Don’t forget Yugoslavia

The secrets of the crushing of Yugoslavia are emerging, telling us more about how the modern world is policed. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, this year published her memoir The Hunt: Me and War Criminals. Largely ignored in Britain, the book reveals unpalatable truths about the west’s intervention in Kosovo, which has echoes in the Caucasus.

KLA

The west’s heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose murderous record was set aside. The British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone. Photo: KLA enlistees muster for a recruiting rally in Yonkers, New York
during the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia.

The tribunal was set up and bankrolled principally by the United States. Del Ponte’s role was to investigate the crimes committed as Yugoslavia was dismembered in the 1990s. She insisted that this include Nato’s 78-day bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, which killed hundreds of people in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and tele vision studios, and destroyed economic infrastructure. “If I am not willing to [prosecute Nato personnel],” said Del Ponte, “I must give up my mission.” It was a sham. Under pressure from Washington and London, an investigation into Nato war crimes was scrapped.

Readers will recall that the justification for the Nato bombing was that the Serbs were committing “genocide” in the secessionist province of Kosovo against ethnic Albanians. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, announced that as many as “225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59″ may have been murdered. Tony Blair invoked the Holocaust and “the spirit of the Second World War”. The west’s heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose murderous record was set aside. The British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, told them to call him any time on his mobile phone.

With the Nato bombing over, international teams descended upon Kosovo to exhume the “holocaust”. The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing “a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines”. A year later, Del Ponte’s tribunal announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide in Kosovo. The “holocaust” was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.

That was not all, says Del Ponte in her book: the KLA kidnapped hundreds of Serbs and transported them to Albania, where their kidneys and other body parts were removed; these were then sold for transplant in other countries. She also says there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the Kosovar Albanians for war crimes, but the investigation “was nipped in the bud” so that the tribunal’s focus would be on “crimes committed by Serbia”. She says the Hague judges were terrified of the Kosovar Albanians - the very people in whose name Nato had attacked Serbia.

Indeed, even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of “liberated” Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province. Last February the “international community”, led by the US, recognised Kosovo, which has no formal economy and is run, in effect, by criminal gangs that traffic in drugs, contraband and women. But it has one valuable asset: the US military base Camp Bondsteel, described by the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner as “a smaller version of Guantanamo”. Del Ponte, a Swiss diplomat, has been told by her own government to stop promoting her book.

Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent and multi-ethnic, if imperfect, federation that stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to dominate its “natural market” in the Yugoslav pro vinces of Croatia and Slovenia. By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991, a secret deal had been struck; Germany recognised Croatia, and Yugoslavia was doomed. In Washington, the US ensured that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans and the defunct Nato was reinvented as an enforcer. At a 1999 Kosovo “peace” conference in France, the Serbs were told to accept occupation by Nato forces and a market economy, or be bombed into submission. It was the perfect precursor to the bloodbaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

John Pilger | Saturday, August 16, 2008

Mr. Bush, Enough!!

So you have the colossal audacity, Mr. Bush, to “warn” Russia to pull back? As the wanton, perverse war criminal under whose watch the world saw the crime known as “shock and awe” committed, I’d say you were well out of your mind to suggest that Russia should pull back.

What’s a little shock and awe among inferior people we want to rob and destroy, eh?

What do human beings need an infrastructure for?

Why do they need clean water? Why do they need electricity?

What’s a little torture?

What’s a little regime change? Don’t recall when that was a goal of yours?

What’s a little deviant, perverted sexual experimentation and humiliation?

What’s a few secret detention camps?

What’s wrong with destroying an environment for 4 billion years and generations after generations of people? After all, they’re just rag heads, aren’t they Mr. Bush?

Perhaps when Russia even begins to match your tremendous feats of glory can you speak about pulling back you fool of the worst kind.

You can also tell your number two man to shut up. Cheney said “Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States.”

So how do you plan to answer this erroneously termed “aggression”? He says this will “worsen” relations with the United States? Buddy, relations with the United States could hardly be any worse than they are now.

The United States shows no respect for Russia. The United States shows no respect for any other country weaker than itself, much less a rival as you perceive Russia to be. How about your NATO? Today the west, tomorrow the world, eh? America uber alles!

