"Israel Prepares to Recognize Kosovo" ?

Saturday, 20 June 2009 (Palluxo Media)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday his cabinet is readying to recognize the indepenedence of Kosovo in August. His decision comes as a result of recent negotiations with the President Barack Obama.

Knesset member Otniel Schneller said she is concerned about Serbia's nazi past and that Israel is in in "no debt" to Serbia.

The United States has consistently shown its support for the government of Kosovo in the defence of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Netanyahu said that Israel has a very close relationship with the United States and will follow recommendations of Obama administration to recognize Kosovo. Netanyahu explained that negotiated solution for Kosovo was not possible and Israel cannot sit on the sidelines.

As of 20 June 2009, 60 out of 192 sovereign United Nations member states have formally recognised the Republic of Kosovo as an independent state. Notably, a majority of European Union member states have formally recognised Kosovo (22 out of 27). 24 out of 28 NATO member states have recognised Kosovo. Of the four countries that border Kosovo, only Serbia refuses to recognise it.

I don't know what kind of reputation the "Palluxo Media" has ( Never heard of them) but Kosovo's public television RTK has a story alone similar lines. At the same time it should be noted that this story has NOT been reported in any major Israeli media ( Haaretz,Jpost etc). So will see what happens.

No going back for Kosovo, says US

Kosovans have been keen to show their appreciation of the US

US Vice-President Joe Biden has told Kosovo's parliament its independence is "absolutely irreversible" and the only viable option for regional stability.

"The success of an independent Kosovo is a priority for our administration," Mr Biden said in a speech that received several standing ovations from MPs.

Earlier, he received an enthusiastic welcome from crowds of ethnic Albanians in the capital, Pristina.

However, the Serb minority said it was planning to hold anti-US protests.

The US played a leading role in the Nato bombing campaign which expelled Serbian forces from Kosovo a decade ago.

Medal

On the final stage of his three-day tour of the Balkans, Mr Biden became the most senior US official to visit Kosovo since it declared independence in February 2008.

Your independence, is irreversible, absolutely irreversible US Vice-President Joe Biden

The US and more than 50 other countries have recognised its independence, but more than 100 have not, including Serbia and Russia.

"Kosovo's independence was and remains today in my view, in the view of my government, the only viable option for stability in the region," he told a special sitting of the parliament in Pristina.

"And your independence - as I've said in the countries I have visited - your independence, is irreversible, absolutely irreversible," he added to applause from the ethnic Albanian-dominated assembly.

Earlier, after holding talks with President Fatmir Sejdiu, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and other leaders, Mr Biden said he had been awarded the Golden Medal of Freedom, Kosovo's highest honour.

"I don't deserve it, but I received it on behalf of the United States," said the vice-president, who many Kosovans credit with helping them gain independence while he was a senator.

Earlier, thousands of schoolchildren waved US flags along the route his motorcade took from Pristina airport, while posters lined the route declaring "Welcome, and thank you".

Re-engagement

His reception contrasted markedly with that in his previous stop, Serbia, where police lined the streets amid nationalist anger.

MPs from the hardline nationalist Serbian Radical Party held up banners in parliament saying: "Biden, you Nazi scum, go home."

Mr Biden said he did not expect Serbia to recognise Kosovo's independence

Serbian President Boris Tadic told Mr Biden on Tuesday that his country would never give up its claim to Kosovo.

But despite that outstanding issue, and the antipathy of many Serbs to the US because of the Nato bombing campaign in 1999, Mr Biden and the pro-Western Mr Tadic exchanged warm words.

Mr Biden said: "The United States does not, I emphasise, does not expect Serbia to recognise the independence of Kosovo."

"It is not a precondition for our relationship or our support for Serbia becoming part of the European Union," he said.

Mr Tadic said Serbia and the US could move their relationship forward "on the basis of dialogue rooted in mutual respect".

The rare visit by a top US official marks a new effort by President Barack Obama to re-engage with the Balkans, BBC Eastern Europe correspondent Nick Thorpe says.

As well as Serbia and Kosovo, he has also visited Bosnia-Hercegovina. BBC Article

Hero's welcome for Biden in Kosovo

" Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Kosovo on Thursday, receiving a hero's welcome as the most senior US official to visit the Balkan country since Washington backed its split from Serbia last year, AFP reported. Biden's US Air Force Two plane landed at a NATO-controlled airstrip of Pristina airport, where Foreign Minister Skender Hyseni and students bearing US flags were ready to greet him. He then travelled to NATO headquarters in a helicopter and arrived at parliament where huge crowds greeted him with banners, reading: "Welcome Mr Biden", "Kosovo loves the USA" and "Thank you USA" ". FOCUS News Agency

