US Chides Russia For Lifting Sanctions On Georgian Region
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)--The U.S. Tuesday chided Russia for its decision to lift trade sanctions imposed on the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia and
reaffirmed support for Georgia's territorial integrity.
"The United States regrets Russia's decision to withdraw unilaterally from the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) sanctions on Abkhazia," U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters.
"We do not see how it contributes to stability in the South Caucasus, resolution of the Abkhazian conflict or improvement of Russian-Georgian relations," he added.
Last week, Moscow said it was lifting the largely symbolic trade restrictions imposed on Abkhazia, but denied it had been influenced by Western support for
Kosovo's independence.
The Russian foreign ministry then said that Moscow "no longer considers itself bound by the terms" of a sanctions accord approved by the ex-Soviet CIS in 1996.
The sanctions were imposed as part of efforts to limit the separatist aspirations of Abkhazia, one of two such breakaway Georgian territories that lie on Russia's
southern border, the other being South Ossetia.
Georgia's U.N. envoy, Irakli Alasania, restated his country's view that Moscow's action could open the way for Moscow to sell arms to the region and to allow
Russian citizens to join separatist forces in Abkhazia.
He told a press conference that that lifting of the Russian sanctions, "under the pretext of promoting a resolution of the situation in Abkhazia, creates the conditions for
destabilization and undermines the legal framework underpinning the process of a return to peace initiated by the CIS."
"We support the territorial integrity of Georgia and the settlement of the territorial dispute within its internationally recognized borders," Khalilzad reaffirmed Tuesday.
"Most alarming is the prospect that Russia's withdrawal from sanctions could lead the way to arms transfers to the separatists," he added.
"This is a time when renewed dialogue between Georgia and Russia is most needed to address a number of bilateral issues. It is our hope that Russia would play a
constructive role in the region helping resolve the conflict through peaceful means and dialogue.
Khalilzad conceded that Russia has "legitimate interests in the region which we hope Russia would pursue in a way consistent with Georgia's territorial integrity."
Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, dismissed suggestions that Moscow's action on Abkhazia was linked to the West's support for Kosovo's declaration of
independence.
But he emphasized "the negative impact which the Kosovo example has been setting" while stating Moscow's call for "a negotiated outcome of complex situations."
Russia's ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Dmitry Rogozin, meanwhile, said Tuesday that "in the case of any invitation to Georgia on the part of
NATO, driven by the United States, we can expect the separation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia."
Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from Georgia in conflicts in the early 1990s in which thousands of people were killed and hundreds of thousands of ethnic
-Georgians were forced to leave their homes.
Both have called for international recognition of their self-declared independence, citing Kosovo's move to separate from Serbia as a precedent, a move recognized
by several European NATO nations and the U.S.
Friday, 14 March 2008
Kosovo Walks out
Back
WORLD AFFAIRS
Kosovo walks out
JOHN CHERIAN
Albanian-dominated Kosovo declares independence from Serbia with the blessings of the West, especially the U.S.
DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP Kosovars wave an Albanian flag (left) and the flag of independent Kosovo after the declaration of independence from Serbia, on February 17 in Pristina.
THE unilateral declaration of independence by the Serbian province of Kosovo on February 17 has once again put the Balkan tinderbox in the international spotlight.
The Albanian-dominated enclave in Serbia with a population of less than two million is another mini-state that has emerged from the wreckage of the Yugoslav
Federation. Last year, it was the turn of Montenegro (with a population of 800,000) to break away from Serbia.
The backing of the West was crucial in both cases. In Kosovo, the wild celebrations that followed the declaration of independence lasted for days. The United
States’ Stars and Stripes in fact outnumbered the national flag of Kosovo in the jubilations on the streets of the capital Pristina. Kosovo Albanians acknowledge U.S.
President George W. Bush and former President Bill Clinton as their political godfathers.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was secretly armed and trained by the U.S. and Germany in the 1990s. This was despite Washington officially labelling the
KLA a “terrorist outfit” after it was accused of trafficking in drugs, arms and women. It was Clinton who unleashed the three-month-long North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO)-led war in 1999 against Yugoslavia mainly on the pretext of human rights violations in Kosovo by the Yugoslav state. The assault wrought
great havoc on Yugoslavia’s infrastructure. Bridges, passenger trains and television stations were among the targets hit by NATO planes and missiles. That war had
led to the occupation of Kosovo by the West under the umbrella of the United Nations. A permanent U.S. military base was concurrently established there.
An independent Kosovo fitted into the grandiose plans of the U.S. to gain hegemony over the strategic Balkan region and isolate Russia further. The U.S. military
base in Kosovo, called “Camp Bondsteel”, is among the string of bases that have come up since the 1990s in the Balkans, East Europe and Central Asia. It has been
used for “rendition” flights, and the interrogation and torture of suspects in the U.S.-led “war on terror”.
False State
With the active connivance of major Western powers such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany and France, the Kosovo leadership laid the groundwork for
secession from Serbia. The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Hacim Thaci, declared that the independence of Kosovo signalled “the end of the dissolution of former
Yugoslavia”.
Among the most vocal supporters of Kosovo’s independence is the current French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. Kouchner was the first U.N.-appointed
administrator in Kosovo and served from 1999 to 2001.
The Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, criticising Washington’s support for an independent Kosovo, said that the U.S. had by its actions shown that it was
ready “to unscrupulously and violently jeopardise international order for the sake of its own military interests”. Kostunica described Kosovo as a “false state”.
Serbia was quick to recall its ambassadors from the U.S., France, Turkey and Austria. The Serbian Parliament passed a resolution condemning the “declaration of
independence”. Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic asserted that his country would “fight tooth and nail” to have the declaration overturned. He emphasised that
Kosovo Albanians were not the only people in the world to have a grievance against Belgrade. More than 200,000 people staged angry demonstrations in the
Serbian capital, Belgrade. The wrath of the crowds was focussed on the embassies of those countries that had actively connived in the break-up of the Yugoslav
Federation.
Part of the U.S. embassy was set on fire. Angry mobs also set fire to customs posts manned by international peacekeepers along the border with the self-proclaimed
state.
Kosovo has been an emotive issue for Serbians, who consider the territory the cradle of their culture and civilisation. Kosovo fell to the Ottomans in the 15th century.
Until the end of the 19th century, Serbs formed the majority in the province. Successive wars and forcible population transfers reduced them to a minority in the
province in the 20th century. By the 1970s, Serbs constituted only 25 per cent of the population. After the NATO attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, ostensibly to
protect the majority Albanians, it was the Serbs who fled Kosovo. Less than 10 per cent of the population in Kosovo today is Serb.
No Serb politician, even pro-Western ones like the recently re-elected President, Boris Tadic, is willing to give up Kosovo. Tadic, who was conveniently out of the
country when the recent dramatic events unfolded, later said that he would “never give up the fight for our Kosovo”.
International reactions
The fear in the international community is that the events in Kosovo may be a precedent that could be replicated in other parts of the world. Breakaway regions in the
Caucasus are threatening to declare independence. The Serbs in Bosnia have said that they are planning to unite with Serbia. Kashmiri separatists are now loudly
demanding that the Kosovo model should be applied to the disputed territory. Even within Kosovo, the minority Serbs, who still number around 120,000 despite the
ethnic cleansing, have indicated that the territory that they occupy will merge with Serbia. They are threatening to set up their own parliament in the town of Mitrovica.
Branislav Ristivojevic, a close associate of the Serbian Prime Minister, said that his country would take the U.S. to the International Court of Justice if it did not annul
the decision to recognise Kosovo’s independence. The Serbian Prime Minister had earlier demanded that Washington “annul” its recognition of Kosovo’s
independence and confirm Serbia’s sovereignty.
Despite the key role the European Union has played in the creation of the mini-state, many of its member-countries have refused to recognise it formally. E.U.
members such as Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania have sizable minority communities clamouring for separate identity. The Basques in Spain have for
long been waging a violent struggle for statehood. The Basques and the Turkish Cypriot leadership have hailed the declaration of independence by the Kosovo
Albanians.
DARKO BANDIC/AP Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hacim Thaci speaks at the Parliament convention in Pristina, on February 17.
Senior Palestinian officials highlighted the double standards adopted by the West on the issue of statehood. Yasser Abdel Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official, said
that Palestine had a more legitimate case for independence than Kosovo. He emphasised that if the international community could accept Kosovo’s independence,
then it should “happen with Palestine as well”.
Russia has warned the E.U. from recognising Kosovo. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticised the E.U.’s deployment of a task force to supervise
Kosovo’s police, customs and justice systems. He said that the E.U. decision was taken without the approval of the U.N. Security Council. The Security Council’s
Resolution 1244 of June 1999 had ordered the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo and the takeover of the territory by the Kosovo Force (KFOR), the
U.N.-sanctioned military mission. However, the resolution had not made any mention of independence for Kosovo. The preamble of the resolution refers specifically
to the “territorial integrity” of Yugoslavia. Article 10 of the resolution only authorises “substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”.
The U.S. used the E.U. to circumvent the U.N. and bestow “independence” on Kosovo. Coming in handy was the plan drawn by Martti Ahtisaari, the U.N. special
representative to Kosovo. Ahtisaari, a former President of Finland, had recommended a limited type of independence for Kosovo. According to the plan, Kosovo
would not be allowed to be part of a greater Albania. Its government would be under international supervision.
The E.U. is sending a 2,000-strong police and justice mission called the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) to replace the U.N. mission in Kosovo.
These forces will be in addition to the 16,000 NATO troops already on the ground in Kosovo.
Many observers feel that these measures have made “independent” Kosovo a “protectorate” of the West. Under the terms of the U.S.-E.U. “supervised
independence”, Kosovo’s leaders will have limited powers. EULEX, under a E.U.-appointed “viceroy”, will have the final say on all important matters. The Kosovo
Albanians had to give up their red flag emblazoned with a two-headed eagle, in favour of an E.U.-sponsored blue flag with the map of Kosovo.
OLIVER BUNIC/BLOOMBERG NEWS Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica at a mass protest rally against Kosovo’s declaration, in Belgrade on February 21.
One commentator described Kosovo as a “post-modern state, an entity that may be sovereign in name but is a U.S.-E.U. protectorate in practice”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that the declaration of independence by Kosovo would have an impact on Moscow’s relations with Abkhazia and Southern
Ossetia, Georgia’s breakaway republics. Kosovo’s independence, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated, “presupposes a revision of commonly accepted norms and
principles of international law”.
Moscow warned that the development would encourage separatist movements “from Moldova to Indonesia”. President Vladimir Putin had warned the West that any
declaration of independence by Kosovo would be “illegal, ill-conceived and immoral”.
New Delhi has also reasons to be concerned about the developments but has not yet formulated a clear position on the issue. Even when Yugoslavia was being
bombed by NATO forces, New Delhi refused to take a clear stand. An External Affairs Ministry spokesperson said that there were “several legal issues” involved
and that the government was studying the evolving situation.
“It has been India’s consistent position that the sovereignty and integrity of all countries should be fully respected by all states,” he said.
Indonesia and Sri Lanka have been more forthright. Their governments have said that they would never recognise an “independent” Kosovo. China and Vietnam have
expressed the opinion that any solution to the Kosovo problem should not infringe on the sovereignty of Serbia.
An adviser to the German Foreign Ministry, writing in the newspaper Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung warned that the independence of Kosovo created a precedent
which could be directed “in other cases against the Western states”.
The spokesman of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Parliament described Kosovo as a “mafia state”. The SPD is a partner in the coalition ruling the country.
Germany has played a key role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia, by first actively encouraging Slovenia and Croatia to secede.
WORLD AFFAIRS
Sri Lankan rebuff
SRI LANKA and Kosovo are continents apart literally. And yet no single event in the global sphere in recent years has caused such trepidation and discomfort in Sri
Lanka as Kosovo’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence. The resounding rejection of Kosovo’s UDI by the government and a vast majority of civil society in the
island is on a par with the consternation in Belgrade and Moscow over the development, and for good reasons.
With its own three-decade-old, unresolved ethnic conflict and the one-point agenda of the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to pursue the goal of a separate
state of Eelam consisting of territories in the north and the east, the island nation is demonstrably alarmed over not only Kosovo’s UDI but also the unabashed manner
in which the United States and its allies rushed to grant recognition to the new state in contravention of all norms of international relations and diplomacy.
For Sri Lanka, Kosovo’s UDI is a painful reminder of what it had gone through 18 years ago and the island nation is understandably horrified at the prospect of the
notion gaining international currency. On March 1, 1990, Varadaraja Perumal, the then Chief Minister of the North-Eastern Province and the leader of the Eelam
People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), made a unilateral declaration of the state of Eelam. (Today, the EPRLF is committed to resolving the ethnic
problem within a united Sri Lanka and is a registered party.) It was no more than a symbolic act of defiance born out of frustration, but for Colombo the ghost of that
action refuses to go away. The LTTE’s decision to write to the United Nations Secretary-General, weeks after the Sri Lankan government ended the Norwegian-
brokered 2002 Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) on January 16 this year, seeking recognition of a separate state of Eelam has only increased Colombo’s discomfort.
It was against this backdrop that the Mahinda Rajapaksa government deemed it necessary to let the world and the powers behind Kosovo’s act of defiance know in
unambiguous terms that it could ill-afford to turn a blind eye to the developments in the Balkans. Sri Lanka’s disapproval of the Kosovo UDI is aimed not only at the
LTTE but also at the powerful Western block led by the U.S. In a brief statement on the very day Kosovo declared independence, the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry
put on record its strong note of disapproval.
“We note that the declaration of independence was made without the consent of the majority of the people of Serbia. This action by Kosovo is a violation of the
Charter of the United Nations, which enshrines the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Member States. Moreover, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244 of 10th
June 1999 reaffirms commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all States of the region. This action is particularly regrettable, since all efforts at reaching
a negotiated political settlement on the future status of Kosovo, as envisaged by the Security Council Resolution 1244, have not been exhausted. The Unilateral
Declaration of Independence by Kosovo could set an unmanageable precedent in the conduct of international relations, the established global order of sovereign
States and could thus pose a grave threat to international peace and security,” the statement said.
For obvious reasons, the Foreign Ministry did not get into the issue of implications of Kosovo’s independence for Sri Lanka. However, Dr. Dayan Jayatilaka, Sri
Lanka’s Permanent Representative at the U.N. Office in Geneva and a non-career diplomat, felt no such restraints. Incidentally, Jayatilaka was a member of the
North-Eastern Council of 1990. In a signed article titled “Kosovo countdown: Lessons for Sri Lanka”, a day before the Kosovo UDI, he forcefully articulated the
diabolical implications of the move for his own country.
“These then are the lessons for Sri Lanka: never withdraw the armed forces from any part of our territory in which they are challenged, and never permit a foreign
presence on our soil. After 450 years of colonial presence, and especially after the experience of the Kandyan Convention, we Sri Lankans should have these lessons
engraved in our historical memory and our collective identity. The Western imperialists who failed to capture our island militarily were able to take control of it only
because we double-crossed our leader, trusted the West, signed an agreement and allowed the foreign presence into our heartland,” he argued.
Jayatilaka reasoned that there were options other than secession for Kosovo. One was the fullest autonomy within Serbia. The other was the carving out of the
Serbian majority portion of Kosovo and its annexation with Serbia. “However, all options were aborted by the obduracy of the Kosovo leadership, which insists on
independence. It must be noted that the current leader of Kosovo is a former leader of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army,” he noted.
The envoy argued that all tendencies in world politics which weakened, fragmented and destabilised states, undermining their sovereignty and making them vulnerable
to hegemony and intervention, were inimical to Sri Lanka while all tendencies which strengthened and defended state sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, were
friendly and helpful to his country.
Endorsing the sentiments of Jayatilaka, the Sri Lankan English daily The Island noted in an editorial that if independent states were to be carved out haphazardly
according to the whims and fancies of a handful of powerful nations, then the U.N. ought to be given a grand funeral. It further noted that the LTTE, which was elated
over Montenegro’s independence in 2006, are not so upbeat this time round; it felt that the Tigers had chosen to tread cautiously because of India’s fears and
concerns about their Eelam project.
Jayatilaka’s arguments seem sound. However, there is one aspect which the envoy has sidestepped, and that is the failure of successive regimes in Colombo to come
forward with a credible political solution to the grievances of minorities. A political package could provide the much-needed muscle to the moderate forces that are
arraigned against the LTTE. It is the inability of the polity to come out with a solution to the ethnic conflict that provides oxygen to the LTTE.
B. Muralidhar Reddy
WORLD AFFAIRS
Kosovo walks out
JOHN CHERIAN
Albanian-dominated Kosovo declares independence from Serbia with the blessings of the West, especially the U.S.
DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP Kosovars wave an Albanian flag (left) and the flag of independent Kosovo after the declaration of independence from Serbia, on February 17 in Pristina.