How about your missile shield breathing down the neck of the Russian nation? There to protect Europe from Iran? The most totally absurd thing that only a moron would believe.

How about your deliberate breaking of your agreements regarding Serbian Kosovo? UN Resolution 1244 which your country agreed to, is the ink dry…you deliberately went against it and recognized Kosovo in total disregard and in violation of that agreement.

And you expect your words to be heeded or even listened to? You are joking! It is said when Caligula went mad he heard laughing.

Do you hear people laughing at you Mr. Bush?

Listening to you, your Vice President, Condi Rice and US and western officials complain about “regime change,” “invasion,” “bloodshed” and “suffering civilians” (in the light of their crimes across the world) have become nothing but laughable at best and highly infuriating and enraging at worst.

You are an idiot!

We seem to recall that when your Israeli friends were absolutely devastating the people of Lebanon, wantonly killing civilians, destroying their country’s infrastructure and destroying their environment also….the flapping jaw of your representative, Condoleezza Rice and your entire administration were saying no ceasefire, no nothing, just keep on going, keep on committing acts of state terrorism on innocent people, keep on committing your war crimes, you have them covered.

Well, Mr. Bush, this is it. Moscow better get this one right: No limited engagement nonsense. Moscow has the moral and legal right to carry out full scale military operations within Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia to ensure the safety of its citizens, to ensure the protection of Abkhazians and Ossetians and to finally destroy NATO plans for the Caucasus region.

No sane, informed, honest, rational person can blame Russia for reacting to a genocide against their own citizens in Georgia. But then you are NONE of those things.

The problem is not what Russia is doing, but how the US is reacting to it. If you were sane, if you were informed, if you were honest, if you were rational, if you were even marginally fair, you should be happy to see Russian forces put an end to the killing of Russian citizens by the Georgian military. But no, your government is advised by lunatics who belong in psychiatric wards instead of the Pentagon and White House. And you, Mr. Bush, belong in an international criminal court to be judged for your crimes against peace and your crimes against humanity.

Pravda | Thursday, August 14, 2008

Zbigniew Brzezinski to be the real power behind an Obama throne

As the United States election race enters the final stretch, Barack Obama as the candidate promising change is revealing his true colours, much to the despair of anyone actually expecting any change.

His recent call to declare Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel, his denial of Palestinans’ right of return, and his support for a Bantustan Palestinian “state” which poses no threat to Israel show how completely he has caved in to the Zionist establishment on that issue.

As President George W Bush calls for early reductions in combat troops in Iraq, Obama’s position on Iraq — a vow to bring troops home within 16 months, excepting a “residual force” — looks less and less like a defining moment in his foreign policy. Whatever happens to troop levels, there is no explicit talk of overriding the plans for 14 permanent bases.

Obama is toeing the line in Afghanistan, too. As NATO casualties continue to mount, surpassing monthly Iraqi casualities as of June this year, he is proposing — now seconded by McCain — that the United States shift up to 15,000 more troops there from Iraq. Just prior to his trip to Afghanistan, he wrote in a New York Times Op Ed, “We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there.” Please, will someone show me the silver lining in an Obama victory in November?

But then none of the above should come as any surprise to those familiar with his chief promoter and foreign policy adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, along with current (and likely future) Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has already entered history as helping “suck the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire.” These are the words of President Jimmy Carter’s Under-Secretary of Defense Walter Slocumbe in March 1979, eight months before the Soviets were successfully “sucked in,” when Gates was CIA chief. The changing of the guard, come November, will change nothing. US foreign policy has a logic which transcends who sleeps in the White House.

What’s especially ghoulish about all this is that there are four Brzezinski offspring who are all onboard the Obama wagon: Mark (director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, and one of the prime movers of the 2004 color revolution in Ukraine); Ian (currently the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and NATO affairs and a backer of Kosovan independence, NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia and US ABM missiles in Poland); Mika, political commentator on MSNBC whose interview with Michele Obama contributed to the general media Obamamia; and finally Matthew, a friend of Ilyas Akhmadov, “foreign minister” and US envoy of the Chechen opposition.