Biden seeks new U.S. start in Balkans

By Adam Tanner
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Vice President Joe Biden makes the highest-level U.S. visit to Serbia in a quarter century this week seeking a new diplomatic start in the Balkans, a region where Washington twice intervened militarily in the 1990s.
In visiting two of Serbia's former adversaries, Bosnia and Kosovo on the same trip, the former U.S. senator with much experience in foreign affairs faces a tricky balancing act where sensitivities about the past wars and divisions remain strong.
"The main point really is that, in a sense, the United States is back; the focus that we had in the 1990s on the region is back," a senior U.S. official told reporters.
"We haven't been as focused on the Balkans in recent years, maybe some of the momentum, for example, in Bosnia, has been lost or, in some cases, reversed."
In 1991 just before the start of the wars that ended Yugoslavia, then Secretary of State James Baker said: "We don't have a dog in this fight." But by 1995 Washington and NATO were bombing Bosnian Serbs and then brokering a peace deal to end a war that killed 100,000 people.
In 1999, the United States and NATO bombed Belgrade in an effort to force rump Yugoslavia to withdraw from Kosovo. A few major buildings in the Serbian capital Belgrade remain in rubble and resentment over the bombing endures.
In recent years, the United States has focused on Kosovo, which declared independence last year, after devoting much attention on warring and postwar Bosnia in the mid 1990s.
"We have had an approach in the last 20 years where we have tried to address what we see as the most critical problems," U.S. Ambassador to Serbia Cameron Munter said in an interview. "What that sometimes leads to is a focus so that those problems sometimes become the defining element of the Balkan policy."
Washington now seeks a broader view of interlocking Balkan issues, he said, a region hoping to join the European Union.
THREE DAYS, THREE COUNTRIES
The vice president arrives on Tuesday in Bosnia, where he meets leaders from both halves of a country divided along ethnic lines. The Bosnian Serb half has acted more assertively since 2006 on boosting its autonomy and the Muslim-Croat half remains stuck in a political and economic morass.
"What the problems are here is a clear demonstration that appeasement does not work," said Raffi Gregorian, a U.S. diplomat who is the deputy peace envoy to Bosnia. "Messages of keep Bosnia quiet but don't do anything have not succeeded on behalf of the international community."
Highlighting the division is an announced protest during Biden's visit by Serb veterans to draw attention to what they call discrimination of non-Muslims in Bosnia. Diplomats and analysts say the ethnic standoff could endanger the entire region's stability and slow EU integration.
Bosnian Serbs are wary about Biden visit and a big U.S. role, but Bosnia's foreign minister welcomed him.
"It is a very clear sign of the willingness of this new administration to engage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to finalize the project that was started during the Clinton Administration," Sven Alkalaj told Reuters.

Serbs in particularly are watching Biden skeptically because of his past criticism of Serb actions in Kosovo, its ex-province that remains a sore point in relations with the West. Biden, who visits Belgrade on Wednesday, is the highest-ranking U.S. official to Serbia since Vice President George Bush in 1983.
By contrast, Biden is likely to receive a warm welcome on Thursday in Kosovo, where he is celebrated as a long-time supporter of Kosovo independence during his years as a U.S. senator. Kosovo is strongly pro-American and the capital Pristina has a Bill Clinton Boulevard and will soon rename one of the city's street after George. W. Bush.
The vice president also had a family link to Kosovo. His son Joseph III, now Delaware's attorney general, served as a U.S. Justice Department adviser in Kosovo in 2001.
(Additional reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo and Fatos Bytyci in Pristina; editing by Alison Williams)

Kosovo was a just war, not an imperialist dress rehearsal

Ten years on, the conflict should be remembered as a responsible western intervention. It is a very different example to Iraq

David Clark
The Guardian, Thursday 16 April 2009

Ten years after Nato jets went into action against Serbia, the Kosovo war remains as controversial as ever. Welcomed by many at the time as evidence of a humanitarian world order in the making, its legacy has been overtaken, subsumed and ultimately distorted by the debate about the war on terror. What Vaclav Havel called "the first war for values" is now more often described as a dangerous precedent. Even Clare Short, a forceful advocate of intervention in the Balkans, attributed Tony Blair's foreign policy errors to the "taste for grandstanding" he acquired in Kosovo.

There are several reasons for this, the most important undoubtedly the effect of the Iraq war in sowing doubt about the legitimacy and efficacy of western military power. In departing from the principle of non-intervention and lacking a UN mandate, Kosovo is often regarded as the original sin that made Iraq possible. Even Russia's invasion and recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been characterised as blowback from Kosovo's declaration of independence a few months before.

Comparisons of this kind confuse more than they clarify. The war in Kosovo was a response to a humanitarian emergency, not a geopolitical power play. Even so, this point is still contested. Self-styled anti-imperialists, all too often apologists for the imperialism of any regime that opposes the west, have constructed an alternative history in which Slobodan Milosevic's crimes are minimised or excused and a rapacious west portrayed as the instigator of violence. In this history, his efforts to reach a negotiated solution were sabotaged at the Rambouillet peace conference by Europe and the US; and the deaths and refugee movements inside Kosovo were caused by Nato bombing.

These critics talk as if the destruction of Bosnia was a figment of the imagination. The reality is that by the time of Rambouillet, western leaders had wised up to Milosevic's game of rope-a-dope in which he negotiated peace in bad faith while continuing to unleash ethnic terror on the ground. They had already endured eight years of it. In Kosovo, Serbian forces had killed 1,500 and driven 270,000 from their homes before Nato acted. The violence accelerated immediately before and after the start of the bombing campaign, but opponents deliberately invert cause and effect.

A survey by eminent statisticians in 2002 confirmed what refugees had always maintained - they were fleeing an organised programme of ethnic slaughter. An analysis of available data revealed a strong correlation between deaths and displacements, and Serbian military activity. There was no correlation with Nato or Kosovo Liberation Army actions. And the speed and extent of Serbia's mobilisation was indicative of a preconceived plan, not a spontaneous reaction to Nato bombing.

About 850,000 people - half Kosovo's Albanian population - were driven out of the country, many with their papers seized to prevent them returning. About 10,000 were murdered by Serbian forces. These atrocities may not have passed the legal test of genocide, but the reality was awful enough. The Serbian state carried out a crime against humanity - a ruthlessly executed plan to change the ethnic composition of Kosovo through expulsion and mass murder.
Had Milosevic completed his ethnic cleansing, the Balkans would be a very different place. A nationalist successor regime in Belgrade would be dedicated to preserving his victorious legacy and destabilising the region with unfulfilled dreams of a Greater Serbia. Hundreds of thousands of Kosovan Albanians would still be in refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia. The expulsion of the Kosovans would have joined al-Qaida's rap sheet of "Crusader" crimes against Muslims, an accusation doubtless echoed by the same critics who condemn Nato for preventing it. Let's not forget that Milosevic waged his war in the name of Orthodox Christian supremacy, or that Ariel Sharon, obsessed with the "Islamic threat" of a Greater Albania, was among his most vocal cheerleaders.