THE unilateral declaration of independence by the Serbian province of Kosovo on February 17 has once again put the Balkan tinderbox in the international spotlight.
The Albanian-dominated enclave in Serbia with a population of less than two million is another mini-state that has emerged from the wreckage of the Yugoslav
Federation. Last year, it was the turn of Montenegro (with a population of 800,000) to break away from Serbia.
The backing of the West was crucial in both cases. In Kosovo, the wild celebrations that followed the declaration of independence lasted for days. The United
States’ Stars and Stripes in fact outnumbered the national flag of Kosovo in the jubilations on the streets of the capital Pristina. Kosovo Albanians acknowledge U.S.
President George W. Bush and former President Bill Clinton as their political godfathers.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was secretly armed and trained by the U.S. and Germany in the 1990s. This was despite Washington officially labelling the
KLA a “terrorist outfit” after it was accused of trafficking in drugs, arms and women. It was Clinton who unleashed the three-month-long North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO)-led war in 1999 against Yugoslavia mainly on the pretext of human rights violations in Kosovo by the Yugoslav state. The assault wrought
great havoc on Yugoslavia’s infrastructure. Bridges, passenger trains and television stations were among the targets hit by NATO planes and missiles. That war had
led to the occupation of Kosovo by the West under the umbrella of the United Nations. A permanent U.S. military base was concurrently established there.
An independent Kosovo fitted into the grandiose plans of the U.S. to gain hegemony over the strategic Balkan region and isolate Russia further. The U.S. military
base in Kosovo, called “Camp Bondsteel”, is among the string of bases that have come up since the 1990s in the Balkans, East Europe and Central Asia. It has been
used for “rendition” flights, and the interrogation and torture of suspects in the U.S.-led “war on terror”.
False State
With the active connivance of major Western powers such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany and France, the Kosovo leadership laid the groundwork for
secession from Serbia. The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Hacim Thaci, declared that the independence of Kosovo signalled “the end of the dissolution of former
Yugoslavia”.
Among the most vocal supporters of Kosovo’s independence is the current French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. Kouchner was the first U.N.-appointed
administrator in Kosovo and served from 1999 to 2001.
The Serbian Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, criticising Washington’s support for an independent Kosovo, said that the U.S. had by its actions shown that it was
ready “to unscrupulously and violently jeopardise international order for the sake of its own military interests”. Kostunica described Kosovo as a “false state”.
Serbia was quick to recall its ambassadors from the U.S., France, Turkey and Austria. The Serbian Parliament passed a resolution condemning the “declaration of
independence”. Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic asserted that his country would “fight tooth and nail” to have the declaration overturned. He emphasised that
Kosovo Albanians were not the only people in the world to have a grievance against Belgrade. More than 200,000 people staged angry demonstrations in the
Serbian capital, Belgrade. The wrath of the crowds was focussed on the embassies of those countries that had actively connived in the break-up of the Yugoslav
Federation.
Part of the U.S. embassy was set on fire. Angry mobs also set fire to customs posts manned by international peacekeepers along the border with the self-proclaimed
state.
Kosovo has been an emotive issue for Serbians, who consider the territory the cradle of their culture and civilisation. Kosovo fell to the Ottomans in the 15th century.
Until the end of the 19th century, Serbs formed the majority in the province. Successive wars and forcible population transfers reduced them to a minority in the
province in the 20th century. By the 1970s, Serbs constituted only 25 per cent of the population. After the NATO attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, ostensibly to
protect the majority Albanians, it was the Serbs who fled Kosovo. Less than 10 per cent of the population in Kosovo today is Serb.
No Serb politician, even pro-Western ones like the recently re-elected President, Boris Tadic, is willing to give up Kosovo. Tadic, who was conveniently out of the
country when the recent dramatic events unfolded, later said that he would “never give up the fight for our Kosovo”.
International reactions
The fear in the international community is that the events in Kosovo may be a precedent that could be replicated in other parts of the world. Breakaway regions in the
Caucasus are threatening to declare independence. The Serbs in Bosnia have said that they are planning to unite with Serbia. Kashmiri separatists are now loudly
demanding that the Kosovo model should be applied to the disputed territory. Even within Kosovo, the minority Serbs, who still number around 120,000 despite the
ethnic cleansing, have indicated that the territory that they occupy will merge with Serbia. They are threatening to set up their own parliament in the town of Mitrovica.
Branislav Ristivojevic, a close associate of the Serbian Prime Minister, said that his country would take the U.S. to the International Court of Justice if it did not annul
the decision to recognise Kosovo’s independence. The Serbian Prime Minister had earlier demanded that Washington “annul” its recognition of Kosovo’s
independence and confirm Serbia’s sovereignty.
Despite the key role the European Union has played in the creation of the mini-state, many of its member-countries have refused to recognise it formally. E.U.
members such as Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania have sizable minority communities clamouring for separate identity. The Basques in Spain have for
long been waging a violent struggle for statehood. The Basques and the Turkish Cypriot leadership have hailed the declaration of independence by the Kosovo
Albanians.
DARKO BANDIC/AP Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hacim Thaci speaks at the Parliament convention in Pristina, on February 17.
Senior Palestinian officials highlighted the double standards adopted by the West on the issue of statehood. Yasser Abdel Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official, said
that Palestine had a more legitimate case for independence than Kosovo. He emphasised that if the international community could accept Kosovo’s independence,
then it should “happen with Palestine as well”.
Russia has warned the E.U. from recognising Kosovo. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticised the E.U.’s deployment of a task force to supervise
Kosovo’s police, customs and justice systems. He said that the E.U. decision was taken without the approval of the U.N. Security Council. The Security Council’s
Resolution 1244 of June 1999 had ordered the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo and the takeover of the territory by the Kosovo Force (KFOR), the
U.N.-sanctioned military mission. However, the resolution had not made any mention of independence for Kosovo. The preamble of the resolution refers specifically
to the “territorial integrity” of Yugoslavia. Article 10 of the resolution only authorises “substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”.
The U.S. used the E.U. to circumvent the U.N. and bestow “independence” on Kosovo. Coming in handy was the plan drawn by Martti Ahtisaari, the U.N. special
representative to Kosovo. Ahtisaari, a former President of Finland, had recommended a limited type of independence for Kosovo. According to the plan, Kosovo
would not be allowed to be part of a greater Albania. Its government would be under international supervision.
The E.U. is sending a 2,000-strong police and justice mission called the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) to replace the U.N. mission in Kosovo.
These forces will be in addition to the 16,000 NATO troops already on the ground in Kosovo.
Many observers feel that these measures have made “independent” Kosovo a “protectorate” of the West. Under the terms of the U.S.-E.U. “supervised
independence”, Kosovo’s leaders will have limited powers. EULEX, under a E.U.-appointed “viceroy”, will have the final say on all important matters. The Kosovo
Albanians had to give up their red flag emblazoned with a two-headed eagle, in favour of an E.U.-sponsored blue flag with the map of Kosovo.
OLIVER BUNIC/BLOOMBERG NEWS Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica at a mass protest rally against Kosovo’s declaration, in Belgrade on February 21.
One commentator described Kosovo as a “post-modern state, an entity that may be sovereign in name but is a U.S.-E.U. protectorate in practice”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that the declaration of independence by Kosovo would have an impact on Moscow’s relations with Abkhazia and Southern
Ossetia, Georgia’s breakaway republics. Kosovo’s independence, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated, “presupposes a revision of commonly accepted norms and
principles of international law”.
Moscow warned that the development would encourage separatist movements “from Moldova to Indonesia”. President Vladimir Putin had warned the West that any
declaration of independence by Kosovo would be “illegal, ill-conceived and immoral”.
New Delhi has also reasons to be concerned about the developments but has not yet formulated a clear position on the issue. Even when Yugoslavia was being
bombed by NATO forces, New Delhi refused to take a clear stand. An External Affairs Ministry spokesperson said that there were “several legal issues” involved
and that the government was studying the evolving situation.
“It has been India’s consistent position that the sovereignty and integrity of all countries should be fully respected by all states,” he said.
Indonesia and Sri Lanka have been more forthright. Their governments have said that they would never recognise an “independent” Kosovo. China and Vietnam have
expressed the opinion that any solution to the Kosovo problem should not infringe on the sovereignty of Serbia.
An adviser to the German Foreign Ministry, writing in the newspaper Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung warned that the independence of Kosovo created a precedent
which could be directed “in other cases against the Western states”.
The spokesman of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Parliament described Kosovo as a “mafia state”. The SPD is a partner in the coalition ruling the country.
Germany has played a key role in the disintegration of Yugoslavia, by first actively encouraging Slovenia and Croatia to secede.
WORLD AFFAIRS
Sri Lankan rebuff
SRI LANKA and Kosovo are continents apart literally. And yet no single event in the global sphere in recent years has caused such trepidation and discomfort in Sri
Lanka as Kosovo’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence. The resounding rejection of Kosovo’s UDI by the government and a vast majority of civil society in the
island is on a par with the consternation in Belgrade and Moscow over the development, and for good reasons.
With its own three-decade-old, unresolved ethnic conflict and the one-point agenda of the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to pursue the goal of a separate
state of Eelam consisting of territories in the north and the east, the island nation is demonstrably alarmed over not only Kosovo’s UDI but also the unabashed manner
in which the United States and its allies rushed to grant recognition to the new state in contravention of all norms of international relations and diplomacy.
For Sri Lanka, Kosovo’s UDI is a painful reminder of what it had gone through 18 years ago and the island nation is understandably horrified at the prospect of the
notion gaining international currency. On March 1, 1990, Varadaraja Perumal, the then Chief Minister of the North-Eastern Province and the leader of the Eelam
People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), made a unilateral declaration of the state of Eelam. (Today, the EPRLF is committed to resolving the ethnic
problem within a united Sri Lanka and is a registered party.) It was no more than a symbolic act of defiance born out of frustration, but for Colombo the ghost of that
action refuses to go away. The LTTE’s decision to write to the United Nations Secretary-General, weeks after the Sri Lankan government ended the Norwegian-
brokered 2002 Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) on January 16 this year, seeking recognition of a separate state of Eelam has only increased Colombo’s discomfort.
It was against this backdrop that the Mahinda Rajapaksa government deemed it necessary to let the world and the powers behind Kosovo’s act of defiance know in
unambiguous terms that it could ill-afford to turn a blind eye to the developments in the Balkans. Sri Lanka’s disapproval of the Kosovo UDI is aimed not only at the
LTTE but also at the powerful Western block led by the U.S. In a brief statement on the very day Kosovo declared independence, the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry
put on record its strong note of disapproval.
“We note that the declaration of independence was made without the consent of the majority of the people of Serbia. This action by Kosovo is a violation of the
Charter of the United Nations, which enshrines the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Member States. Moreover, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244 of 10th
June 1999 reaffirms commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all States of the region. This action is particularly regrettable, since all efforts at reaching
a negotiated political settlement on the future status of Kosovo, as envisaged by the Security Council Resolution 1244, have not been exhausted. The Unilateral
Declaration of Independence by Kosovo could set an unmanageable precedent in the conduct of international relations, the established global order of sovereign
States and could thus pose a grave threat to international peace and security,” the statement said.
For obvious reasons, the Foreign Ministry did not get into the issue of implications of Kosovo’s independence for Sri Lanka. However, Dr. Dayan Jayatilaka, Sri
Lanka’s Permanent Representative at the U.N. Office in Geneva and a non-career diplomat, felt no such restraints. Incidentally, Jayatilaka was a member of the
North-Eastern Council of 1990. In a signed article titled “Kosovo countdown: Lessons for Sri Lanka”, a day before the Kosovo UDI, he forcefully articulated the
diabolical implications of the move for his own country.
“These then are the lessons for Sri Lanka: never withdraw the armed forces from any part of our territory in which they are challenged, and never permit a foreign
presence on our soil. After 450 years of colonial presence, and especially after the experience of the Kandyan Convention, we Sri Lankans should have these lessons
engraved in our historical memory and our collective identity. The Western imperialists who failed to capture our island militarily were able to take control of it only
because we double-crossed our leader, trusted the West, signed an agreement and allowed the foreign presence into our heartland,” he argued.
Jayatilaka reasoned that there were options other than secession for Kosovo. One was the fullest autonomy within Serbia. The other was the carving out of the
Serbian majority portion of Kosovo and its annexation with Serbia. “However, all options were aborted by the obduracy of the Kosovo leadership, which insists on
independence. It must be noted that the current leader of Kosovo is a former leader of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army,” he noted.
The envoy argued that all tendencies in world politics which weakened, fragmented and destabilised states, undermining their sovereignty and making them vulnerable
to hegemony and intervention, were inimical to Sri Lanka while all tendencies which strengthened and defended state sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, were
friendly and helpful to his country.
Endorsing the sentiments of Jayatilaka, the Sri Lankan English daily The Island noted in an editorial that if independent states were to be carved out haphazardly
according to the whims and fancies of a handful of powerful nations, then the U.N. ought to be given a grand funeral. It further noted that the LTTE, which was elated
over Montenegro’s independence in 2006, are not so upbeat this time round; it felt that the Tigers had chosen to tread cautiously because of India’s fears and
concerns about their Eelam project.
Jayatilaka’s arguments seem sound. However, there is one aspect which the envoy has sidestepped, and that is the failure of successive regimes in Colombo to come
forward with a credible political solution to the grievances of minorities. A political package could provide the much-needed muscle to the moderate forces that are
arraigned against the LTTE. It is the inability of the polity to come out with a solution to the ethnic conflict that provides oxygen to the LTTE.
B. Muralidhar Reddy
A LONG ROAD FROM KOSOVO TO KURDISTAN
THE ROVING EYE
A long road from Kosovo to Kurdistan
By Pepe Escobar
The precedent of Kosovo is a terrible precedent, which will de facto blow apart the whole system of international relations, developed not over decades, but over
centuries. [The Americans] have not thought through the results of what they are doing. At the end of the day it is a two-ended stick and the second end will come
back and hit them in the face. - Russian President Vladimir Putin
In myriad aspects, Kosovo is the new Kurdistan (and the other way around), as much as Iraq is the new Yugoslavia.
The unilateral independence of Kosovo has nothing to do with "democracy". But then what's the point of this North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) provocation towards Vladimir Putin's Russia - a historic ally of Serbia?
The ongoing saga revolves around two crucial, interrelated facts on the ground: Pipelineistan and the empire of 737 (and counting) US military bases in 130 countries
operated by 350,000-plus Americans. In short: it revolves around the trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, the the largest US base built in
Europe in a generation.
It also lays bare continuity from the Bill Clinton to the George W Bush administrations - the US dictating the rules of the game as if in a one-party state.
Yugoslavia and Iraq also "taught" the world two lessons. From Clinton's humanitarian imperialism to Bush's "war on terror", it's all a matter of exclusive Washington
prerogative. Blowback, of course, as Putin has warned, will be inevitable.
Albright's serpentThe 78-day, 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, allegedly to dislodge a "new Hitler" (Slobodan Milosevic) was mirrored by the 2003 "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq, to
dislodge another "new Hitler" (Saddam Hussein). Clinton, demonizing the Serbs, used NATO to sidestep the lack of a United Nations mandate; Bush, also without a
UN mandate, demonized Iraqis and went all the way with just an authorization by the US Congress.
Clinton attacked the former Yugoslavia to expand the post-Cold War NATO right up to the borders of the former Soviet Union. Bush attacked Iraq to seize the "big
prize" in terms of energy resources. Militarization and hegemonic control were at the heart of both operations. Yugoslavia was devastated, fragmented, balkanized
and ethnically cleansed into mini-countries. Iraq was devastated, fragmented, pushed towards balkanization and towards ethnic cleansing along sectarian and religious
lines.
Senator Hillary Clinton considered Yugoslavia's balkanization and now Kosovo's independence (amputation of Serbia, rather) as "democracy" and a "successful"
accomplishment of US foreign policy.
This "model" new independent state saluted by the US, Germany, France and Britain - and virtually no one else - is, according to Vladimir Ovtchinky, a criminologist
and former head of Interpol's Russia bureau during the 1990s, "a mafia state in the heart of Europe". It's basically run by Hashim Thaci, a former Marxist who then
embraced a nationalist socialism with criminal overtones as one of the youngest chiefs of the UCK (the Kosovo Liberation Army), operating under the codename
"The Serpent".
Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, pushed "The Serpent" into the limelight when she attributed to him "the brightest future" among those Kosovars who
were "fighting for democracy". Albright is nowadays one of Hillary Clintons' top foreign policy advisers. The UCK was roughly a sort of Balkan al-Qaeda on heavy
drugs - propped up enthusiastically by US and British intelligence. British special forces trained the UCK in northern Albania while Turkish and Afghan military
instructors taught them guerrilla tactics. Even Osama bin Laden had been in Albania, in 1994; al-Qaeda had a solid UCK connection.