Brzezinski’s brand of anti-Russian, anti-Muslim geopolitics will dominate a future Obama administration. In Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, published last year, he lays out his New World Order agenda without so much as a blush. Apparently, there is a global political awakening going on, the goal of which is “dignity.” Not economic development, not the alleviation of poverty, not national sovereignty against the IMF and World Bank. Just plain old dignity, though Zbig’s brand of dignity is the kind attained through secession, Balkanisation, and the creation of weak statelets for each ethnic minority subservient to the US. Think: Kosovo and — if he has his way — Chechenia. Neo-Wilsonian demagogy in the service not of peace but of US world domination, encirclement of Russia and control of the Arab world.

Zbig said in endorsing Obama: “What makes Obama attractive to me is that he understands that we live in a very different world where we have to relate to a variety of cultures and peoples.” Obama’s alleged global approach and trans-ethnic, trans-racial allure are right out of Zbig’s university textbook, or rather Second Chance, which will be the manual for the Obama campaign and presidency.

Obama is literally a second chance for Brzezinski: having destroyed the Soviet Union and shattered the Warsaw Pact, he now wants to dismember the Russian Federation itself and put the finishing touches on Afghanistan as an impregnable US military base against China, Russia . . . the list is endless. Perhaps Zbig is dreaming of restoring Greater Poland circa 1600 — from the Black Sea to the Baltic, all controlled by petty szlachta aristocrats like . . . the Brzezinskis?

The Economist blog put it best: “A new brain for Barack Obama! It’s 78 years old [Ed. note: it's 80 years old] and it still works perfectly. It belongs to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the peppery ex-national security adviser to Jimmy Carter.”

The messianic idealism of the Obama campaign has not been seen since the days of another Brzezinski creation — Jimmy Carter, who made him national security adviser with disastrous results. Brzezinski’s anti-Russian obsession back in 1976 prompted him to foment the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, which he touted as the greatest single bulwark against Soviet communism. Webster G. Tarpley argues that Brzezinski was even a prime behind-the-scenes mover in the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and installing Ayatollah Khomeini in power in Tehran. Brzezinski cared less about the Middle East and its oil than he did about the need for a centre from which Islamic fundamentalism of the most retrograde type could penetrate the soft southern underbelly of the USSR. For Brzezinski, the space between the southern frontier of the Soviet and the Indian Ocean littoral became an “arc of crisis,” and we have his handiwork to thank for the horrors taking place there to this day.

The 1980 Carter Doctrine — that the US was determined to dominate the Persian Gulf — is at the root of the first Gulf War, of the present Iraq war, and of the possible war on Iran. Brzezinski’s grandiose schemes of world transformation caused a renewal of the Cold War and gave birth to Al-Qaeda, and without Soviet restraint the results could easily have been far more tragic than they turned out to be. By 1980, disillusionment with Carter led to the nightmare of the Reagan regime. But this was of little concern to Brzezinski — a mere blip on his radar screen.

In 2008, we have an obscure Illinois senator, a neophyte with no legislative achievements to speak of, but with a raft of utopian promises, including solving the race problem once and for all. Recession, unemployment and an alarming rise in poverty are of no consequence; a golden age is at hand thanks to his magnetic personality. Since he knows nothing of foreign policy, these matters will be competently managed by the Brzezinski cabal.

But there seems to be one slight hitch. Despite Obama’s slavish pro-Israeli genuflections of late, he is still not trusted by the Jewish lobby. Quite possibly because they know who the power behind the throne-to-be is, and they can’t stomach him, nor he them. Addressing the AIPAC crew in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said, “They operate not by arguing but by slandering, vilifying, demonising. They very promptly wheel out anti-Semitism. There is an element of paranoia in this inclination to view any serious attempt at a compromised peace as somehow directed against Israel.”

But then Brzezinski was a key player in Carter’s 1978 Camp David Accords, much loathed by the Zionists as giving up Sinai in exchange for a cold peace with Egypt. Brzezinski is definitely not a hardcore Zionist, though he’s happy to allow the destruction of Palestine. Perhaps he is, under his suave exterior, still the quintessential Polish anti-Semite, with a vision of the New World Order without Israel at the centre.