Kosovo also differed radically from the Iraq war in its intended effect on the international system. In the case of Kosovo, it was Russia that acted unilaterally in refusing to accept the balance of international opinion. Every member of Nato and every EU country, and all Serbia's neighbours, supported military action. Operations were conducted through the multilateral structures of Nato, with post-conflict authority handed to the UN. The governments carrying out this intervention knew it was a radical departure, but didn't do it to undermine multilateralism or strengthen US dominance. They wanted the international community to accept that the UN's commitment to individual human rights should count for more than the sovereign rights of states and their rulers. They wanted to enforce international legal norms, not undermine them.

Aspects of Nato's conduct can be criticised. The use of cluster munitions, careless and illegitimate targeting, and high-altitude bombing all resulted in unnecessary loss of life. The failure of Nato troops to prevent revenge attacks on Serbian and Roma civilians dishonoured their humanitarian purpose. But it is bogus to compare such serious errors to state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.

A decade on, many problems remain. Reconciliation between ethnic communities has not been achieved; Serbian enclaves are unwilling to co-operate with the Pristina government; and Serbia still refuses to face up to the loss of sovereignty over Kosovo. Yet independence has not led to the predicted upsurge of ethnic violence and extremism. The region's countries are moving steadily, if awkwardly, towards a new kind of unity as EU members. This includes Serbia, whose democratic government has already handed over Radovan Karadzic to The Hague and is committed to meeting its international obligations. Ultra-nationalists are marginalised, and the region has the opportunity of a future free of violence and despair.

The war in Kosovo was ultimately a question of whether the fall of the Berlin Wall would mark a return to the ethnic barbarism and power politics of the pre-cold war era, or a better phase in European history. That legacy has not been honoured as it should have been. Nevertheless, Kosovo should be remembered as an example of western nations using their power, however imperfectly, to do something good and necessary.

David Clark served as Europe adviser at the Foreign Office, 1997-2001 dkclark@aol.com

Kosovo War massacre: sole survivor found by Telegraph ten years on

Massacre survivor Dren Caka, photographed by the Telegraph in 1999, remembers the night his mother and sisters were murdered by Serbian police in one of the most notorious episodes of the war.

By Neil TweedieLast Updated: 5:25PM BST 01 Apr 2009







Vancouver is almost 6,000 miles from Kosovo but Dren Caka visits his homeland most nights.
He goes back in his dreams, to his home in Milosa Gilica Street in the town of Gjakova where he lived with his extended family, and to the neighbouring pool hall owned by Luli Vejsa, a family friend. Finally, in his darkest moments, he makes the journey to Luli’s house, back to the night of April 1 1999, when the Serbs came.