Writing in the Russian daily Ogoniok, Ovtchinky describes how Albanian Kosovar clans always controlled opium and then heroin trafficking from Afghanistan and
Pakistan through the Balkans towards Western Europe; then during the late 1990s a 3% tax started to finance all UCK operations. The UCK benefited from more
than 750 million euros (US$1.1 billion) in drug money to buy weapons, he wrote.
According to Interpol and Europol, just in 1999 and 2000, these Kosovar mafias made no less than 7.5 billion euros - also by diversifying from narco-smuggling into
human trafficking and large-scale prostitution. In Germany, they made a killing in Kalashnikov trafficking and fake euro banknotes. And as late as in 2007, Italy's top
three mafias - the Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and "Ndrangheta" - were seriously thinking of creating a unified cartel to face the ultra-heavy Albanian Kosovar mafia.
Get me to my pipeline on timeWashington and the three European Union heavyweights (France, Germany and Britain) have applauded Kosovo's independence. But this core of the self-described
"international community" is caught in silent scream mode when confronted with the possibility of independence for Flanders in Belgium, northern Cyprus, the Serbian
Republic of Bosnia, the Basque country in Spain, Gibraltar - not to mention Indian Kashmir (the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, JKLF, is already making some
rumblings), Tibet, Taiwan, Abkahzia and South Ossetia (both in Georgia and both Russia-friendly), Palestine and Kurdistan. Northern Kosovo itself - totally Serbian
-populated - and western Macedonia also don't qualify to become independent. So why Kosovo? Enter the AMBO pipeline and Camp Bondsteel.
AMBO is short for Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corp, an entity registered in the US. The $1.1 billion AMBO pipeline (also known as the Trans-Balkan),
supposed to be finished by 2011, will get oil brought from the Caspian Sea to a terminal in Georgia and then by tanker through the Black Sea to the Bulgarian port of
Burgas, and relay it through Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlora.
Clinton's NATO war against Yugoslavia and pro-Albania was thus crucial to secure Vlora's strategic location. The oil will then be shipped to Rotterdam in the
Netherlands and refineries on the US West Coast, thus bypassing the ultra-congested Bosphorus Strait and the Aegean and the Mediterranean seas.
The original AMBO feasibility study, as early as 1995, and then updated in 1999, is by a British subsidiary of Halliburton, Brown and Root Energy Services. AMBO
fits into Vice President Dick Cheney's (and before him, Clinton's energy secretary Bill Richardson's) US energy security grid. It's all about go-for-broke militarization
of the crucial energy corridor from the Caspian through the Balkans, and about trying to isolate or sabotage both Russia and Iran.
Halliburton had to have a deeper hand in the whole scheme, and that's where Camp Bondsteel fits in - the largest overseas US military base built since the Vietnam
War. Bondsteel, built by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root on 400 hectares of farmland near the Macedonian border in southern Kosovo, is a sort of
smaller - and friendlier - five-star Guantanamo, with perks like Thai massage and loads of junk food. According to Chalmers Johnson in The Sorrows of Empire,
"army wags say facetiously that there are only two man-made objects that can be seen from outer space - the Great Wall of China and Camp Bondsteel". Bondsteel
will also double as Kosovo's Abu Ghraib - the largest prison in the independent entity, where prisoners can be held indefinitely without charges pressed and without
defense attorneys. Taxi to the Dark Side, which has just won an Oscar for best documentary, applies not only to Bagram in Afghanistan but also to Bondsteel in
Kosovo.
Protection racket Kosovo's "independence" has been brewing since 1999. A single 1999 photo tells the whole story - establishing beyond doubt those elusive "international community"
ties. The photo unites Hashim Thaci, then head of terrorist outfit UCK and current prime minister of Kosovo; Bernard Kouchner, then UN administrator of Kosovo
and current French foreign minister in the Nicolas Sarkozy administration; Sir Mike Jackson, then commander of NATO's occupying force and current consultant for
a Blackwater-style mercenary outfit; and general Wesley Clark, then NATO supreme commander and now military adviser to Hillary Clinton.
Kosovo's "internationally supervised independence", which was due to be outlined in a meeting in Vienna this Thursday, has nothing to do with autonomy. Exit the
UN, enter the European Union. Amputated from Serbia, Kosovo will be no more than an EU (and NATO) protectorate. EU officials in Brussels confirm that
thousands of bureaucrats, along with police officers, will be deployed to Kosovo, to live alongside more than 17,000 NATO military personnel already in place.
Neo-colonialism is alive and well in "liberated" Kosovo - which will have to put up with a viceroy and will have no say whatsoever in foreign policy. Think of
"liberated" Iraq under the infamous Coalition Provisional Authority run by viceroy L Paul Bremer.
An array of European analysts, not to mention Russians, has compared the current, dangerous state of play in the Balkans to Sarajevo in 1914 that led to the
outbreak of World War II. Blowback, in the short term, will include Serbs refusing to be part of this "independent" state and Albania not recognizing the current
Albania/Serbia/Macedonia borders. Just like a century ago, Central Europe, Russia and the Muslim world are clashing in the Balkans, but this time subjected to a US
screenplay. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in tandem, gave the go-ahead to the Kosovo declaration of independence weeks before the fact. Small,
contrarian EU countries like Slovakia, Romania and Cyprus were imperially overlooked.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has characterized Kosovo's independence as the beginning of the end of contemporary Europe. As British journalist John
Laughland, manager of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group stresses, "The current status of the province is established by UN Security Council resolution 1244,"
which determines that Kosovo is part of Serbia. Thus the US and the EU have - once again - made minced meat of international law.
Why not us?Kurds, especially those in Iraq, might be tempted to believe Kosovo is a meaty precedent pointing to the emergence of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan - their dream,
and Turkey's nightmare. Just as in Kosovo, oil is in play (Kirkuk and its pipelines); and Iraqi Kurdistan, since 1991, had been a sort of extended Camp Bondsteel
anyway, an American-protected enclave in Saddam's Iraq and then a haven of stable "democracy" in Bush-devastated Iraq.
But it's hard to dream about independence when Iraqi Kurdistan has been de facto invaded by 10,000 Turkish troops with the help of US intelligence.
According to Baghdad's al-Mada daily, the president of the Irbil-based Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Massoud Barzani, sent an urgent letter to Bush for
him to personally stop the Turkish invasion. Barzani flatly accuses the Turks of destroying his region's infrastructure. Barzani's spokesman, Falah Mustafa, has placed
all responsibility "on the US government". Peshmerga (Kurdish militia) General Muhammad Mohsen is also furious ("We think the United States is making a big
mistake"). This is as good an intimation of inevitable blowback as any.
Dozens of thousands of Peshmerga are now stationed very close to the Turkish-Iraqi border. According to Mohsen, the red line is along the Mateen mountain range.
He said, "The Peshmergas told [the Turks] if you go any further we will kill you." Also according to Mohsen, Barzani theatrically told him, "I will be the first to die in
fighting the Turks."
The official KRG position, endlessly relayed on Kurdish media, is that it has done everything to "limit the activities" of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels in Iraqi
Kurdistan. This has fallen as much on (Turk) deaf ears as Baghdad's feeble official protests. Iraqi Kurdish politician recite the same mantra; the PKK is just an excuse
for the Turks to "prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state".
But then, in the thick of the action, KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani struck quite a different chord. He said the Turks did not attack Kurdish civilians and only
destroyed a few bridges in some desolate mountain passes. Kurdish media though is awash with reports and even video of damage to Kurdish villages. So what's
going on?
Turkey's invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan is a graphic show of force - a sort of "shock and awe" in slow motion, meaning this is a player to be reckoned with in both the
Middle East and Central Asia. Turkey - with much more firepower than Serbia, and a NATO member to boot - has set its objectives with precision: to bomb the
KRG's credibility, and to imprint the extent of its reaction in case the Kurdish go for autonomy, including control of the oil-rich Kirkuk area in Iraq. At the same time,
this is a message to Washington (don't trample us or we destabilize the only "stable" part of Iraq) and to Baghdad (let's do business; we need some of your oil and a
lot of your water for our development).
So much for Kurdistan's dream of independence - inside Iraq as much as for the 12 million Kurds living in Turkey. They are left with a few rumblings, an attempt at
downplaying the whole thing, and the obligation of facing the fact that the US, once again, has sold them short. Not to mention the Kurds, once again, they are sold
short.
The KRG's Barzani and current Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, eternal Iraqi Kurdish leaders, rival warlords and wily opportunists, had already sold PKK Kurds short
15 years ago during a joint offensive with the Turkish army (See Double-crossing in Kurdistan Asia Times Online, November 2, 2007). They had vocally promised
this would never happen again. It's happening right now. Thus Turkey wins, hands down - driving a wedge between Washington and Iraqi Kurds.
Blowback, in this case, may be long in coming, but Washington is bound to taste it. Turkey will clinch an oil deal with Russia and will buy Iranian gas and co-exploit
Iranian oil in the Caspian. As for Iraqi Kurds - seeing red against both Washington and Ankara - more than ever they won't stop dreaming of becoming the new
Kosovo, on their own terms.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at
pepeasia at yahoo.com.
A long road from Kosovo to Kurdistan
By Pepe Escobar
The precedent of Kosovo is a terrible precedent, which will de facto blow apart the whole system of international relations, developed not over decades, but over
centuries. [The Americans] have not thought through the results of what they are doing. At the end of the day it is a two-ended stick and the second end will come
back and hit them in the face. - Russian President Vladimir Putin
In myriad aspects, Kosovo is the new Kurdistan (and the other way around), as much as Iraq is the new Yugoslavia.
The unilateral independence of Kosovo has nothing to do with "democracy". But then what's the point of this North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) provocation towards Vladimir Putin's Russia - a historic ally of Serbia?
The ongoing saga revolves around two crucial, interrelated facts on the ground: Pipelineistan and the empire of 737 (and counting) US military bases in 130 countries
operated by 350,000-plus Americans. In short: it revolves around the trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, the the largest US base built in
Europe in a generation.
It also lays bare continuity from the Bill Clinton to the George W Bush administrations - the US dictating the rules of the game as if in a one-party state.
Yugoslavia and Iraq also "taught" the world two lessons. From Clinton's humanitarian imperialism to Bush's "war on terror", it's all a matter of exclusive Washington
prerogative. Blowback, of course, as Putin has warned, will be inevitable.
Albright's serpentThe 78-day, 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, allegedly to dislodge a "new Hitler" (Slobodan Milosevic) was mirrored by the 2003 "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq, to
dislodge another "new Hitler" (Saddam Hussein). Clinton, demonizing the Serbs, used NATO to sidestep the lack of a United Nations mandate; Bush, also without a
UN mandate, demonized Iraqis and went all the way with just an authorization by the US Congress.
Clinton attacked the former Yugoslavia to expand the post-Cold War NATO right up to the borders of the former Soviet Union. Bush attacked Iraq to seize the "big
prize" in terms of energy resources. Militarization and hegemonic control were at the heart of both operations. Yugoslavia was devastated, fragmented, balkanized
and ethnically cleansed into mini-countries. Iraq was devastated, fragmented, pushed towards balkanization and towards ethnic cleansing along sectarian and religious
lines.
Senator Hillary Clinton considered Yugoslavia's balkanization and now Kosovo's independence (amputation of Serbia, rather) as "democracy" and a "successful"
accomplishment of US foreign policy.
This "model" new independent state saluted by the US, Germany, France and Britain - and virtually no one else - is, according to Vladimir Ovtchinky, a criminologist
and former head of Interpol's Russia bureau during the 1990s, "a mafia state in the heart of Europe". It's basically run by Hashim Thaci, a former Marxist who then
embraced a nationalist socialism with criminal overtones as one of the youngest chiefs of the UCK (the Kosovo Liberation Army), operating under the codename
"The Serpent".
Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, pushed "The Serpent" into the limelight when she attributed to him "the brightest future" among those Kosovars who
were "fighting for democracy". Albright is nowadays one of Hillary Clintons' top foreign policy advisers. The UCK was roughly a sort of Balkan al-Qaeda on heavy
drugs - propped up enthusiastically by US and British intelligence. British special forces trained the UCK in northern Albania while Turkish and Afghan military
instructors taught them guerrilla tactics. Even Osama bin Laden had been in Albania, in 1994; al-Qaeda had a solid UCK connection.
Writing in the Russian daily Ogoniok, Ovtchinky describes how Albanian Kosovar clans always controlled opium and then heroin trafficking from Afghanistan and
Pakistan through the Balkans towards Western Europe; then during the late 1990s a 3% tax started to finance all UCK operations. The UCK benefited from more
than 750 million euros (US$1.1 billion) in drug money to buy weapons, he wrote.
According to Interpol and Europol, just in 1999 and 2000, these Kosovar mafias made no less than 7.5 billion euros - also by diversifying from narco-smuggling into
human trafficking and large-scale prostitution. In Germany, they made a killing in Kalashnikov trafficking and fake euro banknotes. And as late as in 2007, Italy's top
three mafias - the Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and "Ndrangheta" - were seriously thinking of creating a unified cartel to face the ultra-heavy Albanian Kosovar mafia.
Get me to my pipeline on timeWashington and the three European Union heavyweights (France, Germany and Britain) have applauded Kosovo's independence. But this core of the self-described
"international community" is caught in silent scream mode when confronted with the possibility of independence for Flanders in Belgium, northern Cyprus, the Serbian
Republic of Bosnia, the Basque country in Spain, Gibraltar - not to mention Indian Kashmir (the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, JKLF, is already making some
rumblings), Tibet, Taiwan, Abkahzia and South Ossetia (both in Georgia and both Russia-friendly), Palestine and Kurdistan. Northern Kosovo itself - totally Serbian
-populated - and western Macedonia also don't qualify to become independent. So why Kosovo? Enter the AMBO pipeline and Camp Bondsteel.
AMBO is short for Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corp, an entity registered in the US. The $1.1 billion AMBO pipeline (also known as the Trans-Balkan),
supposed to be finished by 2011, will get oil brought from the Caspian Sea to a terminal in Georgia and then by tanker through the Black Sea to the Bulgarian port of
Burgas, and relay it through Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlora.
Clinton's NATO war against Yugoslavia and pro-Albania was thus crucial to secure Vlora's strategic location. The oil will then be shipped to Rotterdam in the
Netherlands and refineries on the US West Coast, thus bypassing the ultra-congested Bosphorus Strait and the Aegean and the Mediterranean seas.
The original AMBO feasibility study, as early as 1995, and then updated in 1999, is by a British subsidiary of Halliburton, Brown and Root Energy Services. AMBO
fits into Vice President Dick Cheney's (and before him, Clinton's energy secretary Bill Richardson's) US energy security grid. It's all about go-for-broke militarization
of the crucial energy corridor from the Caspian through the Balkans, and about trying to isolate or sabotage both Russia and Iran.
Halliburton had to have a deeper hand in the whole scheme, and that's where Camp Bondsteel fits in - the largest overseas US military base built since the Vietnam
War. Bondsteel, built by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root on 400 hectares of farmland near the Macedonian border in southern Kosovo, is a sort of
smaller - and friendlier - five-star Guantanamo, with perks like Thai massage and loads of junk food. According to Chalmers Johnson in The Sorrows of Empire,
"army wags say facetiously that there are only two man-made objects that can be seen from outer space - the Great Wall of China and Camp Bondsteel". Bondsteel
will also double as Kosovo's Abu Ghraib - the largest prison in the independent entity, where prisoners can be held indefinitely without charges pressed and without
defense attorneys. Taxi to the Dark Side, which has just won an Oscar for best documentary, applies not only to Bagram in Afghanistan but also to Bondsteel in
Kosovo.
Protection racket Kosovo's "independence" has been brewing since 1999. A single 1999 photo tells the whole story - establishing beyond doubt those elusive "international community"
ties. The photo unites Hashim Thaci, then head of terrorist outfit UCK and current prime minister of Kosovo; Bernard Kouchner, then UN administrator of Kosovo
and current French foreign minister in the Nicolas Sarkozy administration; Sir Mike Jackson, then commander of NATO's occupying force and current consultant for
a Blackwater-style mercenary outfit; and general Wesley Clark, then NATO supreme commander and now military adviser to Hillary Clinton.
Kosovo's "internationally supervised independence", which was due to be outlined in a meeting in Vienna this Thursday, has nothing to do with autonomy. Exit the
UN, enter the European Union. Amputated from Serbia, Kosovo will be no more than an EU (and NATO) protectorate. EU officials in Brussels confirm that
thousands of bureaucrats, along with police officers, will be deployed to Kosovo, to live alongside more than 17,000 NATO military personnel already in place.
Neo-colonialism is alive and well in "liberated" Kosovo - which will have to put up with a viceroy and will have no say whatsoever in foreign policy. Think of
"liberated" Iraq under the infamous Coalition Provisional Authority run by viceroy L Paul Bremer.