If he can keep up the momentum, however, he may be able to outflank the Zionists in Washington and bringing his horse first past the finish line. They are on the defensive these days, what with spy trials, even J Street Project, a Jewish lobby group that — gasp — dares to criticise Israel. Is this, then, the silver lining in an Obama victory?
Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at www.geocities.com/walberg2002/.

Online Journal | Eric Walberg | Thursday, July 24, 2008

US Policy Shift On Iran-Iraq Again Shows Brzezinski Rules In Washington

Looming Attack On Pakistan Spells Nuclear Confrontations With China, Russia & Their Allies

Washington, DC, July 17, 2008 — With the Bush regime sending a top State Department diplomat to sit down with Iranian officials, with signs that the US departure from Iraq may now be accelerated, and with Israel beginning to make deals with Hezbollah, some observers in this capital are beginning to celebrate Peace in Our Time in an outburst of midsummer euphoria. But this perspective is an illusion: the United States and NATO now escalating the hopeless and unwinnable Afghan war, and is preparing to send US and NATO forces on the ground to seize parts of Pakistan, a country which is almost 3 times more populous than Iran, and possesses a nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it. The Bush-Cheney-neocon era in foreign policy is over, and the Brzezinski-Trilateral-Rockefeller-Soros phase of aggression has begun; the US hit list now features Chinese allies like Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan. Brzezinski is striving to put together some huge provocation for the Beijing Olympics, to make the Chinese government lose face and begin disintegrating. The ultimate targets of the new Obama-Brzezinski foreign policy are Russia, China, and the other members and friends of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the main pole of resistance in the world to the designs of Washington and London. The stakes are now much higher than a mere conventional clash in the Persian Gulf. Brzezinski’s adventurism goes far beyond that of the neocons, and objectively places the danger of a thermonuclear exchange on the world agenda. Watch for the Polish-Czech-Lithuanian missile crisis, a Balkan crisis, and a crisis between Georgia and Russia to point the world in this ominous new direction. Read more

Kosovar Government adopts the plan for EU integration

Pristina, KOSOVO - the Government of Kosovo has adopted today the plan for European Integrations for the period 2008 - 2010. The plan foresees all activities to be undertaken by Kosovar Institutions in achieving the EU standards in legislation and administration. The Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi said the EU integration is the main priority of the Kosovar Government.

The adopted document contains the action plan for European partnership, the concept document for bringing Kosovar legislation closer to the EU and foresees structural reforms of public administration in all fields.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi expressed his belief that the road of Kosovo towards the European Union will be shorter than for other countries. The reason for this is the fact that Kosovar legislation, build from scratch after the war in 1999, is overwhelmingly compatible with the EU legislation.

ECICKS | Thursday, April 3, 2008

Russia’s NATO envoy: US military “arming ex-terrorists” in Kosovo

Moscow/Brussels (dpa) - Russia’s firebrand envoy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said Thursday that US military aid to Kosovo amounted to arming “former terrorists.”Responding to news of US President George W Bush approval of military aid to Kosovo, Russia’s ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin warned that such a move could lead to “new terrorist clashes in the Balkans.”

“To give former terrorists weapons for the war against terrorism appears at least amusing if not worse,” the Interfax news agency quoted Rogozin as saying from Brussels.

“It is well known that those in power in Kosovo came in as the organizers and leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which many states recognized as a terrorist organization,” he said.

The US was among the first nations to recognize Kosovo after it split from Serbia, despite heavy protest from Russia, which warned that example of the province’s independence would fan the flames of separatist struggles worldwide. dpa tr adc mga

DPA | Thursday, March 20, 2008

Serb PM hits out at U.S. over plan for Kosovo military aid

BELGRADE, March 20 (RIA Novosti) - A decision to permit U.S. arms deliveries to Kosovo is “another profoundly mistaken step” by Washington, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said on Thursday.On Wednesday, U.S. President George Bush signed a presidential order authorizing military aid to Kosovo, saying that, “the furnishing of defense articles and defense services to Kosovo will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace.”

Kosovo declared unilateral independence from Serbia on February 17. It has so far been recognized by the majority of Western countries, including the U.S. and most EU member states.