A decade on from the Kosovo War, that last great exercise in 20th-century European blood-letting, Dren Caka, 20, is a casualty still.
“I have nightmares a lot,” he says, looking out over Vancouver’s glistening waterfront. “I can’t sleep at night and feel constantly tired; I usually have bags under my eyes.”
He speaks with a Canadian accent now, and looks and behaves like a typical young Canadian, but his history separates him from friends who have known nothing but peace and affluence by the Pacific Ocean.
“If you were to look at me walking along you would think ‘he’s just a normal a kid’, but I’m not just a normal kid. When I tell them, when I tell my friends, they are speechless.”
Dren Caka is the sole survivor - the miraculous survivor - of one of the most notorious episodes of the war: the massacre of 19 women and children, including his mother and three sisters, by Serb police. Kosovo has already faded from the popular memory, overtaken by the seismic events of September 11 2001 and their aftermath. Slobodan Milosevic is dead and many of the henchmen responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the former Serbian province have stood trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, but the war continues to cast a shadow over people like Dren.
He was 10 years old in March 1999 when the Serbs began their campaign of deportation and murder against the predominantly ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. On the night of April 1, a week after Nato began bombing Serb forces, the paramilitary police arrived in Milosa Galica Street.
Gjakova - Djakovica to the Serbs - was a particular target, standing as it does in the shadow of the Accursed Mountains, which separate Kosovo from Albania. Members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), fighting for independence from Serbia, were using mountain tracks to import weapons from Albania and the Serbs wanted to choke off the insurgents’ supply routes. That meant clearing Gjakova of its majority Albanian population and fortifying the area.
To escape Nato bombs and Serb reprisals, women and children living in Milosa Galica Street slept in the basement of Luli Vejsa’s pool hall. The men, including Dren’s father, Ali, hid elsewhere - it was thought only males of military age were at risk.
“Ever since I was a kid I’ve known when bad things are going to happen,” says Dren. “Things were getting bad and the adults were talking about it. Helicopters overhead were telling us we must hand in our weapons and no harm would come to us. I didn’t know who was doing the bombing but it didn’t scare me much - my sisters would scream but I would just carry on watching TV. That night, though, I had a really bad feeling.”
Valbone, his mother, said he could stay in the house with his grandparents and aunt and uncle if he wanted, but that she was taking his sisters, Dalina, 14, Delvina, six, and Diona, aged two, to Luli’s basement. Reluctantly, Dren accompanied them.
There were 21 people in the cellar that night: women, children - most of them under 10 years of age - and one man aged 60. Dren and the other children were given sleeping pills. Between two and three o’clock in the morning the door opened, revealing a Serb policeman. One of the men was a neighbour of the Caka family. “He was an okay kind of guy”, says Dren.
“My mom woke me and the first thing I said was ‘I told you so’. There were about six police yelling in Serb and Albanian saying we were KLA and hiding the men. My mother spoke and said we just women and children trying to stay safe.”
The group was taken to Luli’s house. As they arrived a little girl ran for the door. One of the police opened fire, narrowly missing the child. Once inside mothers and children were ordered to sit down in the living room. Then the shooting began.
“A girl called Flaka - she was in her teens - got up to make tea. A policeman pushed her back and fired at her. Her mother got up to get hold of her and was shot, and then the policeman started shooting everybody.”
Luli’s wife and baby daughter were shot next, then Dren’s mother. She fell on top of Diona, shielding her from the bullets. Dalina and Delvina collapsed in a hail of Kalashnikov fire.
“My mother had been changing my baby sister, who turned two that night. One man was shooting inside the house and there was another man shooting through the window.
“I was sitting behind a woman who was quite big and I was kind of lying down when I was shot. There was smoke everywhere because they had set fire to the closet and the guy got his flashlight out to check that everyone was dead. He shot and I could feel the bullet move between my hair. I dropped my head and he took off.”
Diona was still alive under her mother but Dren had lost the use of his right arm and could not help her.
“I tried to save my baby sister but I only had one good arm and the house was smoking up. I knew if I stayed there I would be gone too.”
He lay for five minutes before running from the house, Diona’s cries ringing in his ears. He thinks his oldest sister, dying from her wounds, passed him a glove to cover his nose and mouth from the smoke. He managed to escape over a wall.
When he reached his own home his aunt did not believe what had happened.
“She told me I had a bad dream.”
His grandfather was similarly unimpressed.
“He kind of slapped me – he said ‘snap out of it’. Then he took off my jacket and saw I was soaked with blood. He bandaged me up.”
His father returned at daylight to learn that most of his family had gone.
“He was crying, saying ‘go with your aunt and uncle and I’ll see you in Albania’.
“I said ‘dad can I have one last kiss in case I don’t see you ever again’, and he gave me a kiss and said ‘don’t worry son, you’ll see me’.
Patched up in the local hospital, Dren then travelled by car to the Albanian border with his aunt, uncle and cousin. They were specks in a human tide. Some 700,000 Kosovans were expelled from their homeland between March and June 1999.
The boy spent two months in hospital in the Albanian capital, Tirana, believing his father was dead. until one day he walked through the door.
“I was learning to accept that he was gone. That day when he came to the hospital it was a most amazing day. I was asleep and when I woke up the first thing I saw was my dad. ‘Dad!’ I said, and jumped up and kissed him.”
It was Canada which offered Dren and Ali Caka sanctuary. Dren works as a carpet fitter now; his father remarried and had a second son, Dennis. Dren wears his half-brother’s name in a tattoo on his arm.
“My dad still hasn’t learned to let go. I hope for happiness for my dad - I really do.”
For himself there is memory and a sense of dislocation.
“Vancouver can be fun but boring at the same time. If you don’t have money you get stuck in the boring part.”
Dren loves football and still dreams of returning to Kosovo. He misses the sociability of life there, the evening gatherings in cafes.
“The Serbs and Kosovans in Vancouver play football together now,” he says, before laughing: “Then they have a fight.”
Seaplanes are landing and taking off in Vancouver’s harbour as he speaks. The Rockies provide an impressive backdrop to his adopted home, not unlike the mountains he crossed to escape the war that claimed his loved ones.
“In some ways I’ve had the most amazing life. At that age I didn’t know what Canada was. It is another life here but not the one I wanted.”
The conflict refuses to leave him alone. He has testified twice before the tribunal in The Hague, the first time as a protected (anonymous) witness in the trial of Milosevic. During his second appearance as a witness, in the trial of senior Serb politicians and officers indicted for war crimes, he shed his title of Witness K13 and used his own name. He may be soon be going to The Hague again.
“I want to do it to show people that I haven’t forgotten. I will never forget. I am more than glad to go and testify and get these guys locked up.”
Kosovo is independent of Serbia now, its self-proclaimed status guaranteed by a Nato garrison. The hearings in The Hague are due to conclude in 2011. Will the fate of his mother and sisters ever cease to haunt him?
“Maybe when I get a family of my own - my dad wants me to find a girl in Kosovo - but I will never be 100 per cent. I have nightmares, can’t sleep sometimes. Sometimes when I smile it is the most fake smile I will ever give because I’m just not happy. It’s just something I’m going to have to live with.”
And why, why did he survive?
“I ask that question every day of my life. Is there a purpose for me to be here? I don’t know. “

Kosovo's independence: One year on

Feb 12th 2009
The Economist
Confounding the sceptics, up to a point

NEXT week Kosovo will be one year old. It was the seventh state to emerge from former Yugoslavia. Sceptics predicted dire consequences: the Serb minority would leave, the region would see a new round of violence, Serbia would fall into the hands of extreme nationalists. Happily, none of this has actually happened.

Unlike the other six former Yugoslav countries, Kosovo was technically a province of Serbia in the old Yugoslavia, not a republic, even though over 90% of its 2m people are ethnic Albanians. That distinction gave Russia an excuse to block a United Nations resolution on Kosovo’s status. It also explains why only 54 countries recognise Kosovo’s independence.

The greatest success of Kosovo has been to avert a Serb exodus. Kosovo’s Serbs live mostly in enclaves or in the north of the country, under de facto Serbian control. They are under pressure from Belgrade not to participate in any of Kosovo’s institutions. Yet Serbia now has a firmly pro-European government; in the wake of Kosovo’s independence, the extreme nationalist threat has evaporated, not exploded.

After a slow start EULEX, the European Union’s police and justice mission, deployed across Kosovo in December. For most of 2008 it was hampered by Serbian opposition and by splits within the EU. The former UN administration, which was meant to leave with Kosovo’s independence, has shrunk but not completely disappeared. A 15,000-strong NATO-led force remains.

The bad news is that Kosovo remains poor and its administration weak. Serbia’s government has led a highly effective diplomatic campaign against it and Kosovo has a bad image abroad. Yet it is often unfairly singled out for blame. It lies on a main drug-trafficking route, for instance; but so do some EU members, such as Bulgaria and even Austria.

It is widely believed that Albanians, including Kosovars, play an inordinately large role in Europe’s drug cartels, but research does not often bear this out. According to a report by the Kosovar Stability Initiative, a think-tank, in 2006 only 6% of those arrested for heroin smuggling in Italy were ethnic Albanians; 65% were Italians and 19% were north Africans. Some stereotypes widely believed and repeated about Kosovars abroad are merely racist.
So are Kosovars downcast? Far from it. A recent survey by the European Fund for the Balkans and Gallup found that, among seven western Balkan countries, Kosovo’s people are the most satisfied. They will certainly enjoy their birthday.

