http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=767

Strategic Cultural Foundation
June 2, 2007

Another Exam for Russia at the Balkans
Pyotr Iskenderov

Trying to be as dexterous as possible about granting
sovereignty to its restless trustees, Kosovo’s
Albanian extremists, the West shows its unique
foxiness, masquerading its true head-notes and
juggling with arguments.

Should the U.S. and the EU be as resourceful when it
comes to other international crises, the problems of
North Cyprus, Kashmir, of the Kurds, Palestinians, and
who knows what else would be long solved.

“The status quo cannot last longer,” said Herve
Morand, the newly appointed French foreign Minister on
May 28.

And nothing loath, he based his statement on the
bloody anti-Serbian pogroms in Kosovo in March of
2004.

According to him, those events were an indication of
the need to consolidate the province’s status as soon
as possible.

Mind you, he only spoke about granting sovereignty to
Kosovo, never mentioning the possibility of punishment
of those to blame, nor disarmament of the Albanian
militants, nor granting to Serbs real guarantees of
their security, and this is exactly what the draft of
the French resolution tabled at the UN Security
Council is all about.

UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon who has not yet been
sitting in his chair for a mere 6 months is also
rushing the Security Council to come up with a
resolution on Kosovo.

“I hope that the Security Council will approve the
resolution without delay and I am trying to make it
hurry. I personally asked the leaders of a certain
number of nations represented in the Security Council
to support the move,” South Korea’s ex-foreign
minister said several days ago, unfortunately not
offering any explanation why he was not as eager to
call for the UN Security Council to hurry up putting
out the centres of tensions in all the remaining
“hotbeds”.

The main reason behind such haste is that unlike its
views of other regions, the west’s sympathies and
antipathies in regards of Kosovo are as clear as can
be, based on the far-stretching financial and
geopolitical calculations in view of which the
problems of peace-making and fundamental norms of
international law lose their significance.

Placed on the scale of the balance are active leaders
of the Albanian underworld who control prostitution,
slave sales and drug traffic at both the Balkans and
in many countries of the European Union. The
influential pro-Albanian lobby in Europe and the
United States ensures their political security.

Suffice it to recollect the former CIA chief, George
Tenet.

NATO treats the Albanian separatists in Kosovo
especially tenderly.

None other than the “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA)
terrorists staged an alleged mass firing of peaceful
Albanians in the village of Racak in Kosovo, giving
the West the longed-for pretext for the disruption of
the peaceful negotiations at Rambouille and the
go-ahead for the start of bombing Yugoslavia.

In the course of this bombing the KLA and NATO
headquarters maintained close contacts, jointly
directing missile and bomb attacks and preparing a
land operation.

The other sclae of the balance has the Serbs.

The West has for 15 years viewed them as the evil for
all on the Balkans and it has not even once tried to
pretend to be objective over any of the conflicts
involving Serbs.

Even in 2000 when local Albanian extremists staged an
armed riot that was backed by the KLA militants,
Western politicians, diplomats and the military
cracked down indignantly on Belgrade, accusing it of
an alleged refusal to settle the issue with Albanians
in provinces Presevo, Medvedji and Buyanovca.

As for the 5-kilometre NATO-established demilitarized
zone, it separated Kosovo from Serbia from the
territory of the latter. The Yugoslav army and police
were not allowed to enter the zone, whereas Albanian
militants continued to cross the border to Kosovo
uninhibited.

So it was not expected by anyone that the U.S., EU and
NATO would seriously take into account Belgrade’s
interests in Kosovo.

But even given that, what happened in reality was
beyond the worst premonitions.

At present the West is completely prepared to ignore
Serbia that still regards Kosovo as its integral part
according to the UN SC resolution 1244 of June 10,
1999.

Can there be any other interpretation of the statement
made by Condoleezza Rice during her recent visit to
Moscow?

Speaking about the U.S. stance on Serbia she said that
the country should be integrated into Europe, so the
U.S. supports the “Partnership for Peace” initiative
Serbia adopted within the framework of cooperation
with NATO.

“We believe that Serbia and Kosovo should leave the
past behind and start moving on into future,” she
said, also making it clear that she thought highly of
cooperation between Russia’s and the U.S. ambassadors
to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin and Zalmai
Khalilzad, the man who, before taking the current job,
acted as the political mouthpiece in favour of the
U.S. aggression against Iraq in his then position as
the American Ambassador to Baghdad.

No one but Khalilzad authored the phrase:
”the long-term future of Kosovo and Serbia is their
integration in the EU, but to get there Kosovo needs
'internationally supervised sovereignty'”.

As for the Martti Ahtisaari plan, according to Ms.
Rice the United States is doing what it can to make
Russians realise that there exist clear-cut serious
guarantees for the Serbian minority.

Here you are! So this is the biggest snag of Kosovo’s
problem!

It only takes persuading Russia that the plan to grant
sovereignty to Kosovo “clearly and seriously”
guarantees the rights of Kosovo Serbs.

But the U.S. State Secretary keeps silent about the
fact that this document bluntly violates the
international legal status of the Serbian state.

She needs to promise that Kosovo’s Serbs will be taken
care of only for the vindication of the desecration of
the rights of Serbia itself.

By way of translation of such a train of thought into
the plane of American realities we would conclude the
following: should Texans of the Mexican descent fail
settling some dispute with the progeny of local
cowboys, such a problem should be tackled exclusively
within the borders of this state, exclusive of
interference by the federal authorities, Congress and
the White House.

But what about the European Union, to which Washington
is now selling a new sovereign state of drug dealers
and traders in “human commodities”?

Brussels has its own “Kosovo religion”, or the
“Three-No” rule.

Here’s what Hernot Erler, a German minister, whose
country is the 2007 EU and Big-8 Chairman, said: “At
the outset of negotiation over Kosovo the Contact
group succeeded in reaching a consensus on the
principles of solving the problem on the basis of the
“Three-No” principle:

“No” Kosovo division; “no” annexing by other states,
and “no” return of its status before 1999 when Kosovo
was a part of Serbia.”

Based on this, the EU rendered full support to “the
Ahtisaari plan”, which, as Russian diplomats in
private conversations with the author of these lines
acknowledged, was in reality prepared in Brussels.

What can be said about this?

Until 1999 province of Kosovo was a part of Serbia as
an autonomy along the same lines as Voevodina.

So, the decision taken by the Contact Group only
signifies that it reconsidered that status, which is
not tantamount to granting Kosovo its sovereignty.

Moreover, the preamble to UNSC Resolution 1244
confirms the commitment of the members states to the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Union
Republic of Yugoslavia and other states in the region


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