An array of European analysts, not to mention Russians, has compared the current, dangerous state of play in the Balkans to Sarajevo in 1914 that led to the
outbreak of World War II. Blowback, in the short term, will include Serbs refusing to be part of this "independent" state and Albania not recognizing the current
Albania/Serbia/Macedonia borders. Just like a century ago, Central Europe, Russia and the Muslim world are clashing in the Balkans, but this time subjected to a US
screenplay. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in tandem, gave the go-ahead to the Kosovo declaration of independence weeks before the fact. Small,
contrarian EU countries like Slovakia, Romania and Cyprus were imperially overlooked.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has characterized Kosovo's independence as the beginning of the end of contemporary Europe. As British journalist John
Laughland, manager of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group stresses, "The current status of the province is established by UN Security Council resolution 1244,"
which determines that Kosovo is part of Serbia. Thus the US and the EU have - once again - made minced meat of international law.
Why not us?Kurds, especially those in Iraq, might be tempted to believe Kosovo is a meaty precedent pointing to the emergence of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan - their dream,
and Turkey's nightmare. Just as in Kosovo, oil is in play (Kirkuk and its pipelines); and Iraqi Kurdistan, since 1991, had been a sort of extended Camp Bondsteel
anyway, an American-protected enclave in Saddam's Iraq and then a haven of stable "democracy" in Bush-devastated Iraq.
But it's hard to dream about independence when Iraqi Kurdistan has been de facto invaded by 10,000 Turkish troops with the help of US intelligence.
According to Baghdad's al-Mada daily, the president of the Irbil-based Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Massoud Barzani, sent an urgent letter to Bush for
him to personally stop the Turkish invasion. Barzani flatly accuses the Turks of destroying his region's infrastructure. Barzani's spokesman, Falah Mustafa, has placed
all responsibility "on the US government". Peshmerga (Kurdish militia) General Muhammad Mohsen is also furious ("We think the United States is making a big
mistake"). This is as good an intimation of inevitable blowback as any.
Dozens of thousands of Peshmerga are now stationed very close to the Turkish-Iraqi border. According to Mohsen, the red line is along the Mateen mountain range.
He said, "The Peshmergas told [the Turks] if you go any further we will kill you." Also according to Mohsen, Barzani theatrically told him, "I will be the first to die in
fighting the Turks."
The official KRG position, endlessly relayed on Kurdish media, is that it has done everything to "limit the activities" of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels in Iraqi
Kurdistan. This has fallen as much on (Turk) deaf ears as Baghdad's feeble official protests. Iraqi Kurdish politician recite the same mantra; the PKK is just an excuse
for the Turks to "prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state".
But then, in the thick of the action, KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani struck quite a different chord. He said the Turks did not attack Kurdish civilians and only
destroyed a few bridges in some desolate mountain passes. Kurdish media though is awash with reports and even video of damage to Kurdish villages. So what's
going on?
Turkey's invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan is a graphic show of force - a sort of "shock and awe" in slow motion, meaning this is a player to be reckoned with in both the
Middle East and Central Asia. Turkey - with much more firepower than Serbia, and a NATO member to boot - has set its objectives with precision: to bomb the
KRG's credibility, and to imprint the extent of its reaction in case the Kurdish go for autonomy, including control of the oil-rich Kirkuk area in Iraq. At the same time,
this is a message to Washington (don't trample us or we destabilize the only "stable" part of Iraq) and to Baghdad (let's do business; we need some of your oil and a
lot of your water for our development).
So much for Kurdistan's dream of independence - inside Iraq as much as for the 12 million Kurds living in Turkey. They are left with a few rumblings, an attempt at
downplaying the whole thing, and the obligation of facing the fact that the US, once again, has sold them short. Not to mention the Kurds, once again, they are sold
short.
The KRG's Barzani and current Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, eternal Iraqi Kurdish leaders, rival warlords and wily opportunists, had already sold PKK Kurds short
15 years ago during a joint offensive with the Turkish army (See Double-crossing in Kurdistan Asia Times Online, November 2, 2007). They had vocally promised
this would never happen again. It's happening right now. Thus Turkey wins, hands down - driving a wedge between Washington and Iraqi Kurds.
Blowback, in this case, may be long in coming, but Washington is bound to taste it. Turkey will clinch an oil deal with Russia and will buy Iranian gas and co-exploit
Iranian oil in the Caspian. As for Iraqi Kurds - seeing red against both Washington and Ankara - more than ever they won't stop dreaming of becoming the new
Kosovo, on their own terms.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at
pepeasia at yahoo.com.
US Policy in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean
Special Report;
US Policy in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean:
Time to Stop Choosing Sides, and to Start Choosing Strategic InterestsDefense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis - April 13, 2005 Wednesday
Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS.
<1> A nation's foreign and strategic policies exist solely to protect and further the nation's interests, sovereignty, and
security. The furtherance of these interests often necessitates compromise, collaboration, and patience, but the ultimate goal remains constant. Too often, in all
countries, however, the process and structural continuity of the foreign and strategic policy tools are given greater priority and weight than the fundamental goal. As
with all aspects of the ageing process, fear of change takes precedence over the furtherance of survival goals. Arteries calcify and become brittle, and an aloof manner
indicates not strength and calmness but the fact that rigidity has replaced perceptiveness.
There is a saying that insanity is defined by continuing to repeat the same processes and expecting different outcomes. To a large extent, that is what we get when we
give greater priority to the process than to the purpose of our foreign and strategic policy tools.
It is in this context that we can say that US policy toward the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean regions is not based on realistic, current, and balanced
assessments of US strategic interests, nor even on a balanced and realistic accretion of historic friendships, treaty obligations, or past interests. That is not to say that
the matter of interests, treaties, and historic friendships play no part in current US policy in this critical area of the world, but rather these key factors now play only a
secondary role in how the US operates in the region.
But added to the problem of systemic sclerosis, it is also true that nations accustomed to the safety which their strategic power gives them feel that they can afford not
to look too seriously into the consequences of their international activities and policies. Miles Copeland, the author of The Game of Nations, and a seasoned Eastern
Mediterranean and Middle East hand, once made the comment that US foreign policy was merely US domestic politics carried out abroad. Not US domestic policy
carried out abroad: domestic politics .
Certainly there was the logic of US national interests behind the early development of US strategic policies toward the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean: the
need to ensure US access to oil; the need to contain the USSR, the principal strategic rival of the US and the West; the need to bolster NATO -- the principal
alliance structure for US and Western defenses -- and to safeguard US and related transit and trade routes through the Mediterranean and Suez Canal; and so on. All
of these vital interests (and other subsidiary interests) were enabled through the development of treaty and alliance structures designed specifically to achieve the
natural goals of a sovereign state operating as a global power.
In the Cold War, the continued strength of NATO's southern flank was of paramount importance in the containment of Soviet military capability. The US commitment
to Greece and Turkey was key in this, as was the US commitment to Iran. Indeed, by whimsically abandoning support for the Shah of Iran, then-President Jimmy
Carter gave a fillip to Soviet survival, and enabled the Cold War to last longer than it possibly would have.
But since the end of the Cold War in 1990, the US has experienced nothing in this region which could directly and immediately jeopardize the survival of the United
States as an entity. It has experienced only side-shows; enough to give it sufficient pause to re-evaluate only tactically and transitorily some aspects of its policy. As a
result, changes in strategic realities -- particularly with the end of the Cold War and the resultant break-up of the USSR and Yugoslavia -- have been dealt with by
adding patches to a US strategic policy which was formulated to meet an entirely different set of circumstances. Even the attempt to bend the old NATO structure to
the fluid and asymmetric threats which emerged in the 1990s and later was like a farmer attempting to use his tractor in the vegetable patch of his retirement home.
Just because they exist, we tend to use the wrong tools for the job at hand.
By dealing on an ad hoc basis with narrow interests within the region, and dealing with these interests in isolation and with the wrong tools, the ramifications of the
patchwork accretion of actions, dictums, and expediencies have been allowed to build into a grotesque distortion, which has achieved a life of its own. Policies which
should have been reviewed a decade ago have continued to develop unrealistically. Policies which were implemented for domestic US reasons have been allowed to
continue simply because no-one knows how to stop them. US allies in the region try to read US desires and intentions on the basis of logic, but the logic most often
escapes them.
Clearly, the entire Balkans, Caucasus, Black Sea, and Mashreq<2> strategic situations -- not to mention the realities of the European Union states, the aspirations of
Russia, Iran, Ukraine, Georgia, and so on -- have changed beyond recognition merely in the past decade. If this was a purely business environment, it would have
been logical to undertake a clean-sheet re-evaluation of the situation, and to draft a new grand strategy for the region. But that has not occurred. New grand strategic
movements have occurred by default, but they have not been fully, and contextually, thought through, at least in Washington, where historic interest groups -- whether
Arabist in nature, or pro-Israel, or pro-Turkey, or anti-Russian, or anti-European, or pro-European, or pro-energy -- have each fought passionately to retain or
improve their position.
As a result, US policy today is based entirely on how well these respective groups have been able to build and protect their interests. And if US policy, as it is
implemented on the ground in the contiguous and interrelated region of the Middle East, Balkans, and Eastern Mediterranean is misshapen, it is merely a reflection of
what is happening in Washington. There, the battles rage between both vested interests, and vested ignorances.
The thought of a "clean sheet" re-evaluation of US policy clearly frightens bureaucrats in Washington as well as US friends and enemies alike in the region. It is not
something which can be done easily. Nor can US policies, and entrenched interests or structures be "put on hold" while such a re-evaluation is undertaken. An hiatus
or sudden implantation of a totally new policy would be tantamount to a revolution, and revolutions causes chaos and unpredictable results. Rather, this over-arching
reassessment needs to be undertaken comprehensively across all levels of the Administration and Congress so that the underlying essentials can be identified and
gradually strengthened, and the outworn or distorted aspects reduced and eliminated.
Obviously, to get to such a situation implies that the various cultures of the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency would all
be able to agree on what US interests, obligations, and desires are for the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans (as well as for other areas of the world). Herein lies
the problem. The cultures of the State Department, Defense Department, and CIA, are so different that even when they can agree on what constitute US interests,
they cannot agree on implementation, and each propose their own skill-sets as the most vital to achieve the goals. If they have succeeded in anything, then it has been
in preventing "short-timers", the elected and appointed officials (who are the only ones to hold the public's proxy and mandate), from making profound policy
initiatives.
In 2003, I published a report, and made a number of speeches, which said specifically that the US was withdrawing its extensive military force structure from
Western Europe -- principally Germany and Italy -- and that these forces would not return to those old Cold War bases. My report was immediately attacked,
vilified, and ridiculed by a number of US ambassadors in Eastern Europe, and yet within weeks the US Defense Department was making it clear that the report was
absolutely correct. And history has vindicated that reporting.<3>
Apart from the end of the Cold War itself, this was the most fundamental change in US strategic projection in 50 years, and yet the State Department appeared to
believe that it was not happening. They appeared as King Canute, attempting to hold back the tide.
We now have the situation of the sudden decision, announced on November 4, 2004, by the United States Government to recognize a change of name in what had
become known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, to merely "the Republic of Macedonia". I don't particularly have a problem with that. Both Greece
and the former Yugoslav republic can make their respective arguments, although only Greece can claim the lineage which the ancient Macedonian conquest of the
Hellenistic city-states created. By conquering the city-states, Philip of Macedon, and his son, Alexander, assumed the mantle of Hellenism, and conquered and spread
culture in its name. But the fact of US recognition of the name change is interesting because of why it was done, and how it highlights US Government decisionmaking
on the region.
Let us forget, for a moment, that the US decision was taken abruptly and that it offended Greece, the country which is, essentially, now the most significant strategic
partner of the US in South-Eastern Europe. [I say this because Turkey has for some years become a questionable and unreliable ally of the US and Europe, partly
because of corruption, but partly also because the Turks have recognized correctly that the Cold War is over, and that they have other interests to protect, and only
some of these interests coincide with the interests of the US and the West.]
Moving US Strategic Assets Out of Albania. But putting that aside for the moment, the real rationale for the US policy change regarding the former Yugoslav republic
of Macedonia was the fact that US military and intelligence facilities in Albania were being sabotaged and attacked, and this was threatening the continuity of logistical
and other support to US forces in the Serbian province of Kosovo. As a result, the US needed to quickly move its assets out of Albania -- a fact which has yet to be
acknowledged or explained -- and to relocate them in Macedonia. Cooperation by Skopje was fast and effective, and the trade-off regarding the recognition of the
name "Republic of Macedonia" was made, by the US Government, on the basis of simple expedience. No real thought was given to the consequences, or to the real
questions which this decision raised.
Certainly, the State Department would have advised the White House that the change in name recognition would create a backlash from Greece, and from Greek-
American voters in the US. The decision to proceed with the trade-off with Skopje would have been taken because the backlash would have been considered to
have been manageable. After all, where is Greece going to go, strategically? Greece needs its alliance with the US to help counterbalance Turkey, among other things.
But what the underlying cause of the decision -- that is, the attacks on, and insecurity of the US facilities in Albania -- means is that the Albanian security situation
reflects the volatility of the clan-based rivalries and the related narco-trafficking and criminal activities which are linked with global terrorism. But by admitting this as
the basis for the need to move facilities out of Albania, the US would then have to admit that this terrorism-related criminal activity, and particularly narco-trafficking,
is intrinsically linked into the al-Qaida and Iranian-backed terrorist infrastructure of the region, and into the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which now, under new
names, controls the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Significantly, part of the trade-off which Washington made with Skopje was that Skopje backed-off from its vociferous claims about the ethnic-Albanian National
Liberation Army (NLA) which has been attempting to break up the former Yugoslav area of Macedonia. The NLA is a re-emerged part of the KLA; it is linked with
al-Qaida, and with the Iranian terrorist infrastructure in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Raska in Southern Serbia, and in Serbia's Kosovo area.
The irony of this begins to emerge. The US rewards Skopje for stopping expressions of concern about Albanian terrorism which is also the cause of the US having to
move its assets out of Albania itself. Why is this? Because no-one in the State Department or Defense Department is willing to admit that US support for this terrorist
and narco-trafficking base of Albanians in 1999 -- when the US led NATO into attacks on Serbia in order to assist the KLA -- was wrong. This is part of the
distortion of US foreign and strategic policy: no-one will admit that they made a mistake.
There are many Congressmen on Capitol Hill who understand that this distortion exists with regard to Balkan policy. But equally, there are politicians in both major
parties who supported the KLA during the 1990s, so that today it is impossible for a Republican-controlled Bush White House and Congress to attack the logic and
merit of the 1999 war, waged against Serbia by the then-Democratic Party-controlled Clinton White House. It is difficult for the White House, for example, to
criticize the 1990s support by the Clinton Administration for the al-Qaida -linked KLA without also opening up to criticism some senior members of the Republican
Party.
There is ample evidence to support this analysis, but I raise it only as a reflection of the symptoms of the failure to objectively re-evaluate US policy toward the
Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean region.
Again, it may be possible to say that, despite its disingenuous nature and its potential to upset regional allies, such US policy distortion does not seriously threaten vital
US interests. In other words, to say: yes, this is a problem, but not a major problem.
I would argue that this is a grave avoidance of reality. US policy failures in the Balkans and the failure to realistically re-evaluate US-Turkish relations threaten several
things:
Firstly , long-term planning by the Defense Department to move its primary European basing and power projection capabilities from Western Europe to South-
Eastern Europe is thrown into jeopardy by the potential for renewed war over Kosovo, in Macedonia, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Secondly , it renders meaningless the war on terrorism if its real core and linkages cannot be acknowledged and attacked. The State and Defense departments, and
the CIA, have been constantly warned about the narco-trafficking and terrorism links in the Balkans, but have swept this aside. The State Department, despite having
been presented with concrete intelligence about the activities of narco-traffickers and terrorists in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in southern Serbia, Macedonia, and the
like, has, nonetheless decided to say that there is no terrorism activity related to these areas.
Thirdly , by failing to acknowledge the changed strategic contextual realities and the changes and cracks within the Turkish system, the US reliance on Turkey, and its
support for Turkey, become meaningless, and have damaging regional effects, including sustaining the logistical framework of the Islamist terrorist movements, even
those which are against Turkey's own long-term interests. There has been strong Turkish involvement in supporting Balkan narco-traffickers and terrorist groups,
perhaps unofficially, but certainly with considerable effect.
There has been no re-evaluation despite all of this, and despite the proven links between Bosnian terrorism cells and the 9/11 attackers and even to the Madrid
bombers.
It would be a mistake to think that this problem will go away, or that the war on terrorism has successfully moved the tide against the terrorism and narco-trafficking
infrastructure in the Balkans. The fact that the US has been forced to remove its assets from Albania, despite the quiet manner in which this has been undertaken, is
just one indication of the ongoing degradation of the situation there. And yet the US still refuses to acknowledge that this is integrally linked with the Albanian-based
terrorism underway in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, or that it is at the very heart of the creation of what is already a criminal sub-state in Kosovo,
which is directly under the control of the KLA.