Balkan exceptionalism

May 15th 2008
From The Economist print edition

What Serbia's election says about the European Union's enlargement

Illustration by Peter Schrank

A BRITISH tabloid set a high standard for bombast when it once took credit for the re-election of a Tory government with the headline: “It's The Sun Wot Won It”. This week European Union leaders were taking credit for another election upset: the unexpected success of the pro-European coalition led by the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, in the general election on May 11th. The Serbs had “clearly chosen Europe,” said the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. Jan Marinus Wiersma, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, declared that the election was “a form of referendum in which citizens gave their support for the country's future membership of the EU.”

That may be a little premature. It is true that Mr Tadic's block is called the “Coalition for a European Serbia”. His supporters waved the EU flag of gold stars on blue. But Mr Tadic did not win outright, and it matters enormously which parties end up in a new coalition government. If the wrong parties cobble together a deal, they could yet lead Serbia into deeper isolation.

Yet it would be absurd to deny that the EU played a role in the election. European governments agreed to offer Serbia a couple of timely (if symbolic) concessions just days before the vote. Serbs may feel “humiliated” that 19 EU countries have recognised the independence of Kosovo after the province broke away in February, says a diplomat. But the EU also reminded them that Europe is about good things, such as freedom to travel. If it was not exactly the EU “wot won it”, European governments did at least send a signal that they would rather have Serbia in the club than brooding dangerously outside.

That holds true also for Serbia's neighbours in the western Balkans, who are being jollied along with visa concessions and the like, and assured that they enjoy a “European perspective” (to use the Brussels jargon for eventual membership). It all feels rather pragmatic, even generous. And that is odd, because when it comes to enlargement in general, older members of the club are in a foul temper.

It is not only the future that causes alarm. The mood is sulphurous over Romania and Bulgaria, which joined in 2007. Bulgaria has already seen tens of millions of EU funds frozen amid fears of fraud. The figure of suspended aid could rise to billions when a European Commission monitoring report comes out this summer. The new Italian government is talking menacingly about restricting Romanian migrants. The latest Eurobarometer poll on enlargement found majority support for the admission of only one new country: Croatia, a relatively advanced place whose beaches heave with sizzling Italians and Germans each summer. Croatia is on course to join in 2010 or 2011.

Even more paradoxically, some of the countries keenest on admitting Serbia and others have voters who are the most alarmed by enlargement. Migrant-phobic Italy led the way (together with Greece) in arguing for the EU to be flexible over demands that Serbia co-operate with prosecutors hunting war criminals. Austria has lobbied tirelessly for Balkan bits of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, starting with Croatia. Yet Austrian voters now oppose admitting any Balkan country other than Croatia by large margins (and a whopping 81% are against Turkish membership). Similarly, French ministers may rejoice that Serbia's voters choose Europe, but in 2006 France was pushing the idea that future enlargement should be assessed according to the EU's “absorption capacity”, a dangerously vague term that includes voters' “perceptions”. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is publicly against Turkey's membership.

If enlargement is so unpopular, why do so many EU leaders want the credit for Serbia's vote for Europe? There are two, linked explanations. The first is that holding the door open to Balkan countries such as Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia and the rest does not imply support for enlargement in general—it is a specific strategy for preventing further instability in Europe's backyard. And the second is that enlargement mostly works like that.

Consolidation, not enlargement

Arguably, enlargement as a general project does not exist. Moves to expand the EU are more often responses to particular crises, and they trigger big squabbles until it becomes clear that no better alternative exists (the 1995 expansion to take in Finland, Sweden and Austria being the exception). Greece was admitted in 1981 to bind it to the West, even though everybody feared it was not ready. It took nine years of argument to get Spain and Portugal in, amid cries of alarm (loudest in France) over cheap Iberian workers and farm produce. In December 1989, as Communist regimes fell across eastern Europe, the French president, François Mitterrand, proposed that ex-Warsaw Pact nations should be invited to join a loose “European confederation” (the idea died, not least because Mr Mitterrand invited Russia too). The EU hopes of Bulgaria and Romania only became plausible during the Kosovo crisis of 1999, when their airspace was needed to allow NATO jets to bomb Serbia.

Today's Serbia and the other Balkan applicants for entry may not be easy cases. But their admission does not pose “existential” questions for the EU, notes one diplomat, just a lot of hard work on building up clean, capable governments, in which scary nationalists are marginalised. Croatian negotiators even talk smoothly of “consolidation” rather than “enlargement” nowadays. Larger candidates for the EU, notably Turkey and Ukraine, cannot do that. They pose big questions, such as how to relate to the Muslim world or how to live with Russia.

The Serbian election could have been a lot worse. A thumping win for nasty nationalists would have seriously delayed EU expansion into the western Balkans. But supporters of admitting Turkey, say, should avoid premature congratulation. The western Balkans remains an exceptional case. Enlargement as a broader cause was not the winner this week.

The Balkans' bakers keep on rolling

By Nick Thorpe
BBC News, Kosovo

Almost all the bakers of the old Yugoslavia were Albanians, from one small corner of Kosovo. They have lived through war and upheaval but the toughest test for some came in February this year when Kosovo broke away from Serbia.

he first poppies of summer are blood scarlet on the shores of the White Drim river as we drive out of Prizren, up onto the slopes of Mount Pashtrik.

The lunchtime bread in the largest village, Djonaj, is white and so fresh it melts like chocolate in your mouth.

Dine Rexhbecaj is 50 and home for a short break to see his family. He has eight children, six girls and two boys. They live here while he works in distant Zagreb, in Croatia, seven or eight months of the year.

"I like my work," he said. "But I would hope for something better for my children. Now that Kosovo is independent, I hope they can find work here and not travel abroad."

'Bread money'

The village streets bustle with women and children on their way home from school. Four little girls, each dressed in a different shade of pink, giggle by.

In a graveyard beside the road, children play ball, and brown cows graze among red and black Albanian flags.

Houses are being repaired with money sent from abroad, "bread money" one might call it. It goes towards new bathrooms in the traditional extended-family compounds, and to repair the tall outside walls and daunting gateways.

