo police.
In response, Nato-led peacekeepers were deployed at the crossings. There have been no reports of any injuries so far.
This is the most serious incident since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, the BBC's Nick Thorpe in Kosovo says.

Belgrade has said Kosovo's declaration violates international law.

See a map of Kosovo's ethnic breakdown

The US, Britain, France, Germany and Italy have all recognised the new state, but others have not.

Russia has warned that the move endangers international stability, while China has expressed its deep concern.

The UN Security Council is divided over how to respond to Kosovo's move, and it has failed to agree on any action.

Police withdrawal
Some 1,000 Kosovo Serbs attacked and set fire to the border crossing at Banja, on the main road between Kosovo's divided town of Mitrovica and Montenegro, our correspondent says.

KOSOVO PROFILE

Population about two million
Majority ethnic Albanian; 10% Serb
Under UN control since Nato drove out Serb forces in 1999
2,000-strong EU staff to take over from UN after independence
Nato to stay to provide security



Nato-led peacekeepers from K-For were called in after UN and Kosovo police were reportedly forced to withdraw from the crossing to a nearby tunnel.

In a separate attack, a mob burnt down the wooden huts of the Kosovo and UN police at the Jarinje crossing, on the main road linking Mitrovica and Serbia's capital Belgrade.

"The police on the spot were not enough - we are deploying troops to re-establish order. There is an ongoing operation," K-For spokesman Bertrand Bonneau told the BBC.

"We have reinforced all the checkpoints in northern Kosovo. The rest of Kosovo is peaceful," he said, adding that so far there were no reports of any injuries.

'Threat to stability'
Earlier on Tuesday, Russia warned the US that Kosovo's declaration of independence endangered international stability.


Kosovo's declaration met protests in Belgrade and in parts of Kosovo

Moscow said the comments were made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a telephone conversation with his US counterpart Condoleezza Rice.

"We confirmed our principled position on the unacceptability of unilateral actions by Pristina declaring its independence," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement, following talks between Mr Lavrov and Ms Rice.

"We underlined the dangerous consequences of such a step, which threatens the destruction of world order and international stability which have developed over decades," the statement said.

'Correct move'
The Russian warning came just hours after US President George W Bush said the US would soon establish full diplomatic relations with Kosovo.

STANCE ON RECOGNITION
For: Germany, Italy, France, UK, Austria, US, Turkey, Albania, Afghanistan
Against: Russia, Spain, Romania, Slovakia, Cyprus

Speaking during a visit to Tanzania, Mr Bush said history would prove Kosovo's independence to be "a correct move".

He said Washington supported Pristina's decision because "we believe it will bring peace".

In a letter to Kosovo's President Fatmir Sejdiu, Mr Bush offered friendship to Kosovo, and said he supported "your embrace of multi-ethnicity as a principle of good governance".

Ambassadors recalled
On Monday, the Serbian parliament passed a resolution condemning Kosovo's declaration of independence.

The resolution also formally annulled the acts of the government in Pristina, saying Belgrade's sovereignty over Kosovo was guaranteed by the UN and international law.

In a separate move, Serbia recalled its ambassadors to the US, France and Turkey because those countries had recognised Kosovo's independence.

At a meeting in Brussels, the EU set aside differences over the recognition of Kosovo, by stressing that it was not a precedent for separatists elsewhere.

All 27 EU foreign ministers agreed to leave recognition up to each member state.

Spain and several other member states have withheld recognition because of concerns about separatist movements within their own borders.

Serbian security forces were driven out of Kosovo in 1999 after a Nato bombing campaign aimed at halting the violent repression of ethnic Albanian separatists.

The province has been under UN administration and Nato protection since then.

[avitalporatova]

Out of the obvious minority of residents that comprise the nation that are of Serbian ancestry, how many of THEM are setting fires and blowing things up at the border?


I hate it when the few OUT OF the few make a bad name for the majority of the Minority.

[drlifeech]

A Postmodern Declaration
Kosovo's sovereignty is a fiction: real power lies with EU officials backed by Western firepower

The Guardian, Tuesday February 19 2008
by John Laughland

There seemed to be no immediate consequences when, in 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Vienna was in clear violation of the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, which it had signed and kept Bosnia in Turkey, yet the protests of Russia and Serbia were in vain. The following year, the fait accompli was written into an amended treaty. Six years later, however, a Russian-backed Serbian gunman exacted revenge by assassinating the heir to the Austrian throne in Sarajevo in June 1914. The rest is history.

Parallels between Kosovo in 2008 and Bosnia in 1908 are relevant, but not only because, whatever legal trickery the west uses to override UN security council resolution 1244 – which kept Kosovo in Serbia – the proclamation of the new state will have incalculable long-term consequences: on secessionist movements from Belgium to the Black Sea via Bosnia, on relations with China and Russia, and on the international system as a whole. They are also relevant because the last thing the new state proclaimed in Pristina on Sunday will be is independent. Instead, what has now emerged south of the Ibar river is a postmodern state, an entity that may be sovereign in name but is a US-EU protectorate in practice.

The European Union plans to send some 2,000 officials to Kosovo to take over from the United Nations, which has governed the province since 1999. It wants to appoint an International Civilian Representative who – according to the plan drawn up last year by Martti Ahtisaari, the UN envoy – will be the "final authority" in Kosovo with the power to "correct or annul decisions by the Kosovo public authorities". Kosovo would have had more real independence under the terms Belgrade offered it than it will now.

