NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen today insisted that their occupation force is “ready to act” in Kosovo to ensure that the government there is able to take over northern border crossings and ensure that the Kosovar Serbs cannot trade with their neighbors across the border.
PM Hashim Thaci insisted that northern Kosovo, the vast majority of whose population is ethnically Serbian, has “no rule and law” and that the national government would have to take over the border crossings to enforce their ban on any and all trade.
The move comes as the Serbs returned to roadblocks near the border crossings to protest the ban on trade. Kosovo politicians blamed the Serbian government, accusing them of plotting to prevent the border closure.
The current row is part of a move since late July, when the national government attacked the border crossings, accusing local police of letting traffic through. NATO has backed the Kosovo government unquestioningly in the dispute, and has condemned calls by the nation’s Serbian minority to maintain ties with the homeland from which they never wanted to secede in the first place.
If it was "okay" for Kosovo to secede from Serbia, why can't part of Kosovo be detached as well? Wasn't this honest Abe's logic in creating West Virginia?
Same double-standard as in Croatia and Bosnia.
Croats and Bosnians can leave Yugoslavia but Serbs cannot leave Croatia and Bosnia.
130,000 died over this.
Then the third double standard of Serbs who cannot leave Croatia and Bosnia, but Albanians who can leave Serbia.
The first was explained by saying that a territory of a former Yugoslav republic can not be split up, but when it came to Serbia that suddenly didn't apply any more.
Who was it that said there is only one rule in the Balkans; the Serbs always lose.
A smugglers dreams cum true…!!!!
I've written pretty extensively about what an inconclusive joke our hunting trip in Kosovo was. Here we are ten years and change later and our little NATO buddies are back at it there. How long before we have to swoop in and make another mess of things in the name of bailing them out?
Jeff
It's not like these are just Europeans. Americans are very much in the middle of things. US embassy in Priština pretty much runs the show and some of the troops occupying the border crossings are American.
thats free trade, yer ass in 9 nay toe style, unlike Libya whare thair is a big dust cloud arising to perserve “contracts” when only the surviving “partisain” cronies are replaced, hows that vampiracal energy empire performing,?, iron poor & anemic, euro trash maggots on parade