This is a male-dominated society but the men are gone, scattered to the four corners of the Balkans, to Serbia and Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia.

Working a baker's dozen of hours each day, they roll out the much sought after burek - spinach or cheese, potato or meat-filled pies - round breads and crescent-moon-shaped rolls, star-scattered with sesame seeds.

And when they finish their long shifts, the fathers can only dream of the children growing up without them.

"I started work as a baker in Montenegro when I was 13," Alush Maloku tells me in Planeja, a village at the end of a mountain road, hunched against the Albanian border.

"Then I came home and worked as a shepherd for 12 years."

Then he went back into baking, this time in western Serbia. All these places were part of one country, then Yugoslavia.

In 1979 when his father died, he came home to run the village shop. As the eldest son, he had to care for his family.

Trade map

We are sitting barefoot, cross-legged on a rug on his porch, looking across the valley at the ruins of his old house.

We knew we were in trouble when the Serbs stopped delivering our flour Azem Collaku, retired baker

American B52 bombers blasted the Serbs into submission here in 1999 after the Albanian villagers had been driven out. The Serbian army, living in quarters nearby, sustained some of its heaviest losses in the air raids.

Unexploded bombs still lie buried deep in the earth. Alush said he knows of five people from a neighbouring village who have lost limbs as they stumbled across war litter.

"We paid a high price for liberation," he says.

"Why do all the men here become bakers?" I ask 79-year-old Azem Collaku from the village of Zym.

He rolls out a mental map of Kosovo, divided by traditional trades.

Keeping it in the family: Azem Collaku, right, with his son Afrim

The bakers from the Harsi i Thata - the dry hearth - so called because of its paucity of water. The builders from a certain valley. The farmers from the flat, fertile lands between Prizren and Djakova.

Azem worked for 40 years in the family bakery in northern Kosovo, in the ethnically-mixed town of Mitrovica. In 1999, when the Nato bombing started, the hostility of the local Serbs to the Albanians increased.

Like all the Albanians here, he tells the history of the Balkans in bakers' terms.

"We knew we were in trouble when the Serbs stopped delivering our flour," said Azem.

So they had to stop baking.

"The strange thing was, the day we fled the city, the flour we had paid for weeks before actually arrived. But by then it was too dangerous to stay," he added.

Radical youths

His son Afrim worked in the Serbian capital Belgrade until January this year. Then Serb refugees from Kosovo smashed the windows of the bakery in a spate of anger, on the eve of Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia.

"They didn't like the idea that we could come to work in their country, while they couldn't return to Kosovo," said Afrim, almost sympathetically.

Kosovo declared independence in February 2008

But he is hopeful the bakery will soon re-open after the defeat of Serb nationalists in last weekend's elections.

Only a month ago, radical youths in Sombor, in northern Serbia, handed out free bread outside an Albanian-run bakery to try to drive it out of business.

And like-minded youths posted a film clip of themselves on the video sharing website YouTube setting fire to another Albanian bakery. (You can see the video below)

In the Kosovan capital Pristina, Ramadan and Lerim from the village of Djonaj load logs into their wood-burning ovens, and mix flour and water and great cakes of yeast from Serbia into a stainless-steel drum.

"There is no better job than this," Ramadan explains. "You can sleep soundly knowing that the money you spend you earned with your own sweat."

He blows out the candles, by the light of which he kneaded the new loaves. Only the early morning sunshine breaks through the windows here.

The Serb Problem

Excellent editorial from the Wall Street Journal .
03/20/2008.

Slobodan Milosevic must be smiling in his coffin. Earlier this week, a Serbian mob took over a United Nations courthouse in the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica to protest Kosovo independence. In the ensuing melee a Ukrainian policeman serving with the U.N. force was killed; more than a hundred others were injured. In Belgrade, similar mobs attacked foreign embassies, setting part of the U.S. mission ablaze.

As in the Milosevic days, the Serbs were whipped into this frenzy by their leaders. Having spurned U.N. talks over Kosovo's future for years, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and other nationalists appealed to Serb feelings of persecution and aggrievement the moment the Kosovars decided on their own to declare independence. "It is clear to us that the violence was orchestrated," said the deputy U.N. administrator for Kosovo, Larry Rossin, after the Mitrovica riots.

Belgrade's intentions aren't hard to divine. Its government ministers are traveling the world to stop countries from recognizing Kosovo's independence, with a view to undoing it one day. Moscow and Beijing encourage Serbia in this fantasy. As a backup plan, it may settle for a partition of Kosovo with the mostly ethnic Serb area around Mitrovica run out of Belgrade.

European and American leaders need to face up to the political challenge posed by the Serbs and their allies in Moscow and Beijing. Since Kosovo joined the Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians and Montenegrins in casting their lot with freedom in independence, Serbia has received a free pass on the intellectual argument. It is a question of national sovereignty, the Serbs say, and even some of Kosovo's backers concede the point.

But it's not a question of national sovereignty, at least not Serbian sovereignty. Before the U.N. took over Kosovo's administration, the region was part of Yugoslavia. The U.N. Security Council resolution that set up that mission in 1999 does not mention the word "Serbia." In the meantime, what was left of Yugoslavia died and Montenegro split away.

A new Serbia was born with a new constitution adopted by referendum that claimed Kosovo as its own; the Kosovars had no vote, and in any event nine in 10 of them don't want anything to do with Serbia. Last month's move toward independence was a classic case of legitimate national self-determination, albeit closely supervised by the "international community." It went off peacefully, except for the Serb outbursts.

Outside military, diplomatic and economic support will be crucial to Kosovo's future. Serb thugs in the streets, and Serb thuggery in international diplomatic salons, have succeeded in giving certain countries pause. Brazil and India don't want to stick their necks out and recognize Kosovo lest Russia and China get angry. The Muslim world has been silent about this new, tiny, democratic Muslim state in Europe. A weakened, much less a partitioned, Kosovo would seriously derail a decade-plus effort led by the U.S. to build a stable Balkans.