A Deal With Haradinaj and the KLA? The fact that the KLA leader and, until March 8, 2005, Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush (Hilmi) Haradinaj, was indicted
for war crimes and taken to The Hague for trial still has not penetrated the consciousness of what is transpiring. Moreover, in order to somewhat ease the
embarrassment of having backed the wrong side -- the side of al-Qaida, the narco-traffickers, the true genocidal xenophobists, and the criminal gangs -- in Kosovo,
the US is in some ways actively working to let Mr Haradinaj out of prison, so that he can "fight his legal battle from a position of freedom". This is a man charged with
having directly and personally killed many innocent people, not a politician who allegedly allowed things to happen by default. The scandal of this particular case has
yet to break, but suffice it to say that Albanian mafia linked to the KLA have worked through former US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke -- a close
associate of the KLA and a beneficiary of its support -- to approach the US President of the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia (ICTY),
Theodore Meron, to see Haradinaj released.<4> There are reports from within the ICTY that the State Department would approve the release of Haradinaj, and
had, in fact, agreed with Haradinaj in advance of his surrender to the ICTY, that a deal would be struck to ensure that he did not serve prison time for the charges he
faced.
So in order to refuse to correct mistakes, or even acknowledge them, there are many officials within the US bureaucracy who have allowed themselves to be drawn
into what has become almost a circus of foreign policy juggling which -- even by the kindest interpretation -- fails to help the US, the region in question, or the cause
of US ethical leadership and credibility. This will result in more war, more instability, more narcotics on European and US streets, more instability in South-Eastern
Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. And ultimately it will cost the US the respect and loyalty of those allies it has in the region and elsewhere.
But clearly that's more important than admitting that mistakes were made, and need correction.
Footnotes:
1. Written for presentation at the Capitol Hill Conference on FYROM: The Need for Reassessment of US Policy in the Balkans , Longworth House of
Representatives Office Building, US Congress, Washington, DC: April 14, 2005. Gregory Copley is also Chairman of the International Strategic Studies
Association's Balkan & Eastern Mediterranean Policy Council, Editor of the Defense & Foreign Affairs group of publications, and head of the Global Information
System (GIS) intelligence service. He has written extensively on Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean strategic issues, and is the author of numerous books and studies
on strategic issues. He can be reached at email: GRCopley@strategicstudies.org.
2. Cyprus, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestinian Authority, and Syria.
3. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, May 2, 2003: The New US and the New Europe: The US Prepares Move of German-based Forces to Serbia-
Montenegro, Bulgaria and Romania , and Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, June 30, 2003: US State Dept., CIA War Against Pentagon Breaks Into the Open With
Profound Impact on Strategic Policy . As well, see for example, Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, June 18, 2003: US Interests in the Balkans: Balancing Perceptions,
Realities and Strategic Need . That report noted:
... Despite statements by the US State Department, the US will do what the Defense Department is advocating. It will move most of the US forces out of Germany.
Most, indeed, are already deployed out of the region, in Iraq, for example. Those forces which return to Europe will start to utilize basing in South-Eastern Europe.
Romania and Bulgaria have been mentioned as most likely to be the alliance partners of choice, because they have access to an area long denied to the US: the Black
Sea. Consideration has been given to Serbia-Montenegro, as well, because history has determined that Belgrade, for example, remains a critical cross-road of trade
in the region and its influence on the Danube artery is vital. Albania, too, must be considered by the US, because of its access to the Mediterranean.
All of this will occur over time, and not as a single, sudden move. Indeed, it is necessary to buffer the changes so that they do not also have a negative impact on the
economy of Germany, which benefits enormously from the US investment. And the US cannot afford to allow the creation of a Berlin-centric European Union which
could emerge as a hostile and destabilizing force, opposing the US. It would be foolhardy for the US to encourage such a development.
4. Meron, a professor of law at New York University, was a member of the US official delegation to the Rome talks in 1998, at which the establishment of the
International Criminal Court (ICC) was discussed. At that conference, he reflected the US line, which was in complete opposition to the foundation of the ICC, but
subsequently accepted to be President of the ICC's subsidiary court, the ICTY.
US Policy in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean:
Time to Stop Choosing Sides, and to Start Choosing Strategic InterestsDefense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis - April 13, 2005 Wednesday
Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS.
<1> A nation's foreign and strategic policies exist solely to protect and further the nation's interests, sovereignty, and
security. The furtherance of these interests often necessitates compromise, collaboration, and patience, but the ultimate goal remains constant. Too often, in all
countries, however, the process and structural continuity of the foreign and strategic policy tools are given greater priority and weight than the fundamental goal. As
with all aspects of the ageing process, fear of change takes precedence over the furtherance of survival goals. Arteries calcify and become brittle, and an aloof manner
indicates not strength and calmness but the fact that rigidity has replaced perceptiveness.
There is a saying that insanity is defined by continuing to repeat the same processes and expecting different outcomes. To a large extent, that is what we get when we
give greater priority to the process than to the purpose of our foreign and strategic policy tools.
It is in this context that we can say that US policy toward the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean regions is not based on realistic, current, and balanced
assessments of US strategic interests, nor even on a balanced and realistic accretion of historic friendships, treaty obligations, or past interests. That is not to say that
the matter of interests, treaties, and historic friendships play no part in current US policy in this critical area of the world, but rather these key factors now play only a
secondary role in how the US operates in the region.
But added to the problem of systemic sclerosis, it is also true that nations accustomed to the safety which their strategic power gives them feel that they can afford not
to look too seriously into the consequences of their international activities and policies. Miles Copeland, the author of The Game of Nations, and a seasoned Eastern
Mediterranean and Middle East hand, once made the comment that US foreign policy was merely US domestic politics carried out abroad. Not US domestic policy
carried out abroad: domestic politics .
Certainly there was the logic of US national interests behind the early development of US strategic policies toward the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean: the
need to ensure US access to oil; the need to contain the USSR, the principal strategic rival of the US and the West; the need to bolster NATO -- the principal
alliance structure for US and Western defenses -- and to safeguard US and related transit and trade routes through the Mediterranean and Suez Canal; and so on. All
of these vital interests (and other subsidiary interests) were enabled through the development of treaty and alliance structures designed specifically to achieve the
natural goals of a sovereign state operating as a global power.
In the Cold War, the continued strength of NATO's southern flank was of paramount importance in the containment of Soviet military capability. The US commitment
to Greece and Turkey was key in this, as was the US commitment to Iran. Indeed, by whimsically abandoning support for the Shah of Iran, then-President Jimmy
Carter gave a fillip to Soviet survival, and enabled the Cold War to last longer than it possibly would have.
But since the end of the Cold War in 1990, the US has experienced nothing in this region which could directly and immediately jeopardize the survival of the United
States as an entity. It has experienced only side-shows; enough to give it sufficient pause to re-evaluate only tactically and transitorily some aspects of its policy. As a
result, changes in strategic realities -- particularly with the end of the Cold War and the resultant break-up of the USSR and Yugoslavia -- have been dealt with by
adding patches to a US strategic policy which was formulated to meet an entirely different set of circumstances. Even the attempt to bend the old NATO structure to
the fluid and asymmetric threats which emerged in the 1990s and later was like a farmer attempting to use his tractor in the vegetable patch of his retirement home.
Just because they exist, we tend to use the wrong tools for the job at hand.
By dealing on an ad hoc basis with narrow interests within the region, and dealing with these interests in isolation and with the wrong tools, the ramifications of the
patchwork accretion of actions, dictums, and expediencies have been allowed to build into a grotesque distortion, which has achieved a life of its own. Policies which
should have been reviewed a decade ago have continued to develop unrealistically. Policies which were implemented for domestic US reasons have been allowed to
continue simply because no-one knows how to stop them. US allies in the region try to read US desires and intentions on the basis of logic, but the logic most often
escapes them.
Clearly, the entire Balkans, Caucasus, Black Sea, and Mashreq<2> strategic situations -- not to mention the realities of the European Union states, the aspirations of
Russia, Iran, Ukraine, Georgia, and so on -- have changed beyond recognition merely in the past decade. If this was a purely business environment, it would have
been logical to undertake a clean-sheet re-evaluation of the situation, and to draft a new grand strategy for the region. But that has not occurred. New grand strategic
movements have occurred by default, but they have not been fully, and contextually, thought through, at least in Washington, where historic interest groups -- whether
Arabist in nature, or pro-Israel, or pro-Turkey, or anti-Russian, or anti-European, or pro-European, or pro-energy -- have each fought passionately to retain or
improve their position.
As a result, US policy today is based entirely on how well these respective groups have been able to build and protect their interests. And if US policy, as it is
implemented on the ground in the contiguous and interrelated region of the Middle East, Balkans, and Eastern Mediterranean is misshapen, it is merely a reflection of
what is happening in Washington. There, the battles rage between both vested interests, and vested ignorances.
The thought of a "clean sheet" re-evaluation of US policy clearly frightens bureaucrats in Washington as well as US friends and enemies alike in the region. It is not
something which can be done easily. Nor can US policies, and entrenched interests or structures be "put on hold" while such a re-evaluation is undertaken. An hiatus
or sudden implantation of a totally new policy would be tantamount to a revolution, and revolutions causes chaos and unpredictable results. Rather, this over-arching
reassessment needs to be undertaken comprehensively across all levels of the Administration and Congress so that the underlying essentials can be identified and
gradually strengthened, and the outworn or distorted aspects reduced and eliminated.
Obviously, to get to such a situation implies that the various cultures of the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency would all
be able to agree on what US interests, obligations, and desires are for the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans (as well as for other areas of the world). Herein lies
the problem. The cultures of the State Department, Defense Department, and CIA, are so different that even when they can agree on what constitute US interests,
they cannot agree on implementation, and each propose their own skill-sets as the most vital to achieve the goals. If they have succeeded in anything, then it has been
in preventing "short-timers", the elected and appointed officials (who are the only ones to hold the public's proxy and mandate), from making profound policy
initiatives.
In 2003, I published a report, and made a number of speeches, which said specifically that the US was withdrawing its extensive military force structure from
Western Europe -- principally Germany and Italy -- and that these forces would not return to those old Cold War bases. My report was immediately attacked,
vilified, and ridiculed by a number of US ambassadors in Eastern Europe, and yet within weeks the US Defense Department was making it clear that the report was
absolutely correct. And history has vindicated that reporting.<3>
Apart from the end of the Cold War itself, this was the most fundamental change in US strategic projection in 50 years, and yet the State Department appeared to
believe that it was not happening. They appeared as King Canute, attempting to hold back the tide.
We now have the situation of the sudden decision, announced on November 4, 2004, by the United States Government to recognize a change of name in what had
become known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, to merely "the Republic of Macedonia". I don't particularly have a problem with that. Both Greece
and the former Yugoslav republic can make their respective arguments, although only Greece can claim the lineage which the ancient Macedonian conquest of the
Hellenistic city-states created. By conquering the city-states, Philip of Macedon, and his son, Alexander, assumed the mantle of Hellenism, and conquered and spread
culture in its name. But the fact of US recognition of the name change is interesting because of why it was done, and how it highlights US Government decisionmaking
on the region.
Let us forget, for a moment, that the US decision was taken abruptly and that it offended Greece, the country which is, essentially, now the most significant strategic
partner of the US in South-Eastern Europe. [I say this because Turkey has for some years become a questionable and unreliable ally of the US and Europe, partly
because of corruption, but partly also because the Turks have recognized correctly that the Cold War is over, and that they have other interests to protect, and only
some of these interests coincide with the interests of the US and the West.]
Moving US Strategic Assets Out of Albania. But putting that aside for the moment, the real rationale for the US policy change regarding the former Yugoslav republic
of Macedonia was the fact that US military and intelligence facilities in Albania were being sabotaged and attacked, and this was threatening the continuity of logistical
and other support to US forces in the Serbian province of Kosovo. As a result, the US needed to quickly move its assets out of Albania -- a fact which has yet to be
acknowledged or explained -- and to relocate them in Macedonia. Cooperation by Skopje was fast and effective, and the trade-off regarding the recognition of the
name "Republic of Macedonia" was made, by the US Government, on the basis of simple expedience. No real thought was given to the consequences, or to the real
questions which this decision raised.
Certainly, the State Department would have advised the White House that the change in name recognition would create a backlash from Greece, and from Greek-
American voters in the US. The decision to proceed with the trade-off with Skopje would have been taken because the backlash would have been considered to
have been manageable. After all, where is Greece going to go, strategically? Greece needs its alliance with the US to help counterbalance Turkey, among other things.
But what the underlying cause of the decision -- that is, the attacks on, and insecurity of the US facilities in Albania -- means is that the Albanian security situation
reflects the volatility of the clan-based rivalries and the related narco-trafficking and criminal activities which are linked with global terrorism. But by admitting this as
the basis for the need to move facilities out of Albania, the US would then have to admit that this terrorism-related criminal activity, and particularly narco-trafficking,
is intrinsically linked into the al-Qaida and Iranian-backed terrorist infrastructure of the region, and into the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which now, under new
names, controls the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Significantly, part of the trade-off which Washington made with Skopje was that Skopje backed-off from its vociferous claims about the ethnic-Albanian National
Liberation Army (NLA) which has been attempting to break up the former Yugoslav area of Macedonia. The NLA is a re-emerged part of the KLA; it is linked with
al-Qaida, and with the Iranian terrorist infrastructure in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Raska in Southern Serbia, and in Serbia's Kosovo area.
The irony of this begins to emerge. The US rewards Skopje for stopping expressions of concern about Albanian terrorism which is also the cause of the US having to
move its assets out of Albania itself. Why is this? Because no-one in the State Department or Defense Department is willing to admit that US support for this terrorist
and narco-trafficking base of Albanians in 1999 -- when the US led NATO into attacks on Serbia in order to assist the KLA -- was wrong. This is part of the
distortion of US foreign and strategic policy: no-one will admit that they made a mistake.
There are many Congressmen on Capitol Hill who understand that this distortion exists with regard to Balkan policy. But equally, there are politicians in both major
parties who supported the KLA during the 1990s, so that today it is impossible for a Republican-controlled Bush White House and Congress to attack the logic and
merit of the 1999 war, waged against Serbia by the then-Democratic Party-controlled Clinton White House. It is difficult for the White House, for example, to
criticize the 1990s support by the Clinton Administration for the al-Qaida -linked KLA without also opening up to criticism some senior members of the Republican
Party.
There is ample evidence to support this analysis, but I raise it only as a reflection of the symptoms of the failure to objectively re-evaluate US policy toward the
Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean region.
Again, it may be possible to say that, despite its disingenuous nature and its potential to upset regional allies, such US policy distortion does not seriously threaten vital
US interests. In other words, to say: yes, this is a problem, but not a major problem.
I would argue that this is a grave avoidance of reality. US policy failures in the Balkans and the failure to realistically re-evaluate US-Turkish relations threaten several
things:
Firstly , long-term planning by the Defense Department to move its primary European basing and power projection capabilities from Western Europe to South-
Eastern Europe is thrown into jeopardy by the potential for renewed war over Kosovo, in Macedonia, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Secondly , it renders meaningless the war on terrorism if its real core and linkages cannot be acknowledged and attacked. The State and Defense departments, and
the CIA, have been constantly warned about the narco-trafficking and terrorism links in the Balkans, but have swept this aside. The State Department, despite having
been presented with concrete intelligence about the activities of narco-traffickers and terrorists in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in southern Serbia, Macedonia, and the
like, has, nonetheless decided to say that there is no terrorism activity related to these areas.
Thirdly , by failing to acknowledge the changed strategic contextual realities and the changes and cracks within the Turkish system, the US reliance on Turkey, and its
support for Turkey, become meaningless, and have damaging regional effects, including sustaining the logistical framework of the Islamist terrorist movements, even
those which are against Turkey's own long-term interests. There has been strong Turkish involvement in supporting Balkan narco-traffickers and terrorist groups,
perhaps unofficially, but certainly with considerable effect.
There has been no re-evaluation despite all of this, and despite the proven links between Bosnian terrorism cells and the 9/11 attackers and even to the Madrid
bombers.
It would be a mistake to think that this problem will go away, or that the war on terrorism has successfully moved the tide against the terrorism and narco-trafficking
infrastructure in the Balkans. The fact that the US has been forced to remove its assets from Albania, despite the quiet manner in which this has been undertaken, is
just one indication of the ongoing degradation of the situation there. And yet the US still refuses to acknowledge that this is integrally linked with the Albanian-based
terrorism underway in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, or that it is at the very heart of the creation of what is already a criminal sub-state in Kosovo,
which is directly under the control of the KLA.