“Instead of sending more arms to [Kosovo] Albanians, what is really needed is for the U.S. to resume respecting international law and the UN Charter. Kosovo needs new talks and not new weapons,” Kostunica told the Belgrade-based newspaper Vecernje Novosti.

He said the decision to launch arms supplies confirmed that “the first state under the NATO aegis” had been established.

Kostunica said the move could aggravate problems caused by the violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which guaranteed Serbia’s territorial integrity, and Washington’s approval of the “illegitimate declaration” of independence by Pristina.

The Serbian premier also said his nation had not forgotten “the policy of force” applied by the U.S. in 1999 when the former Yugoslavia suffered 78 days of bombing as NATO sought to end a conflict between Kosovo’s majority Albanian separatists and Serb forces.

Serbia’s long time ally, Russia, is vehemently opposed to Kosovo’s independence, saying the move could serve as a precedent that could trigger a chain reaction in other secessionist regions.

Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin said on Thursday that he would discuss the decision to authorize military assistance to Kosovo at a Russia-NATO Council session.

The worst violence to hit the region since Pristina declared independence broke out in the north of Kosovo on Monday as rioters attacked UN peacekeepers after an operation to retake a UN court building earlier seized by ethnic Serb protestors.

A Ukrainian member of the UN police force in Kosovo later died of wounds sustained during the violence and scores of people, both ethnic Serbs and UN personnel, were injured.

RIA Novosti | Thursday, March 20, 2008

Bush OKs supplying arms to Kosovo

President George W. Bush authorized Wednesday supplying Kosovo with weapons, signaling the establishment of government-to-government relations after recognizing its independence, the White House said.In a memo to the State Department made public by the White House, Bush said: “I hereby find that the furnishing of defense articles and defense services to Kosovo will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace.”

A senior official said the authorization followed US recognition of Kosovo’s independence and was part of the normal process of establishing relations with a new government.

In a comment apparently meant to allay concerns from Serbia and its ally Russia, the official stressed the military restrictions imposed on Kosovo under a plan by former UN special envoy for Kosovo Martti Ahtisaari.

Under the Ahtisaari plan, which is the basis for Kosovo’s supervised independence, Kosovo is allowed a lightly armed 2,500-person security force under NATO oversight and training.

Kosovo, an Albanian-dominated Serbian province under UN administration since 1999, unilaterally declared its independence on February 17. The United States recognized it on March 18, despite strong opposition from Serbia and Russia.

The US official, who asked not to be identified, said the US weapons deliveries were preparing the ground for the future, adding that the United States had struck similar relations with other countries in the region.

Furthermore, the official said, provisions of defense equipment and services would be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The official said that providing military equipment to Kosovo would improve security relations and engagement with Kosovo, promote security and stability throughout the Balkans, improve Kosovo’s capacity to take part in peacekeeping activities, to detect, deter and defeat terrorists, and to deal with humanitarian emergencies.

AFP | Wednesday, March 19, 2008

UN police forced out of Kosovo town after clashes

UN police were forced to withdraw Monday from the Serb-populated part of this flashpoint Kosovo town after coming under attack as they stormed a court occupied by Serbs opposed to independence.Police said more than 100 people were injured as the troops met gunfire and suspected grenade blasts in the worst violence to have flared in Kosovo since its independence declaration a month ago on February 17.

The clashes erupted after UN police and NATO-led KFOR (Kosovo Force) troops surrounded the courthouse in Kosovska Mitrovica for a pre-dawn raid to evict the Serb protestors.

Kosovo police officials said that 63 international security force members were injured in the unrest while hospital sources put the number of Serbs hurt at as many as 80.

Kosovo’s independence has been recognised by many Western countries but Serbia and Kosovo Serbs — backed by Russia — have vehemently rejected the move as illegal.

Serbian President Boris Tadic warned UN and NATO forces against any “excessive reaction” that could spark a further “escalation.”

Outgoing Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica condemned the “use of force” and said Serbia had “begun consultations with Russia over necessary mutual reaction in order to halt all violence against the Serbs.”

Russia earlier called for a resumption of talks on the status of Kosovo, saying the unrest was a result of the territory’s unilateral independence declaration.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon deplored the violence and urged “all communities to exercise calm and restraint,” while the bitter differences between the US and Russia over Kosovo’s independence were highlighted by contrasting responses.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she wanted the Serbian leadership to press Serbs in Kosovo to avoid “provocative action.”