Serbia did too much harm in the 1990s to get a free pass on its destructive behavior over Kosovo today. Fortunately, with every other country in its immediate vicinity opting for a future in the West, Serbia isn't strategically important. With NATO on the case -- and it will need to stay -- Serbia isn't a threat to Kosovo's sovereignty. The 16,000 NATO troops in Kosovo, as well as in a still unsettled Bosnia, are the first line of defense against Serb recidivism.

If Serbs want their country to become the Belarus of the Balkans -- an isolated appendage of Russia cut off from the West -- that's their choice. In May's parliamentary elections, they will be able to make it. Mr. Kostunica has teamed up with the Radical Party, which wants to discontinue membership talks with the EU unless Brussels acknowledges Serbia's claim to Kosovo. Serb President Boris Tadic, who barely beat the Radical's candidate in elections earlier in the year, represents the pro-Western camp.

Should the Serbs see their future in the West and not with Russia, the first step is to desist from violence. Eventually, they will have to recognize an independent Kosovo. In the meantime, Serbia's leaders don't deserve our understanding or indulgence. They deserve the world's condemnation.

Obama and Kosovo

The anti Albanian crowd has been spreading false rumors that Obama does not support Kosovo’s independence and that somehow he will be more pro Serb. You will see comments like this all over Serbian, Russian and other Slavic websites. They assume that because there are a lot of Serbs in Illinois and because of Rade Blagojevic (governor of Illinois who is ethic Serb) he will be more favorable towards Serbs. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Obama made his feeling clear last night at the debate on MSNBC when he was asked by Tim Russert to comment what he would do if Russia threatens Kosovo. He said U.S is obligated to defend Kosovo and that he will work with the NATO and E.U to do so. This talk about Obama being a pro Serb or not a supporter of Kosovo is utter nonsense. His comments last night were pretty clear on where he stand on this issue. The fact that there are a lot of Serbs in Illinois apparently carries no weight on this issue as far as he is concerned. The anti Albanian crowd has been hopelessly hoping that because Obama is running against Clinton, that somehow he will repudiate Clinton’s policy in the Balkans. In fact he said Clinton did a very good job in the Balkans and he agreed with that policy. Still not convinced? Please go watch the debate on MSNBC.

Justice for Kosovo – Chance for Serbia

A reality check by two reality based Serbs:

By Andrej Nosov and Dragan Popovic

After the declaration of independence of Kosovo and the "spontaneous" reaction of "rage and anger" depicted in the Prime Minister's words, demolished Embassies, public lynching of those with different political opinions, as well as the declarative call to "peace and peaceful protests", Serbia has hit rock bottom. It is less of a problem that in the previous decades we have gotten used to seeing violence, living in it every day and doing it spontaneously to people around us. It is more of a problem that the state politics of Slobodan Milosevic, the politics of violence, has officially returned as the main, driving force, that on which there is a consensus even of the democratic Presedent Tadic, and almost President Nikolic and all the other actes gathered around the leader of the defense of Kosovo, Vojislav Kostunica.

This rock bottom, and this fear that every normal citizen feels regarding what is going to happen the next day, is actually another big chance that we are once again missing. It is a chance for the society in Serbia to face their errors of judgement, to reconsider the politics of the past few decades, to look back and draw the line underneath the decade of conquest, murder, ethnic cleansing, terror over their own citizens and the inhabitants of the region. Kosovo has not been under the rule of Serbia since the day Slobodan Milosevic ended his project by retreating the army and police forces from Kosovo. The politics of conquering territories and nineteenth-century centralistic nationalism is facing a breakdown. Whether it will take something else on its way down, depends on the elite groups in Serbia. Or maybe new politics will arise in its place, appropriate for the modern age, based on cooperation and respect.

Everyone is in wonder because 17 February has happened to us, because there was a celebration and declaration of something we knew had happened in June 1999. Everyone makes excuses for violent behaviour, ancient rights and other mythologies by "our" right to rule "them". Breaking things in Belgrade, they say, is not much in relation to what has happened to us. They talk of cultural heritage, NATO bombing, the Serbs that died in Kosovo. There is no mention of the Albanians except as "separatists, terrorists, immature people, uncivilized snatchers of our land". Everyone is silent about Albanians. Because, I guess, one does not mention the name of evil. And the evil that Belgrade has done to the Albanians has symbolically ended for them on that very 17 February.

State enemy No 1 is Natasa Kandic, because she dared to sit in the Kosovo Parliament in the name of different values. Some media say that she shouldn't exist. Others have a problem with Sonja Biserko, Biljana Kovacevic Vuco. The rest would be satisfied with banning and destroying LDP or the expedition to the apartment of Ceda Jovanovic and insulting and lynching the politics and citizens which he represents. These steps are well known, Milosevic used them too.

Kostunica is now simply applying the matrix he had inherited from his predecessor. Just as he had copied the rhetoric, he also did everything to leave Serbia in the gutter and through fear and terrot enforce the final establishment of the new Russian province, which is obviously his goal.
The last colony in Europe gained its freedom on 17 February 2008. From 1912 Kosovo has been ruled by boot and sabre. The people living there had no say in anything. Military authorities were imposed on them since the occupation. At that time, they were pronounced to be a nation not mature enough for democracy. Instead of a civil state and civil management, they recieved a hoard of officers and officials, mostly the worst ones, sent by punishment to Kosovo.

Many testimonies from that time speak of violence, discrimination and collonial behaviour of the new masters towards the Albanian population in the region. While Kosovo was ruled by the army, the intelligence in Belgrade was making plans on how to change the national make-up of the population. The documents of the Serbian Culture Club lead by Slobodan Jovanovic speak of horrible and cruel entertainment of the Serbian national elite. People are refered to as merchandise, something not alive, calculations are made about how many people should move in and move out from different places. The exact same standards will be applied much more efficiently at the end of the 20th century by academics, writers, poets, bishops... "Humane displacement" will become the official politics which will finally result in the creation of Republika Srpska. That is why it is possible today to speak of territory, but not the people, to pledge in Kosovo, but not give pensions to the Albanians, to erase the complete population from the electorial register or the share of free stocks.

