Shocking: Warning On Kosovo Recognition

‘Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica warned that any foreign recognition of Kosovo would be viewed as harsh interference in Serbia’s domestic affairs. He also said that integration into Europe would not be considered compensation for any loss of Serbia’s territorial integrity.’ (source:http://www.stratfor.com)

Of course this is not news but I decided to publish if for the sake of being transparent with all sides. Vice-President of Kostunica told me the same thing when I interviewed him in Belgrade in 2000. 

I am not shocked that they don’t want to give up Kosovo. I just don’t get it why? They abused Kosovo in every single way and now they claim that they love it and can’t live without it. Fhew, it’s kind of worrying because they sound like one of those abusing partners who beat the crap out of their partners and then they tell them, with tears and blood in their face:  ’Babe, I can’t live without you. I love you. You know that, don’t you?’

Kind of psychotic, isn’t it? And worrying because they claim to be democrats. Hmmm, democracy in which I’m living in Britain is completely and utterly different. Just take my word for it Mr.Kostunica.

Wake up Serbia, wake up. Check the dictionary and understand the word democracy. Do that for the sake of human rights.

Serbian nationalists have been arrested

Serbian police have arrested 27 nationalist demonstrators who said they were recruiting volunteer guards to fight in Kosovo if the breakaway province tries to separate from Serbia.

Several hundred people, including military veterans and former paramilitaries, gathered at a rally in the central Serbian city of Krusevac to swear allegiance to the “Tsar Lazar Guard”. The group, which claims to have enlisted 5,000 volunteers, is named after a medieval Serbian leader who died fighting the Ottoman Turks in the 1389 battle for Kosovo.

The detainees were wearing black T-shirts with the letters JSO, a symbol of a banned paramilitary group from the 1990s. Authorities said they will start legal procedures against them.

A UN-mediated plan for Kosovo envisions supervised independence for the region, something many Serbs refuse to accept, because they consider the region of Kosovo as Serbia’s historical heartland.

More than 90 percent of Kosovo’s population today is ethnic-Albanian, the Voice of America reports.

http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=22161

Another war in Kosovo?

Serb Volunteers Ready To Fight For Kosovo BELGRADE, May 4

A grouping of Serb veterans and hardline nationalist said on Friday they would form a ”volunteer guard” and take up arms to keep Serbia’’s breakaway Kosovo province, which the West wants to make independent in months, Reuters reported.  ”In the event that independence is proclaimed we are going to be ready,” Zeljko Vasiljevic, president of the Serb Veterans’ Movement, told the crowd. “As of today your task will be to unite volunteers and prepare them for defence of Kosovo,” he said. Vasiljevic said on Friday volunteers would not act outside state institutions and would put themselves at the disposal of Serbian army and police. Organisers said 5,000 people, mostly former veterans, had signed up to join. In a move reminiscent of the Serb paramilitary gangs that roamed Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during a decade of war and atrocities in the 1990s, they said they plan to christen the “Guard of Prince Lazar” in a town in central Serbia on Saturday. Named after the 14th century Serb ruler, the guard, they say, will “never give up” the fight to defend the southern province, if the 2 million ethnic Albanians who now dominate Serbia’’s religious heartland win independence.

http://www.mediafax.ro/english/articole-free/Serb-Volunteers-Ready-To-Fight-For-Kosovo-661546-9.html

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/TZO540161.htm

Is being proud of what you are nationalism?

Etno Engjujt -  Albanian 

A good friend of mine told me that he is worried that nationalism is increasing in Kosovo.

To many individuals, I think that this song, sang by Etno Angels,  Albanian, would seem very nationalistic. The thing is, as a Kosovo-Albanian, I see it from a different perspective.

Let me explain few things briefly. During the war, peoples dignity and identity was stripped off.

People were killed, massacred, raped and majority of the population during 1999 was in exile just because they were Kosovo-Albanians, for nothing else and nothing more. Absurd but true.

Now, I think people have the right to regain what they have lost. They were forced to feel ashamed of who and what they are. They were forced to feel as if they don’t belong to Kosovo.

In this song, you can see young people of Kosovo trying to show that they are proud of who they are. They connect it with history, meaning that they did belong to that land for centuries. In more contemporary way, they try to show that Albanians are not as they are perceived or represented sometimes i.e. Mother Teresa was Albanian; and many other good and famous people are and were Albanians.

As a poor country, Kosovo doesn’t have the means to advertise itself – to show all the good hard-working peoples doings. However, good things and bad things happen in that country, as they happen throughout every country in the world.

But sometimes, or rather usually, talented people are wasted in that country (I’m sure Stephen Hawkings and David Beckham are glad that they are not from that country) but this doesn’t have to be the reason for them not to have human rights.

I see it more as a cry to be respected by others and some sort of defensive mode (especially by youth) as respecting them for what they aren (Albanians), is a must by now, because they have had enough.

Therefore, it’s more of a mixture between pride of what they are and civic nationalism.

One thing that Balkans really needs to learn is to respect and accept each other for whom they are, mind their own business within their own geographical borders and just get on well with their neighbouring or far away countries.

It’s as simple as that.

P.S. Besides, Albanians didn’t ever try to colonize other countries nor try to conquer the world. That is because they are happy to stay where they belong.

UN: independence is future for Kosovo

The United Nations’ envoy to Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, risked the wrath of Serbia by including the word “independence” in his proposals for the breakaway province’s future, presented to the UN Security Council in New York yesterday.

 http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2396014.ece

US objects Russia’s proposals for Kosovo

The United States on Monday came out against Russia’s demand that the United Nations should appoint a new envoy to mediate in the Kosovo crisis in place of former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari.
      According to US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, Ahtisaari is doing a good job dealing with very difficult issues.
      Ahtisaari’s representative Remi Dourlot said that the Kosovo talks, held in Vienna, are now over, and that this would not change. The matter has been turned over to the UN Security Council.
      On Monday, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin walked out of a session of the Security Council, where Ahtisaari’s Kosovo report was being debated.
      Churkin said that the Kosovo talks had been handled poorly.

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/US+opposes

Kosovo sides deadlock on independence plan

VIENNA, AUSTRIA – A year of contentious talks on the future status of Kosovo ended Saturday in a bitter deadlock over a U.N. plan that would set the disputed Serbian province on the road to independence.Serbia’s nationalist prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, warned of “the most dangerous precedent in the history of the U.N.” if the Security Council — which will have the final say — approves the plan.