A Deal With Haradinaj and the KLA? The fact that the KLA leader and, until March 8, 2005, Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush (Hilmi) Haradinaj, was indicted
for war crimes and taken to The Hague for trial still has not penetrated the consciousness of what is transpiring. Moreover, in order to somewhat ease the
embarrassment of having backed the wrong side -- the side of al-Qaida, the narco-traffickers, the true genocidal xenophobists, and the criminal gangs -- in Kosovo,
the US is in some ways actively working to let Mr Haradinaj out of prison, so that he can "fight his legal battle from a position of freedom". This is a man charged with
having directly and personally killed many innocent people, not a politician who allegedly allowed things to happen by default. The scandal of this particular case has
yet to break, but suffice it to say that Albanian mafia linked to the KLA have worked through former US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke -- a close
associate of the KLA and a beneficiary of its support -- to approach the US President of the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia (ICTY),
Theodore Meron, to see Haradinaj released.<4> There are reports from within the ICTY that the State Department would approve the release of Haradinaj, and
had, in fact, agreed with Haradinaj in advance of his surrender to the ICTY, that a deal would be struck to ensure that he did not serve prison time for the charges he
faced.
So in order to refuse to correct mistakes, or even acknowledge them, there are many officials within the US bureaucracy who have allowed themselves to be drawn
into what has become almost a circus of foreign policy juggling which -- even by the kindest interpretation -- fails to help the US, the region in question, or the cause
of US ethical leadership and credibility. This will result in more war, more instability, more narcotics on European and US streets, more instability in South-Eastern
Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. And ultimately it will cost the US the respect and loyalty of those allies it has in the region and elsewhere.
But clearly that's more important than admitting that mistakes were made, and need correction.
Footnotes:
1. Written for presentation at the Capitol Hill Conference on FYROM: The Need for Reassessment of US Policy in the Balkans , Longworth House of
Representatives Office Building, US Congress, Washington, DC: April 14, 2005. Gregory Copley is also Chairman of the International Strategic Studies
Association's Balkan & Eastern Mediterranean Policy Council, Editor of the Defense & Foreign Affairs group of publications, and head of the Global Information
System (GIS) intelligence service. He has written extensively on Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean strategic issues, and is the author of numerous books and studies
on strategic issues. He can be reached at email: GRCopley@strategicstudies.org.
2. Cyprus, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestinian Authority, and Syria.
3. See Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, May 2, 2003: The New US and the New Europe: The US Prepares Move of German-based Forces to Serbia-
Montenegro, Bulgaria and Romania , and Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, June 30, 2003: US State Dept., CIA War Against Pentagon Breaks Into the Open With
Profound Impact on Strategic Policy . As well, see for example, Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, June 18, 2003: US Interests in the Balkans: Balancing Perceptions,
Realities and Strategic Need . That report noted:
... Despite statements by the US State Department, the US will do what the Defense Department is advocating. It will move most of the US forces out of Germany.
Most, indeed, are already deployed out of the region, in Iraq, for example. Those forces which return to Europe will start to utilize basing in South-Eastern Europe.
Romania and Bulgaria have been mentioned as most likely to be the alliance partners of choice, because they have access to an area long denied to the US: the Black
Sea. Consideration has been given to Serbia-Montenegro, as well, because history has determined that Belgrade, for example, remains a critical cross-road of trade
in the region and its influence on the Danube artery is vital. Albania, too, must be considered by the US, because of its access to the Mediterranean.
All of this will occur over time, and not as a single, sudden move. Indeed, it is necessary to buffer the changes so that they do not also have a negative impact on the
economy of Germany, which benefits enormously from the US investment. And the US cannot afford to allow the creation of a Berlin-centric European Union which
could emerge as a hostile and destabilizing force, opposing the US. It would be foolhardy for the US to encourage such a development.
4. Meron, a professor of law at New York University, was a member of the US official delegation to the Rome talks in 1998, at which the establishment of the
International Criminal Court (ICC) was discussed. At that conference, he reflected the US line, which was in complete opposition to the foundation of the ICC, but
subsequently accepted to be President of the ICC's subsidiary court, the ICTY.
The Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria Oil Pipeline (AMBO)
The Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria Oil Pipeline (AMBO)The AMBO pipeline project entails a proposed 570-mile, 750,000-barrel-per-day (bbl/d) pipeline connecting the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Burgas with the
Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. AMBO allows sea borne oil exports from Russia and the Caspian Sea region to flow overland between the Black Sea to the
Adriatic, bypassing Turkey's increasingly congested Bosporus and Dardanelles (see map). With oil exports from the Caspian Sea region projected to increase rapidly
in the next decade, the AMBO pipeline proposal is one of several "Bosporus bypass" oil pipeline proposals that are currently under consideration or in development.
A feasibility study for the AMBO project, funded by the U.S. government, was successfully completed in September 2002, with the Albanians approving the
proposed route across their territory in December 2003. The project is estimated to cost $1.2 billion, of which $930 million will be provided by international donors
such as the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the U.S.
Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Construction is expected to begin in 2005, and to be completed by 2008. The AMBO Pipeline Corporation, based in
New York, has been established with exclusive rights to develop the project.
Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. AMBO allows sea borne oil exports from Russia and the Caspian Sea region to flow overland between the Black Sea to the
Adriatic, bypassing Turkey's increasingly congested Bosporus and Dardanelles (see map). With oil exports from the Caspian Sea region projected to increase rapidly
in the next decade, the AMBO pipeline proposal is one of several "Bosporus bypass" oil pipeline proposals that are currently under consideration or in development.
A feasibility study for the AMBO project, funded by the U.S. government, was successfully completed in September 2002, with the Albanians approving the
proposed route across their territory in December 2003. The project is estimated to cost $1.2 billion, of which $930 million will be provided by international donors
such as the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the U.S.
Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Construction is expected to begin in 2005, and to be completed by 2008. The AMBO Pipeline Corporation, based in
New York, has been established with exclusive rights to develop the project.
Caspian Pipelines War
CASPIAN PIPELINES WAR"Fifteen years after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, a covert Cold War has sprung up over the issue of developing the energy assets of the Caspian,
with Russia and the United States once again at odds.
Both sides have had successes and failures, and the shadow conflict is not destined to end anytime soon. The case of Azerbaijan epitomizes both the promise and
peril of developing Caspian energy. At issue is the exploitation of a vast reserve of oil and natural gas. In May 2007 the U.S. Energy Information Administration
projected that by 2015 Caspian basin energy production could reach 4.3 million barrels per day, concluding that in addition to the region’s proven reserves of 17
billion to 49 billion barrels, comparable to Qatar at the lower estimate and Libya on the high end. The region could contain an additional reservoir of hydrocarbons up
to 235 billion barrels of oil, roughly equivalent to a quarter of the Middle East's total proven reserves. Nor is oil the only energy deposit there. The Caspian’s potential
natural gas reserves are as large as the region's proven gas reserves and could yield another potential 328 trillion cubic feet of gas. In the initial confrontation, the
Russian Federation enjoyed the advantage of the Soviet-era Transneft monopoly pipeline network, but the system had two major flaws: a decrepit infrastructure and
an orientation toward directing products into the western Soviet Union's production system rather than being geared toward exports. For Azerbaijan, the first of the
post-Soviet potential oil states to seek opportunities to export to lucrative Western markets, these shortcomings substantially reduced Baku’s revenue stream.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Azeri President Haidar Aliyev moved swiftly to procure foreign investment, in 1994 signing the Contract of the Century to
develop Azerbaijan's offshore Caspian Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields. Three years later the 868-mile, 100,000 bpd Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline opened to export
Azeri oil from the Black Sea to Western markets. The pipeline almost immediately ran into problems, limiting exports initially to approximately 40,000 bpd; problems
included unilateral Transneft transit limitations, disputes over transit fees, as Baku objected to Moscow’s $15 per barrel tariff, and the ongoing conflict in Chechnya.
A further factor causing unhappiness in Baku was the fact Transneft was incapable of “batch shipping,” which meant high-grade Azeri light crude was mixed with
lower-grade Russian Urals crude, resulting in a lower per-barrel price. Prior to 1997 Caspian oil exporters had only one major pipeline option, the 210,000 bpd
Atyrau-Samara pipeline from Kazakhstan to Russia. In 1999 the Chechen conflict motivated Russian President Boris Yeltsin to instruct Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
to begin construction of a pipeline bypass to skirt the 90 miles of Chechen territory traversed by the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline; work began Oct. 26. The conflict
combined with other issues reduced Azeri exports via Baku-Novorossiisk in early 2000 to an average of only 10,000 bpd. In April 2000 construction finished on the
$140 million, 204-mile Baku-Novorossiisk bypass via Dagestan to Tikhoretsk. The bypass had a potential capacity of 120,000 bpd, but by then Baku already had
other plans, having worked with neighboring Georgia to develop an alternative pipeline route to the eastern Black Sea coast completely outside of Russian control.
The $600 million, 515-mile Baku-Supsa 100,000 bpd pipeline, essentially a refurbished Soviet-era pipeline, opened in April 1999. In contrast to Transneft’s
extortionate rates, Georgia only charged Azerbaijan $3 per barrel, in contrast to Russia’s $15. Besides the transit revenue, Georgian authorities considered the
possibility of building a refinery at Supsa to process the pipeline’s crude oil. The Baku-Supsa pipeline, however, shared a problem with its Novorossiisk counterpart
in that its exports were forced to use the Turkish Straits for shipping to global markets, and Ankara was unhappy about the Bosporus and Dardanelles being turned
into an energy corridor. Azerbaijan’s third and final export project would finally end dependence on Russia and mollify Turkey in the bargain.
The $3.6 billion, 1,092-mile million bpd Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which began operations in May 2005, was the final element in Azerbaijan’s drive for
independence from the Kremlin over its energy exports. A decision to proceed with construction of the BTC was reached at a meeting of the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe in Istanbul in November 1999, and construction began three years later. Unlike Russia’s insistence on its Transneft monopoly,
Baku showed great flexibility in financing BTC, which is owned by a consortium of energy companies led by BP, with a 30.1 percent stake in the project. Other
significant BTC shareholders include the State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan with 25 percent and Chevron with 8.9 percent. BTC benefited all the transit countries, with
Georgia estimating BTC would boost its national income by 1.5 percent, while Turkey projected $200 million annually in transit fees even as the pipeline lessened the
ecological risks to the Turkish Straits. For Azerbaijan, the fiscal windfall from BTC was projected at as much as $160 billion in revenue over the next 30 years,
though given recent record high oil prices, this is undoubtedly a conservative estimate. The oil revenues generated by BTC in its first year of operation have already
had a significant impact on the Azeri economy, whose gross domestic product grew an extraordinary 41.7 percent in the first quarter of 2007. BTC is also having an
impact on the United States; in May the EIA reported that since the beginning of the year, the United States imported 2.677 million barrels of oil and oil products
from Azerbaijan.
Baku’s energy future seems ever brighter, as many additional projects are on the drawing boards, including a proposed 190-mile pipeline to northwest Iran and the
proposed 6.74 billion 2,485-mile Nabucco natural gas pipeline project, endorsed on June 26 in Vienna by the energy ministers of Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary,
Romania, and Turkey and European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. Another project under consideration is the $3 billion, 1,242-mile Trans-Caspian
Pipeline Project to carry annually 16 billion cubic meters of Turkmen and Azeri natural gas to Turkey and 14 billion cubic meters to Europe. Taken collectively,
Azerbaijan’s energy deals do indeed represent the Contract of the Century". (UPI)
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
ENB:KOSOVO IN-neocolonial-DEPENDENCE
ENB:KOSOVO IN-NEO COLONIAL-DEPENDENCE
Albanian triumph, Serb anger as Kosovo secedes
By Douglas Hamilton1 hour, 45 minutes ago
Kosovo Albanians will proclaim independence from Serbia on Sunday, ending a long chapter in the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia but cementing a bitter ethnicfrontline in the Balkans.Kosovo will be the 6th state carved from the Serb-dominated federation since 1991, after Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Montenegro, and the last toescape Serbia's embrace.The Serbs vow never to give up the land where their history goes back 1,000 years.They will reject independence in defiance of the Albanians and their Western backers and will keep their grip on strongholds in northern Kosovo, making the ethnicpartition of the new state a reality from the start."The influence of Belgrade has ended," Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said. "The success of Kosovo's independence as a new beginning will be clearlymeasured by respect for the rights of minorities, especially Serbs," the former guerrilla promised.Snow blanketed the capital on Sunday morning after triumphant celebrations the night before, thousands of Albanians pouring into the streets, flags in every hand andcar horns blaring. Banners proclaimed "Happy Independence.""Today, a new life begins. The past should not be forgotten, but it belongs to the past, and should be forgiven," the Kosovo daily Koha Ditore wrote.Ten years ago this week, Serb forces fought an Albanian guerrilla uprising, killing civilians who got in the way. Major Western powers were calling for talks. Russiabacked Serbia in its battle with "terrorists."Determined to end a decade of humiliation from Belgrade under the late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, the Albanians fought on until the West, unable to sit powerlessafter other Balkan bloodbaths, bombed Serbia into submission in 1999.Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since Serb forces withdrew in June that year. Promised swift recognition by the United States and major EuropeanUnion powers, Kosovo's 90 percent Albanian majority can now ignore Serb warnings.RAZOR-WIRE"This is the happiest day," said Tahir Bajrami, an elderly Kosovo Albanian who flew from New York to join the celebrations. "We were prisoners, but this marks anew beginning," he said.The European Union will deploy a rule-of-law mission of some 2,000 starting next month to take over from the United Nations. A NATO-led peace force of 16,000troops will stay on.Establishing their writ in Serb-dominated land north of the Ibar River will be their toughest challenge. Serbia says the EU mission is illegitimate because it has no U.N.mandate, and its major ally Russia backs that position.Serbia promised reprisals but kept them secret. Analysts believe any trade, diplomatic or bureaucratic blockade will be relatively short-lived. But they sayimpoverished Kosovo, whose population of 2 million is Europe's youngest, will need a lot of development aid and on-the-spot guidance for years to come.Western powers are also nervously watching for any Kosovo fallout in ethnically divided Bosnia, where some Serbs threaten to secede, breaking up their uneasypartnership with Muslims and Croats in what would be yet another Balkan fragmentation.And in neighboring Macedonia, where NATO and the EU stepped in to cut short an ethnic guerrilla war, the Macedonian-Albanian coalition had its fingers crossedfor a soft landing in Kosovo.NATO peacekeepers were not relying on optimism. French troops prepared concrete and razor-wire barriers to separate Serbs from Albanians in the flashpoint cityof Mitrovica.The commander of NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo, French Lieutenant-General Xavier de Marnhac, said his troops "will react and oppose any provocation thatmay happen during these days, whether from the Albanian or the Serb side."Tens of thousands of Serbs fled Kosovo in 1999, fearing Albanian vengeance. Of the 120,000 who stayed, about half live in the northern enclave. But the rest arescattered in small, isolated and vulnerable villages.Kosovo's declaration will come at a session of parliament to begin at 3.00 p.m. (9 a.m. EST). Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica will address his country at4.00 p.m. (10 a.m. EST).The weather forecast was for heavy snow all day.(Additional reporting by Matt Robinson and Shaban Buza; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Resolution 1244 (1999)Adopted by the Security Council at its 4011th meeting,on 10 June 1999