Those who support the sort of "polyvalent sovereignty" and "postnational statehood" that we already have in the EU welcome such arrangements as a respite from the harsh decisionism of post-Westphalian statehood. But such fictions are in fact always underpinned by the timeless realities of brute power. There are 16,000 Nato troops in Kosovo and they have no intention of coming home: indeed, they are even now being reinforced with 1,000 extra troops from Britain. They, not the Kosovo army, are responsible for the province's internal and external security.

Kosovo is also home to the vast US military base Camp Bondsteel, near Urosevac – a mini-Guantánamo that is only one in an archipelago of new US bases in eastern Europe, the Balkans and central Asia. This is why the Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, speaking on Sunday, specifically attacked Washington for the Kosovo proclamation, saying that it showed that the US was "ready to unscrupulously and violently jeopardise international order for the sake of its own military interests".

In order to symbolise its status as the newest Euro-Atlantic colony, Kosovo has chosen a flag modelled on that of Bosnia-Herzegovina – the same EU gold, the same arrangement of stars on a blue background. For Bosnia, too, is governed by a foreign high representative, who has the power to sack elected politicians and annul laws, all in the name of preparing the country for EU integration.

As in Bosnia, billions have been poured into Kosovo to pay for the international administration but not to improve the lives of ordinary people. Kosovo is a sump of poverty and corruption, both of which have exploded since 1999, and its inhabitants have eked out their lives for nine years now in a mafia state where there are no jobs and not even a proper electricity supply: every few hours there are power cuts, and the streets of Kosovo's towns explode in a whirring din as every shop and home switches on its generator.

This tragic situation is made possible only because there is a fatal disconnect in all interventionism between power and responsibility. The international community has micro-managed every aspect of the break-up of Yugoslavia since the EU brokered the Brioni agreement within days of the war in Slovenia in July 1991. Yet it has always blamed the locals for the results. Today, the new official government of Kosovo will be controlled by its international patrons, but they will similarly never accept accountability for its failings. They prefer instead to govern behind the scenes, in the dangerous – and no doubt deliberate – gap between appearance and reality.

John Laughland's latest book is Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice (with Ramsey Clark).

Copyright © 2008 The Guardian

[Pvfcadbh]

Serb protesters attack U.S. embassy



Flames light up the facade of the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.





Serbian TV showed someone trying to set fire to the U.S. flag at the embassy, which was closed and unstaffed when the masked protesters attacked.
Riot police fired tear gas at the rioters and lines of armored vehicles were on the streets.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said; "We are in contact with the Serbian government to ensure that they devote the appropriate assets to fulfill their international obligations to help protect diplomatic facilities in this case."
Kosovo declared independence last Sunday and the United States was among the first countries to offer official recognition of its split from Serbia.

Bratislaw Grubacic, chief editor of VIP magazine in Belgrade, said police reported 32 people injured, including 14 police officers.
Teresa Gould, a translator for Belgrade TV, said the Croatian Embassy next door also was attacked. Police quickly rounded up the demonstrators, witnesses said.
The violence was part of a much bigger, peaceful demonstration where up to 150,000 people chanted 'Kosovo is Serbia," and vowed to never accept the province's independence.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who earlier addressed the peaceful rally, said "Kosovo is Serbia's first name." He called the declaration of independence last Sunday illegal and said will do all he can to get it annulled.
State railroads provided free transport to protesters, and schools across the country were closed Thursday for the "Kosovo is Ours" rally in the Serb capital, The Associated Press reported.
Tensions also erupted at the Kosovo border checkpoint in Merdare -- about 50 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Kosovo's capital Pristina -- as several hundred Serbian army reservists clashed with NATO-led peacekeepers and police, AP said.

Photographs showed demonstrators, many of them wearing their reservist uniform, hurling rocks and setting tires alight to create a wall of smoke before they charged past the checkpoint shouting "Kosovo is ours! Kosovo is Serbia.
U.N. police said the demonstrators had come by bus from the Serbian town of Kursumlija and were largely army veterans who had fought with the Serbian side in Kosovo's 1998-1999 war, AP reported.
Following the clashes, the demonstrators dismantled and returned to the
Serbian side of the checkpoint, according to AP.

Meanwhile several hundred Bosnian Serbs rallied in the Bosnian city of Banja Luka and in the Sarajevo suburb of Lukavica, AP said.
Students in Lukavica were seen waving Serbian flags and singing Serbian patriotic songs while police in Banja Luka were stopping demonstrators from marching on the U.S. consulate there.

The breakaway region has been recognized by the U.S. and several EU nations including the UK, France and Germany but the government in Belgrade maintains that Kosovo is a part of Serbia.
Amid simmering tensions in northern Kosovo, home to most of the region's Serb minority, there were fears that Thursday's rally could spill over into violence, as was seen at the Merdare border crossing, following attacks by Serb nationalists on western targets in Belgrade including the U.S. embassy earlier this week.

The U.S. Embassy in Belgrade advised American citizens to stay away from the gathering, warning that "businesses and organizations with U.S. affiliations may serve as focal points for these demonstrations."
"We wish to remind American citizens that even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and possibly escalate into violence. American citizens are therefore urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any protests," a statement said.
On Thursday, Italy became the latest European nation to recognize Kosovo's sovereignty, AP reported.

"The recognition of Kosovo's independence does not take away anything from our closeness to Serbia," Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi told reporters.
Russia and China continue to oppose Kosovo's declaration of independence while Spain has expressed concern that recognition will give momentum to secessionist movements in other countries, such as the Basques in northern
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