Following a meeting today with European Union President Herman Van Rompuy, Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga condemned the notion of Kosovar Serbs having the same right to secession that caused the creation of Kosovo.
“Proposals for partition of Kosovo or exchange of territories are unacceptable, inhuman and anti-historical,” she insisted after the talks. The Kosovar Serbs have hoped to rejoin Serbia, complaining of harsh discrimination in Albanian majority NATO-occupied Kosovo.
Many in the Serb-majority north had been operating as though they were still part of Serbia, trading and traveling freely. Attacks by the central government and the seizure of border posts by NATO put an end to that.
Now NATO is warning that tensions are on the rise again in the north, and that “extremist” sentiment among ethnic Serbs could lead to violence. At the same time, Rompuy and other EU officials praised Jahjaga for her willingness to meet over the tensions, even though she made it clear the Kosovo government will do nothing to answer the grievances causing them.
We are struggling financially here in the U.S., yet we have to pay for this? That Clinton is such a bitch.
The Kosovo Albanian leaders' hypocrisy knows no bounds… The very "state" of Kosovo was founded on secession and terrorism, now they will try and deny that very right to the Serbs in the north. The KLA killed police and government officials and now they have the nerve to scream "terrorism!" when Serbs block roads??? Yes, one KLA/ROSU officer was killed, but it has yet to be revealed if he was killed in self defense, was shot by one of his own during the event, or in fact was assasinated. Either way, this is but one officer compared to dozens if not hundreds killed by KLA thugs in the late 1990s.
It is a fact that Pristina has almost zero control over the Serbian majority populating the areas north fo the Ibar. Despite propaganda by Pristina and its allies, the people there do not want anything to do with ethnic Albanian authorities from Pristina and they will fight to every last one to retain what is left of their freedom. NATO does control the borders/boundaries to some extent, but that will never evolve to ethnic Albanian control. There is no way to bend 98% of the population to the will of 2%. Look at what happened to Serbia in the same situation in the 1990s in Kosovo.
Jesse:
Right on. Thank you for this post.
Thank you for a very informative comment on Kosovo. The whole world knew that the problem in Kosovo was caused by the strong mafia klans, well into the 1980s. Those clans formed in the nineties a movement for the secession of Kosovo, hoping that they can the same favorable treatment from the West as Croatia and Bosnia did. Sure enough, overnight they have been taken off the terrorist list in US, and became freedom fighters. The problem today is that both EU and US continue blocking any investigations in the crimes of Kosovo mighty families. The Prime Minister is the key figure in crime, the Godfather of Albanian crime. EU has come up with a report by Swiss former prosecutor Dick Marti on the activities of Hashim Taci and his crime organizations, and are implicating them in the hineous crime of organ harvesting from Serbs. Yet, the protection continues. Serbs have no security, and the crying of the mafia government is laughable. If they did not manage to secure population, what are they good for? How far will Clinton's go to protect their mess? This is a dusty imperial outpost with criminals in charge, and we are protecting them.
Double standards. And Kosovo was never a state until NATO created it in 2008. So I have no idea of what history of Kosovo she is talking about.
What she is "talking…" is BS, nothing more – what else can be expected? I had never been ashamed of my country (the US) until the bombing of Yugoslavia. It was a revelation, how greatly our ethics had deteriorated.
I said the same thing after the Yugoslavia debacle. I was even more ashamed after working with the UN and EU in Kosovo for years and seeing how biased, unethical, and non-transparent our meddling there has been. The 2004 pogroms being among the worst of the decade… and on top of that, not a single murder of Serbian civilians has been solved by the "multi-ethnic paradise" of Kosovo. It is telling in that one Albanian police officer is killed and they are rounding up suspects and going all out to investigate it, yet they cannot solve the murder of Serbian children swimming in Gorazdevac, the murder of 12 farmers tending their fields near Ljipjan, or the elderly couple killed in their home in Gnjilane 2 years ago. Apparently Serbian victims do not count in the eyes of the government, or in the eyes of our own. No wonder the Serbs in the north want nothing to do with this failed state!
Me too.
Never bought a poppy since and I tell that to the poppy sellers.
And do you know they all agree.
President Atifete Jahjaga has obviously learnt well the lessons of the Libyan fiasco. Accuse the opposition of war crimes (even though you are the worse perpetrator of them) and the "useful idiot" neo-liberal interventionists will back you to continue committing those war crimes and even commit a few war crimes of their own.
Thank God that the European and British economies is now tanking – hopefully it will put the European and British interventionists out of business!
The Serbian majority in the northern two provinces of Kosovo have the same rights to self-determination as did the Muslim majority in the remaining provinces. How can this be such a problem for the European Union, for NATO or for Kosovo leaders? The country line was drawn incorrectly as were most of the lines drawn after the first World War. So redraw the line.
About time the Republic of Serbska was given the right to secede from islamic Bosnia.
Their lives are a misery and the Empire humiliates and bullies them each day.
Bastards.