The Security Council,Bearing in mind the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance ofinternational peace and security,Recalling its resolutions 1160 (1998) of 31 March 1998, 1199 (1998) of 23 September 1998, 1203 (1998) of 24 October 1998 and 1239 (1999) of 14 May 1999,Regretting that there has not been full compliance with the requirements of these resolutions,Determined to resolve the grave humanitarian situation in Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and to provide for the safe and free return of all refugees anddisplaced persons to their homes,Condemning all acts of violence against the Kosovo population as well as all terrorist acts by any party,Recalling the statement made by the Secretary-General on 9 April 1999, expressing concern at the humanitarian tragedy taking place in Kosovo,Reaffirming the right of all refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes in safety,Recalling the jurisdiction and the mandate of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,Welcoming the general principles on a political solution to the Kosovo crisis adopted on 6 May 1999 (S/1999/516, annex 1 to this resolution) and welcoming alsothe acceptance by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of the principles set forth in points 1 to 9 of the paper presented in Belgrade on 2 June 1999 (S/1999/649,annex 2 to this resolution), and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's agreement to that paper,Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region,as set out in the Helsinki Final Act and annex 2,Reaffirming the call in previous resolutions for substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration for Kosovo,Determining that the situation in the region continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security,Determined to ensure the safety and security of international personnel and the implementation by all concerned of their responsibilities under the present resolution,and acting for these purposes under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,Decides that a political solution to the Kosovo crisis shall be based on the general principles in annex 1 and as further elaborated in the principles and other requiredelements in annex 2;Welcomes the acceptance by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of the principles and other required elements referred to in paragraph 1 above, and demands the fullcooperation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in their rapid implementation;Demands in particular that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia put an immediate and verifiable end to violence and repression in Kosovo, and begin and completeverifiable phased withdrawal from Kosovo of all military, police and paramilitary forces according to a rapid timetable, with which the deployment of the internationalsecurity presence in Kosovo will be synchronized;Confirms that after the withdrawal an agreed number of Yugoslav and Serb military and police personnel will be permitted to return to Kosovo to perform thefunctions in accordance with annex 2;Decides on the deployment in Kosovo, under United Nations auspices, of international civil and security presences, with appropriate equipment and personnel asrequired, and welcomes the agreement of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to such presences;Requests the Secretary-General to appoint, in consultation with the Security Council, a Special Representative to control the implementation of the international civilpresence, and further requests the Secretary-General to instruct his Special Representative to coordinate closely with the international security presence to ensure thatboth presences operate towards the same goals and in a mutually supportive manner;Authorizes Member States and relevant international organizations to establish the international security presence in Kosovo as set out in point 4 of annex 2 with allnecessary means to fulfil its responsibilities under paragraph 9 below;Affirms the need for the rapid early deployment of effective international civil and security presences to Kosovo, and demands that the parties cooperate fully in theirdeployment;Decides that the responsibilities of the international security presence to be deployed and acting in Kosovo will include:Deterring renewed hostilities, maintaining and where necessary enforcing a ceasefire, and ensuring the withdrawal and preventing the return into Kosovo of Federaland Republic military, police and paramilitary forces, except as provided in point 6 of annex 2; Demilitarizing the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and other armed Kosovo Albanian groups as required in paragraph 15 below;Establishing a secure environment in which refugees and displaced persons can return home in safety, the international civil presence can operate, a transitionaladministration can be established, and humanitarian aid can be delivered;Ensuring public safety and order until the international civil presence can take responsibility for this task;Supervising demining until the international civil presence can, as appropriate, take over responsibility for this task;Supporting, as appropriate, and coordinating closely with the work of the international civil presence;Conducting border monitoring duties as required;Ensuring the protection and freedom of movement of itself, the international civil presence, and other international organizations;Authorizes the Secretary-General, with the assistance of relevant international organizations, to establish an international civil presence in Kosovo in order to providean interim administration for Kosovo under which the people of Kosovo can enjoy substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and which willprovide transitional administration while establishing and overseeing the development of provisional democratic self-governing institutions to ensure conditions for apeaceful and normal life for all inhabitants of Kosovo;Decides that the main responsibilities of the international civil presence will include:Promoting the establishment, pending a final settlement, of substantial autonomy and self-government in Kosovo, taking full account of annex 2 and of the Rambouilletaccords (S/1999/648);Performing basic civilian administrative functions where and as long as required;Organizing and overseeing the development of provisional institutions for democratic and autonomous self-government pending a political settlement, including theholding of elections;Transferring, as these institutions are established, its administrative responsibilities while overseeing and supporting the consolidation of Kosovo's local provisionalinstitutions and other peace-building activities;Facilitating a political process designed to determine Kosovo's future status, taking into account the Rambouillet accords (S/1999/648);In a final stage, overseeing the transfer of authority from Kosovo's provisional institutions to institutions established under a political settlement;Supporting the reconstruction of key infrastructure and other economic reconstruction;Supporting, in coordination with international humanitarian organizations, humanitarian and disaster relief aid;Maintaining civil law and order, including establishing local police forces and meanwhile through the deployment of international police personnel to serve in Kosovo;Protecting and promoting human rights;Assuring the safe and unimpeded return of all refugees and displaced persons to their homes in Kosovo;Emphasizes the need for coordinated humanitarian relief operations, and for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to allow unimpeded access to Kosovo byhumanitarian aid organizations and to cooperate with such organizations so as to ensure the fast and effective delivery of international aid;Encourages all Member States and international organizations to contribute to economic and social reconstruction as well as to the safe return of refugees anddisplaced persons, and emphasizes in this context the importance of convening an international donors' conference, particularly for the purposes set out in paragraph11 (g) above, at the earliest possible date;Demands full cooperation by all concerned, including the international security presence, with the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia;Demands that the KLA and other armed Kosovo Albanian groups end immediately all offensive actions and comply with the requirements for demilitarization as laiddown by the head of the international security presence in consultation with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General;Decides that the prohibitions imposed by paragraph 8 of resolution 1160 (1998) shall not apply to arms and related matériel for the use of the international civil andsecurity presences;Welcomes the work in hand in the European Union and other international organizations to develop a comprehensive approach to the economic development andstabilization of the region affected by the Kosovo crisis, including the implementation of a Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe with broad internationalparticipation in order to further the promotion of democracy, economic prosperity, stability and regional cooperation;Demands that all States in the region cooperate fully in the implementation of all aspects of this resolution;Decides that the international civil and security presences are established for an initial period of 12 months, to continue thereafter unless the Security Council decidesotherwise;Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Council at regular intervals on the implementation of this resolution, including reports from the leaderships of theinternational civil and security presences, the first reports to be submitted within 30 days of the adoption of this resolution;Decides to remain actively seized of the matter. Annex 1Statement by the Chairman on the conclusion of the meeting of the G-8 Foreign Ministers held at the Petersberg Centre on 6 May 1999The G-8 Foreign Ministers adopted the following general principles on the political solution to the Kosovo crisis:Immediate and verifiable end of violence and repression in Kosovo;Withdrawal from Kosovo of military, police and paramilitary forces;Deployment in Kosovo of effective international civil and security presences, endorsed and adopted by the United Nations, capable of guaranteeing the achievementof the common objectives;Establishment of an interim administration for Kosovo to be decided by the Security Council of the United Nations to ensure conditions for a peaceful and normal lifefor all inhabitants in Kosovo;The safe and free return of all refugees and displaced persons and unimpeded access to Kosovo by humanitarian aid organizations;A political process towards the establishment of an interim political framework agreement providing for a substantial self-government for Kosovo, taking full accountof the Rambouillet accords and the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other countries of the region, andthe demilitarization of the KLA;Comprehensive approach to the economic development and stabilization of the crisis region. Annex 2Agreement should be reached on the following principles to move towards a resolution of the Kosovo crisis:An immediate and verifiable end of violence and repression in Kosovo. Verifiable withdrawal from Kosovo of all military, police and paramilitary forces according to a rapid timetable.Deployment in Kosovo under United Nations auspices of effective international civil and security presences, acting as may be decided under Chapter VII of theCharter, capable of guaranteeing the achievement of common objectives.The international security presence with substantial North Atlantic Treaty Organization participation must be deployed under unified command and control andauthorized to establish a safe environment for all people in Kosovo and to facilitate the safe return to their homes of all displaced persons and refugees.Establishment of an interim administration for Kosovo as a part of the international civil presence under which the people of Kosovo can enjoy substantial autonomywithin the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to be decided by the Security Council of the United Nations. The interim administration to provide transitionaladministration while establishing and overseeing the development of provisional democratic self-governing institutions to ensure conditions for a peaceful and normallife for all inhabitants in Kosovo.After withdrawal, an agreed number of Yugoslav and Serbian personnel will be permitted to return to perform the following functions:Liaison with the international civil mission and the international security presence; Marking/clearing minefields; Maintaining a presence at Serb patrimonial sites; Maintaining a presence at key border crossings.Safe and free return of all refugees and displaced persons under the supervision of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and unimpededaccess to Kosovo by humanitarian aid organizations.A political process towards the establishment of an interim political framework agreement providing for substantial self-government for Kosovo, taking full account ofthe Rambouillet accords and the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other countries of the region, and thedemilitarization of UCK. Negotiations between the parties for a settlement should not delay or disrupt the establishment of democratic self-governing institutions.A comprehensive approach to the economic development and stabilization of the crisis region. This will include the implementation of a stability pact for South-Eastern Europe with broad international participation in order to further promotion of democracy, economic prosperity, stability and regional cooperation.Suspension of military activity will require acceptance of the principles set forth above in addition to agreement to other, previously identified, required elements,which are specified in the footnote below.(1) A military-technical agreement will then be rapidly concluded that would, among other things, specify additionalmodalities, including the roles and functions of Yugoslav/Serb personnel in Kosovo: WithdrawalProcedures for withdrawals, including the phased, detailed schedule and delineation of a buffer area in Serbia beyond which forces will be withdrawn; Returning personnelEquipment associated with returning personnel; Terms of reference for their functional responsibilities; Timetable for their return; Delineation of their geographical areas of operation; Rules governing their relationship to the international security presence and the international civil mission.--------NotesOther required elements:A rapid and precise timetable for withdrawals, meaning, e.g., seven days to complete withdrawal and air defence weapons withdrawn outside a 25 kilometre mutualsafety zone within 48 hours;Return of personnel for the four functions specified above will be under the supervision of the international security presence and will be limited to a small agreednumber (hundreds, not thousands);Suspension of military activity will occur after the beginning of verifiable withdrawals;The discussion and achievement of a military-technical agreement shall not extend the previously determined time for completion of withdrawals.
Kosovo Prepares for Independence
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSPublished: February 17, 2008Filed at 3:19 a.m. ETPRISTINA, Serbia (AP) -- A decade after Serbia sent in troops to crush a rebellion, Kosovo prepared to declare independence on Sunday -- a bold and historicmove to carve a new country out of a corner of Europe long bloodied by ethnic strife.By sidestepping the U.N. and appealing directly to the U.S. and other nations for recognition, Kosovo's independence sets up a showdown with Serbia -- outragedat the imminent loss of its territory -- and Russia, which warns of a dangerous precedent for separatist groups worldwide.Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army whose ethnic Albanian guerrillas clashed with Serb troops in a 1998-99 conflict thatclaimed 10,000 lives, was expected to convene an extraordinary session of parliament Sunday afternoon to proclaim the Republic of Kosovo.On the eve of the Serbian province's bid for statehood, Thaci hailed it as ''a historic day in our effort to create a state.''''We are getting our independence,'' he said in a nationally televised address. ''Everything is a done deal. The world's map is changing.''Underscoring Serbian anger, about 1,000 people staged a noisy protest in Belgrade on Saturday, waving Serbian flags and chanting ''Kosovo is the heart of Serbia.''Kosovo has formally remained a part of Serbia even though it has been administered by the U.N. and NATO since the war ended in 1999. The province is stillprotected by 16,000 NATO-led peacekeepers, and the alliance boosted its patrols over the weekend in hopes of discouraging violence. International police,meanwhile, deployed to back up local forces in the tense north.''It would be best for the Americans to take the Albanians to America and give them a part of their territory, so that they could have a small republic there,'' saidLjubinko Stefanovic, a resident of the ethnically divided northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica.Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership kept details of Sunday's ceremony under wraps, but Thaci was to meet with the parliament speaker at midmorning to formallyrequest a special session. A declaration of independence would be read out in the chamber, where the proceedings were to be broadcast live on television, andlawmakers would be asked to adopt it.The speaker, Jakup Krasniqi, would then proclaim Kosovo independent from Serbia, and lawmakers would vote on the new nation's flag and crest.The Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra planned to play Beethoven's ''Ode to Joy'' at a sports hall, where top leaders would gather for speeches and toasts. Theyplanned to sign their names on giant iron letters spelling out ''NEWBORN'' to be displayed in downtown Pristina, the capital.Fireworks and an outdoor concert were scheduled for later in the evening.Spontaneous street celebrations broke out for a second straight night Saturday, with giddy Kosovars waving red and black Albanian flags and sounding car horns.''This will be a joyful day,'' said Besnik Berisha, a Pristina resident. ''The town looks great, and the party should start.''Ninety percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are ethnic Albanian -- most moderate or non-practicing Muslims, the rest Roman Catholics -- and they see no reason tostay joined to the rest of Christian Orthodox Serbia.With Russia, a staunch Serbian ally, determined to block the bid, Kosovo looked to the U.S. and key European powers for swift recognition of its status as thecontinent's newest nation. That recognition was likely to come Monday at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium.Russian President Vladimir Putin, arguing that independence without U.N. approval would set a dangerous precedent for ''frozen conflicts'' across the former SovietUnion and around the world, pressured the Security Council to intervene.Serbia's government ruled out any military response as part of a secret ''action plan'' drafted earlier this week as a response, but warned that it would downgraderelations with any foreign government that recognizes Kosovo's independence.------Associated Press Writers William J. Kole in Pristina, Dusan Stojanovic in Kosovska Mitrovica and Slobodan Lekic in Belgrade contributed to this report.