“I do believe the Kosovars are doing everything that they can to maintain calm,” Rice told reporters, referring to the Kosovar Albanians who make up the vast majority of the former Serb province.

But Russia’s ambassador to NATO accused alliance peacekeepers of using excessive force to try and remove the Serbs from the court house and warned against any escalation.

“Why was disproportionate force used against women and children, who were in the justice building?” Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin told AFP at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

“I would like the escalation to stop. Given that there are lot of hidden guns in Kosovo, there could be a lot of bloodshed. The blood of French soldiers, US soldiers and Serbs will be shed.”

“That will mean a new, serious conflict from which no way out will be found,” he warned.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaci accused Belgrade of “inspiring violence,” saying it was “regretful that the Serbian government has not learnt any lesson from the past.”

“They still think they can realize their goals from the past by inspiring violence in new Kosovo,” he added.

Thaci urged Belgrade “to call the Serbian people to be calm and mature. There is no place for violence in a new Kosovo, no need for acts as in Mitrovica today,” Thaci said.

The Serbs in the courthouse — many of whom worked in the judiciary before Kosovo came under UN administration in 1999 — had demanded the establishment of their own court.

As the UN police arrived, about 100 angry Serbs pelted them with stones. Police used tear gas to disperse them and several UN vehicles were set alight.

Dozens of Serbs were arrested during the unrest and some were taken to Pristina for questioning before being released later, police said.

At least 27 of the wounded UN police were Polish, Poland’s national police spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski said in Warsaw, adding they had been pelted with rocks, homemade explosives and possibly shot at.

Kosovo’s NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers have remained in the tense town and witnesses said more troops were seen on the roads leading to Mitrovica.

“NATO condemns, in the strongest terms, violence that we have seen today. NATO will respond firmly to ensure a safe and secure environment,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai said in Brussels.

Northern Kosovo has a 40,000-strong Serb population who are divided from the mainly ethnic Albanian south by the Ibar River, which passes through Mitrovica.

The clashes came on the four-year anniversary of the March 2004 anti-Serb riots by ethnic Albanians in which 19 people were killed and dozens of mediaeval Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed or damaged.

AFP | Jovan Matic | Monday, March 17, 2008

Kosovo overseers say no split, no separate police

VIENNA, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The newly formed International Steering Group (ISG) that will monitor Kosovo’s progress after its declaration of independence on Thursday rejected partition or separate security institutions in the new country.Serbia’s former province seceded on Feb 17. The Serbian government has vowed never to accept the secession and to extend its authority over Serb areas in the territory’s north.

“There will be no partition of the country. That is not foreseen and that is not the intention of this group,” said ISG head Pieter Feith, who is also the EU civilian representative.

A European Union mission that is taking over supervision of Kosovo from the United Nations pulled out of the north over a week ago for security reasons, after mobs attacked embassies in Belgrade and burned down border posts in north Kosovo.

Analysts say that the violent protests, and signs that Belgrade is consolidating its rule, point to a deepening ethnic divide that could lead the new republic to a de facto partition between Serb north and Albanian south.

Dozens of Serb policemen have also failed to report for duty in an eastern region while a Serb minister said Belgrade planned to have its own police service in Serb towns in Kosovo.

Feith said he was not aware of Kosovo police not performing their duties or Serb police being present in Kosovo at this time.

“We will not admit any parallel security institution to manifest itself on the territory of Kosovo,” he told a news conference following the ISG’s first meeting.

Feith said the ISG would also demand that international peacekeepers and police be deployed throughout the territory of Kosovo and have freedom of movement.

The ISG is made up of 15 countries that have recognised Kosovo and want to play a part in its development, among them the United States, Germany, France and Britain.

It aims to implement a plan drawn up by United Nations special envoy Martti Ahtisaari for Kosovo’s future path, including links between the Serb minority and Serbia, protection of religious monuments, minority rights and decentralisation. (Editing by Dominic Evans)

Reuters | Karin Strohecker | Thursday, February 28, 2008

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