Russia warns of Kosovo repercussions
Fri Feb 15, 2008 6:29am ESTBy Christian LoweMOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday international recognition of Kosovo would influence its policy towards the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but it did not say if it would recognize them.Kosovo is expected to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia on Sunday and then be recognized by the United States and most members of the European Union. Russia backs its ally Serbia in opposing the move.Russian officials have linked Kosovo's status to Georgia's separatist regions, saying any recognition of the Serbian province as an independent state would create a legal precedent that would be followed by others."We will, without doubt, have to take into account a declaration and recognition of Kosovo independence in connection with the situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement.The statement, posted on the ministry's Internet site .......made no mention of whether Russia would grant recognition to the two regions.Earlier, Interfax news agency quoted the foreign ministry as saying Russia would change its policy on the breakaway regions if Kosovo was recognized. It later amended its report, removing the reference to a change in policy.The statement on the Internet site said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had talks on Friday with Abkhazia's separatist leader Sergei Bagapsh and Eduard Kokoity, president of South Ossetia's separatist administration.Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from ex-Soviet Georgia in fighting in the 1990s. Some observers have said Russia might grant them recognition in response to Western states recognizing Kosovo.Russia already provides financial aid to both regions and the majority of residents hold Russian passports. Moscow has peacekeeping troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.Russia has stopped short of granting the regions recognition because, analysts say, it fears that could encourage its own separatists.President Vladimir Putin on Thursday described recognition for Kosovo as "immoral and illegal" and said he had a plan on how to respond if Western states back Kosovo's independence.He did not disclose any details of the plan but he said Russia would not "ape" the Western recognition of Kosovo, a signal that Russia's response would not involve Moscow recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia.(Writing by Christian Lowe; editing by Elizabeth Piper)
Albanian triumph, Serb anger as Kosovo secedes
By Douglas Hamilton1 hour, 45 minutes ago
Kosovo Albanians will proclaim independence from Serbia on Sunday, ending a long chapter in the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia but cementing a bitter ethnicfrontline in the Balkans.Kosovo will be the 6th state carved from the Serb-dominated federation since 1991, after Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Montenegro, and the last toescape Serbia's embrace.The Serbs vow never to give up the land where their history goes back 1,000 years.They will reject independence in defiance of the Albanians and their Western backers and will keep their grip on strongholds in northern Kosovo, making the ethnicpartition of the new state a reality from the start."The influence of Belgrade has ended," Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said. "The success of Kosovo's independence as a new beginning will be clearlymeasured by respect for the rights of minorities, especially Serbs," the former guerrilla promised.Snow blanketed the capital on Sunday morning after triumphant celebrations the night before, thousands of Albanians pouring into the streets, flags in every hand andcar horns blaring. Banners proclaimed "Happy Independence.""Today, a new life begins. The past should not be forgotten, but it belongs to the past, and should be forgiven," the Kosovo daily Koha Ditore wrote.Ten years ago this week, Serb forces fought an Albanian guerrilla uprising, killing civilians who got in the way. Major Western powers were calling for talks. Russiabacked Serbia in its battle with "terrorists."Determined to end a decade of humiliation from Belgrade under the late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, the Albanians fought on until the West, unable to sit powerlessafter other Balkan bloodbaths, bombed Serbia into submission in 1999.Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since Serb forces withdrew in June that year. Promised swift recognition by the United States and major EuropeanUnion powers, Kosovo's 90 percent Albanian majority can now ignore Serb warnings.RAZOR-WIRE"This is the happiest day," said Tahir Bajrami, an elderly Kosovo Albanian who flew from New York to join the celebrations. "We were prisoners, but this marks anew beginning," he said.The European Union will deploy a rule-of-law mission of some 2,000 starting next month to take over from the United Nations. A NATO-led peace force of 16,000troops will stay on.Establishing their writ in Serb-dominated land north of the Ibar River will be their toughest challenge. Serbia says the EU mission is illegitimate because it has no U.N.mandate, and its major ally Russia backs that position.Serbia promised reprisals but kept them secret. Analysts believe any trade, diplomatic or bureaucratic blockade will be relatively short-lived. But they sayimpoverished Kosovo, whose population of 2 million is Europe's youngest, will need a lot of development aid and on-the-spot guidance for years to come.Western powers are also nervously watching for any Kosovo fallout in ethnically divided Bosnia, where some Serbs threaten to secede, breaking up their uneasypartnership with Muslims and Croats in what would be yet another Balkan fragmentation.And in neighboring Macedonia, where NATO and the EU stepped in to cut short an ethnic guerrilla war, the Macedonian-Albanian coalition had its fingers crossedfor a soft landing in Kosovo.NATO peacekeepers were not relying on optimism. French troops prepared concrete and razor-wire barriers to separate Serbs from Albanians in the flashpoint cityof Mitrovica.The commander of NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo, French Lieutenant-General Xavier de Marnhac, said his troops "will react and oppose any provocation thatmay happen during these days, whether from the Albanian or the Serb side."Tens of thousands of Serbs fled Kosovo in 1999, fearing Albanian vengeance. Of the 120,000 who stayed, about half live in the northern enclave. But the rest arescattered in small, isolated and vulnerable villages.Kosovo's declaration will come at a session of parliament to begin at 3.00 p.m. (9 a.m. EST). Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica will address his country at4.00 p.m. (10 a.m. EST).The weather forecast was for heavy snow all day.(Additional reporting by Matt Robinson and Shaban Buza; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Resolution 1244 (1999)Adopted by the Security Council at its 4011th meeting,on 10 June 1999
The Security Council,Bearing in mind the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and the primary responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance ofinternational peace and security,Recalling its resolutions 1160 (1998) of 31 March 1998, 1199 (1998) of 23 September 1998, 1203 (1998) of 24 October 1998 and 1239 (1999) of 14 May 1999,Regretting that there has not been full compliance with the requirements of these resolutions,Determined to resolve the grave humanitarian situation in Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and to provide for the safe and free return of all refugees anddisplaced persons to their homes,Condemning all acts of violence against the Kosovo population as well as all terrorist acts by any party,Recalling the statement made by the Secretary-General on 9 April 1999, expressing concern at the humanitarian tragedy taking place in Kosovo,Reaffirming the right of all refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes in safety,Recalling the jurisdiction and the mandate of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,Welcoming the general principles on a political solution to the Kosovo crisis adopted on 6 May 1999 (S/1999/516, annex 1 to this resolution) and welcoming alsothe acceptance by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of the principles set forth in points 1 to 9 of the paper presented in Belgrade on 2 June 1999 (S/1999/649,annex 2 to this resolution), and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's agreement to that paper,Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region,as set out in the Helsinki Final Act and annex 2,Reaffirming the call in previous resolutions for substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration for Kosovo,Determining that the situation in the region continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security,Determined to ensure the safety and security of international personnel and the implementation by all concerned of their responsibilities under the present resolution,and acting for these purposes under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,Decides that a political solution to the Kosovo crisis shall be based on the general principles in annex 1 and as further elaborated in the principles and other requiredelements in annex 2;Welcomes the acceptance by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia of the principles and other required elements referred to in paragraph 1 above, and demands the fullcooperation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in their rapid implementation;Demands in particular that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia put an immediate and verifiable end to violence and repression in Kosovo, and begin and completeverifiable phased withdrawal from Kosovo of all military, police and paramilitary forces according to a rapid timetable, with which the deployment of the internationalsecurity presence in Kosovo will be synchronized;Confirms that after the withdrawal an agreed number of Yugoslav and Serb military and police personnel will be permitted to return to Kosovo to perform thefunctions in accordance with annex 2;Decides on the deployment in Kosovo, under United Nations auspices, of international civil and security presences, with appropriate equipment and personnel asrequired, and welcomes the agreement of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to such presences;Requests the Secretary-General to appoint, in consultation with the Security Council, a Special Representative to control the implementation of the international civilpresence, and further requests the Secretary-General to instruct his Special Representative to coordinate closely with the international security presence to ensure thatboth presences operate towards the same goals and in a mutually supportive manner;Authorizes Member States and relevant international organizations to establish the international security presence in Kosovo as set out in point 4 of annex 2 with allnecessary means to fulfil its responsibilities under paragraph 9 below;Affirms the need for the rapid early deployment of effective international civil and security presences to Kosovo, and demands that the parties cooperate fully in theirdeployment;Decides that the responsibilities of the international security presence to be deployed and acting in Kosovo will include:Deterring renewed hostilities, maintaining and where necessary enforcing a ceasefire, and ensuring the withdrawal and preventing the return into Kosovo of Federaland Republic military, police and paramilitary forces, except as provided in point 6 of annex 2; Demilitarizing the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and other armed Kosovo Albanian groups as required in paragraph 15 below;Establishing a secure environment in which refugees and displaced persons can return home in safety, the international civil presence can operate, a transitionaladministration can be established, and humanitarian aid can be delivered;Ensuring public safety and order until the international civil presence can take responsibility for this task;Supervising demining until the international civil presence can, as appropriate, take over responsibility for this task;Supporting, as appropriate, and coordinating closely with the work of the international civil presence;Conducting border monitoring duties as required;Ensuring the protection and freedom of movement of itself, the international civil presence, and other international organizations;Authorizes the Secretary-General, with the assistance of relevant international organizations, to establish an international civil presence in Kosovo in order to providean interim administration for Kosovo under which the people of Kosovo can enjoy substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and which willprovide transitional administration while establishing and overseeing the development of provisional democratic self-governing institutions to ensure conditions for apeaceful and normal life for all inhabitants of Kosovo;Decides that the main responsibilities of the international civil presence will include:Promoting the establishment, pending a final settlement, of substantial autonomy and self-government in Kosovo, taking full account of annex 2 and of the Rambouilletaccords (S/1999/648);Performing basic civilian administrative functions where and as long as required;Organizing and overseeing the development of provisional institutions for democratic and autonomous self-government pending a political settlement, including theholding of elections;Transferring, as these institutions are established, its administrative responsibilities while overseeing and supporting the consolidation of Kosovo's local provisionalinstitutions and other peace-building activities;Facilitating a political process designed to determine Kosovo's future status, taking into account the Rambouillet accords (S/1999/648);In a final stage, overseeing the transfer of authority from Kosovo's provisional institutions to institutions established under a political settlement;Supporting the reconstruction of key infrastructure and other economic reconstruction;Supporting, in coordination with international humanitarian organizations, humanitarian and disaster relief aid;Maintaining civil law and order, including establishing local police forces and meanwhile through the deployment of international police personnel to serve in Kosovo;Protecting and promoting human rights;Assuring the safe and unimpeded return of all refugees and displaced persons to their homes in Kosovo;Emphasizes the need for coordinated humanitarian relief operations, and for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to allow unimpeded access to Kosovo byhumanitarian aid organizations and to cooperate with such organizations so as to ensure the fast and effective delivery of international aid;Encourages all Member States and international organizations to contribute to economic and social reconstruction as well as to the safe return of refugees anddisplaced persons, and emphasizes in this context the importance of convening an international donors' conference, particularly for the purposes set out in paragraph11 (g) above, at the earliest possible date;Demands full cooperation by all concerned, including the international security presence, with the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia;Demands that the KLA and other armed Kosovo Albanian groups end immediately all offensive actions and comply with the requirements for demilitarization as laiddown by the head of the international security presence in consultation with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General;Decides that the prohibitions imposed by paragraph 8 of resolution 1160 (1998) shall not apply to arms and related matériel for the use of the international civil andsecurity presences;Welcomes the work in hand in the European Union and other international organizations to develop a comprehensive approach to the economic development andstabilization of the region affected by the Kosovo crisis, including the implementation of a Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe with broad internationalparticipation in order to further the promotion of democracy, economic prosperity, stability and regional cooperation;Demands that all States in the region cooperate fully in the implementation of all aspects of this resolution;Decides that the international civil and security presences are established for an initial period of 12 months, to continue thereafter unless the Security Council decidesotherwise;Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Council at regular intervals on the implementation of this resolution, including reports from the leaderships of theinternational civil and security presences, the first reports to be submitted within 30 days of the adoption of this resolution;Decides to remain actively seized of the matter. Annex 1Statement by the Chairman on the conclusion of the meeting of the G-8 Foreign Ministers held at the Petersberg Centre on 6 May 1999The G-8 Foreign Ministers adopted the following general principles on the political solution to the Kosovo crisis:Immediate and verifiable end of violence and repression in Kosovo;Withdrawal from Kosovo of military, police and paramilitary forces;Deployment in Kosovo of effective international civil and security presences, endorsed and adopted by the United Nations, capable of guaranteeing the achievementof the common objectives;Establishment of an interim administration for Kosovo to be decided by the Security Council of the United Nations to ensure conditions for a peaceful and normal lifefor all inhabitants in Kosovo;The safe and free return of all refugees and displaced persons and unimpeded access to Kosovo by humanitarian aid organizations;A political process towards the establishment of an interim political framework agreement providing for a substantial self-government for Kosovo, taking full accountof the Rambouillet accords and the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other countries of the region, andthe demilitarization of the KLA;Comprehensive approach to the economic development and stabilization of the crisis region. Annex 2Agreement should be reached on the following principles to move towards a resolution of the Kosovo crisis:An immediate and verifiable end of violence and repression in Kosovo. Verifiable withdrawal from Kosovo of all military, police and paramilitary forces according to a rapid timetable.Deployment in Kosovo under United Nations auspices of effective international civil and security presences, acting as may be decided under Chapter VII of theCharter, capable of guaranteeing the achievement of common objectives.The international security presence with substantial North Atlantic Treaty Organization participation must be deployed under unified command and control andauthorized to establish a safe environment for all people in Kosovo and to facilitate the safe return to their homes of all displaced persons and refugees.Establishment of an interim administration for Kosovo as a part of the international civil presence under which the people of Kosovo can enjoy substantial autonomywithin the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to be decided by the Security Council of the United Nations. The interim administration to provide transitionaladministration while establishing and overseeing the development of provisional democratic self-governing institutions to ensure conditions for a peaceful and normallife for all inhabitants in Kosovo.After withdrawal, an agreed number of Yugoslav and Serbian personnel will be permitted to return to perform the following functions:Liaison with the international civil mission and the international security presence; Marking/clearing minefields; Maintaining a presence at Serb patrimonial sites; Maintaining a presence at key border crossings.Safe and free return of all refugees and displaced persons under the supervision of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and unimpededaccess to Kosovo by humanitarian aid organizations.A political process towards the establishment of an interim political framework agreement providing for substantial self-government for Kosovo, taking full account ofthe Rambouillet accords and the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other countries of the region, and thedemilitarization of UCK. Negotiations between the parties for a settlement should not delay or disrupt the establishment of democratic self-governing institutions.A comprehensive approach to the economic development and stabilization of the crisis region. This will include the implementation of a stability pact for South-Eastern Europe with broad international participation in order to further promotion of democracy, economic prosperity, stability and regional cooperation.Suspension of military activity will require acceptance of the principles set forth above in addition to agreement to other, previously identified, required elements,which are specified in the footnote below.(1) A military-technical agreement will then be rapidly concluded that would, among other things, specify additionalmodalities, including the roles and functions of Yugoslav/Serb personnel in Kosovo: WithdrawalProcedures for withdrawals, including the phased, detailed schedule and delineation of a buffer area in Serbia beyond which forces will be withdrawn; Returning personnelEquipment associated with returning personnel; Terms of reference for their functional responsibilities; Timetable for their return; Delineation of their geographical areas of operation; Rules governing their relationship to the international security presence and the international civil mission.--------NotesOther required elements:A rapid and precise timetable for withdrawals, meaning, e.g., seven days to complete withdrawal and air defence weapons withdrawn outside a 25 kilometre mutualsafety zone within 48 hours;Return of personnel for the four functions specified above will be under the supervision of the international security presence and will be limited to a small agreednumber (hundreds, not thousands);Suspension of military activity will occur after the beginning of verifiable withdrawals;The discussion and achievement of a military-technical agreement shall not extend the previously determined time for completion of withdrawals.
Kosovo Prepares for Independence
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSPublished: February 17, 2008Filed at 3:19 a.m. ETPRISTINA, Serbia (AP) -- A decade after Serbia sent in troops to crush a rebellion, Kosovo prepared to declare independence on Sunday -- a bold and historicmove to carve a new country out of a corner of Europe long bloodied by ethnic strife.By sidestepping the U.N. and appealing directly to the U.S. and other nations for recognition, Kosovo's independence sets up a showdown with Serbia -- outragedat the imminent loss of its territory -- and Russia, which warns of a dangerous precedent for separatist groups worldwide.Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army whose ethnic Albanian guerrillas clashed with Serb troops in a 1998-99 conflict thatclaimed 10,000 lives, was expected to convene an extraordinary session of parliament Sunday afternoon to proclaim the Republic of Kosovo.On the eve of the Serbian province's bid for statehood, Thaci hailed it as ''a historic day in our effort to create a state.''''We are getting our independence,'' he said in a nationally televised address. ''Everything is a done deal. The world's map is changing.''Underscoring Serbian anger, about 1,000 people staged a noisy protest in Belgrade on Saturday, waving Serbian flags and chanting ''Kosovo is the heart of Serbia.''Kosovo has formally remained a part of Serbia even though it has been administered by the U.N. and NATO since the war ended in 1999. The province is stillprotected by 16,000 NATO-led peacekeepers, and the alliance boosted its patrols over the weekend in hopes of discouraging violence. International police,meanwhile, deployed to back up local forces in the tense north.''It would be best for the Americans to take the Albanians to America and give them a part of their territory, so that they could have a small republic there,'' saidLjubinko Stefanovic, a resident of the ethnically divided northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica.Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership kept details of Sunday's ceremony under wraps, but Thaci was to meet with the parliament speaker at midmorning to formallyrequest a special session. A declaration of independence would be read out in the chamber, where the proceedings were to be broadcast live on television, andlawmakers would be asked to adopt it.The speaker, Jakup Krasniqi, would then proclaim Kosovo independent from Serbia, and lawmakers would vote on the new nation's flag and crest.The Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra planned to play Beethoven's ''Ode to Joy'' at a sports hall, where top leaders would gather for speeches and toasts. Theyplanned to sign their names on giant iron letters spelling out ''NEWBORN'' to be displayed in downtown Pristina, the capital.Fireworks and an outdoor concert were scheduled for later in the evening.Spontaneous street celebrations broke out for a second straight night Saturday, with giddy Kosovars waving red and black Albanian flags and sounding car horns.''This will be a joyful day,'' said Besnik Berisha, a Pristina resident. ''The town looks great, and the party should start.''Ninety percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are ethnic Albanian -- most moderate or non-practicing Muslims, the rest Roman Catholics -- and they see no reason tostay joined to the rest of Christian Orthodox Serbia.With Russia, a staunch Serbian ally, determined to block the bid, Kosovo looked to the U.S. and key European powers for swift recognition of its status as thecontinent's newest nation. That recognition was likely to come Monday at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium.Russian President Vladimir Putin, arguing that independence without U.N. approval would set a dangerous precedent for ''frozen conflicts'' across the former SovietUnion and around the world, pressured the Security Council to intervene.Serbia's government ruled out any military response as part of a secret ''action plan'' drafted earlier this week as a response, but warned that it would downgraderelations with any foreign government that recognizes Kosovo's independence.------Associated Press Writers William J. Kole in Pristina, Dusan Stojanovic in Kosovska Mitrovica and Slobodan Lekic in Belgrade contributed to this report.
Russia warns of Kosovo repercussions
Fri Feb 15, 2008 6:29am ESTBy Christian LoweMOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday international recognition of Kosovo would influence its policy towards the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but it did not say if it would recognize them.Kosovo is expected to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia on Sunday and then be recognized by the United States and most members of the European Union. Russia backs its ally Serbia in opposing the move.Russian officials have linked Kosovo's status to Georgia's separatist regions, saying any recognition of the Serbian province as an independent state would create a legal precedent that would be followed by others."We will, without doubt, have to take into account a declaration and recognition of Kosovo independence in connection with the situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement.The statement, posted on the ministry's Internet site .......made no mention of whether Russia would grant recognition to the two regions.Earlier, Interfax news agency quoted the foreign ministry as saying Russia would change its policy on the breakaway regions if Kosovo was recognized. It later amended its report, removing the reference to a change in policy.The statement on the Internet site said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had talks on Friday with Abkhazia's separatist leader Sergei Bagapsh and Eduard Kokoity, president of South Ossetia's separatist administration.Abkhazia and South Ossetia broke away from ex-Soviet Georgia in fighting in the 1990s. Some observers have said Russia might grant them recognition in response to Western states recognizing Kosovo.Russia already provides financial aid to both regions and the majority of residents hold Russian passports. Moscow has peacekeeping troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.Russia has stopped short of granting the regions recognition because, analysts say, it fears that could encourage its own separatists.President Vladimir Putin on Thursday described recognition for Kosovo as "immoral and illegal" and said he had a plan on how to respond if Western states back Kosovo's independence.He did not disclose any details of the plan but he said Russia would not "ape" the Western recognition of Kosovo, a signal that Russia's response would not involve Moscow recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia.(Writing by Christian Lowe; editing by Elizabeth Piper)
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