The parties changed names, from the National Radical to the League of Communists, from the Socialist Party of Serbia to the Serbian Radical or the Democratic Party of Serbia. The continuity of colonial rule was maintained after the Second World War through military management. Even though the former colonists were forbidden to return to Kosovo, new ones soon arrived.

Authority was established through bloody massacres in Drenica and all over Kosovo. Once again there were no "conditions" for civil authorities. The UDBA sovereignly ruled Kosovo until 1966. Many people, rich today, owe their family posessions to the gold stolen from Kosovo Albanians. After the Brioni Plenum there was an ease, but as soon as the ruling circles saw that Kosovo inhabits people who want their rights and who will not reconcile with the existing situation, everything went to the way it used to be. One year after Tito's death, the Yugoslav National Army "establishes order" in the streets of Pristina, Pec, Prizren... The number of killed Albanians has never been revealed. In the end, in 1989, the "easily promised speed" completely overtakes the legitimate politics. The sovereignity of Kosovo is annuled by tanks, martial law is established and a system very similar to apartheid.

During the nineties, if you were an Albanian, you could not live without fear, let alone work in a school, hospital, the police, or government institutions. Even when the Albanians reacted to such a situation with violence, the elite circles in Serbia did not wonder why, but ravaged villages, civillians, women and children. To be an Albanian, male or female, meant a death sentence. Many were saved by some money or gold. For others, there was no way out.

The nineties are a disgrace for Serbain history, and that must be said out loud in reference to Kosovo. Today in Kosovo, as well as Serbia and the other countries in the region, a large number of people is waiting for the answer to the question where their loved ones are, what happened to them, who killed them. Vojislav Kostunica and his security services hide the answer to that question. Boris Tadic surpresses the answer to that question becase of "stability and the future" and tycoon interests.

There is no justice for the Serbs either, if we do not tell the others what we have done to them. There will be no other future if we conceal the facts. And it is futile to rant about crimes over Serbs, world injustice, double standards... Ivica Dacic clearly stated on the parliamentary speakers stand that the politics of the nineties has been confirmed once more. When in 1999 revenge and retaliation against the Serbs started, there were no academics or scientists who would look for the cause in the behaviour of the state of Serbia. Or even to be determined according to the 800.000 banished people, mass murders in Meja, Djakovica, Suva Reka, Podujevo, Izbica, Vucitrn... Maybe that would have saved more Serbs than any books written in the name of the defense of Kosovo and such politics. Or any journalist scribblings which announced lynching, which the newspapers are full of these days.

The complete state apparatus was involved in hiding the tracks of mass crimes. Bodies were buried all over Serbia, burned in factories and power plants, sunk into the Danube or Perucac. The policemen, officers, members of National Security, politicians, local tycoons and enterpreneurs, judges and prosecutors, the Government and political parties were involved too. And after all that, Serbia is in wonder. Not a trace of regret, sense of responsibility, readiness to change behaviour. The people directly responsible for Serbia's loss of the right to rule the Kosovo people, today decide our own fate. They will not admit to their mistakes. Instead of that, they will try to tailor the international legislature according to their own dreams.

To turn it into a calcified shell which cannot be adjusted to new situations. Because that is how one rules Serbia. That is how laws and constitutions are made here. Full of strong words and phrases, but inapplicable. Legitimately and legally, the democratic and free part of the world estimated that we cannot terrorize our own citizens forever. Maybe Russia or China still can, but that time will soon pass too. Then the people in Chechnya or Tibet will also gain their deserved place in the community of independent nations. The world's decision (at least the better part of it) to recognize Kosovo, should not be taken as punishment by Serbia. It is not a punishment, it is an opportunity. Not only for Serbia, but for the whole world to strengthen the mechanisms of the protection of human rights and more decisively defy the terror of local dictators. From Beijing to Havana, from Teheran to Moscow.

Serbia is obliged to recognize the Republic of Kosovo. To give a hand of friendship to their legally elected representatives, to help them establish a modern, democratic society. Not because we are more advanced or cultured, but because we owe at least that much to the Kosovo society. And through Kosovo, we can open the issue of the society in Serbia. To reconsider all the illusons and false values, reform institutions, start creating a critical conscience in young people, to reverse the value system and set things in their place. Serbia must, from the mistakes of the past, learn the lessons which will take us to building a new society and a different future. By making violence legitimate and attacking people with different political opinions, the authorities are only continuing the old and already seen practice. Those who think that they will destroy critical thinking and the need for different relations with the neigbours in this way, are sadly mistaken. The mass "events of the people" just take us back and create new mistakes which will cost us dearly.

US embassy in Belgrade attacked

Ok, so now Belgrade is in the same league as Gaza Strip, Karachi and Tehran where burning US flags is a fashion. These images of U.S embassy going up in flames are being beamed right now thru out US and every other country. I have always said, you can always count on Serbs to bungle it. With leader like Kostunica, and Nikolic who needs enemies? The 51% who voted for Tadic are being overrun by the other half that voted for Nikolic. This is what you get when half of your population supports a neo nazi party. I only feel sorry for the ½ of the Serbian population, but I wish good for all of Serbia for the sake of the children of this country. When will Serbia wake up? The flames of hate and nationalism will burn you again.

BBC article below:


Several hundred protesters have attacked the US and other embassies in Serbia's capital in anger at Western support for Kosovo's independence.


Protesters broke into the US compound and briefly set part of the embassy alight. Firemen later found an unidentified charred body inside.



The UK, Belgian, Croatian and Turkish missions were also attacked.
The violence followed a peaceful rally earlier by at least 150,000 people outside the main parliament building.
The US, UK, Germany and Italy are among those to have recognised Kosovo.
Kosovo belongs to the Serbian people
Vojislav Kostunica
In pictures: Belgrade rally



Earlier, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica delivered an impassioned speech condemning the territory's secession.
"As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia. Kosovo belongs to the Serbian people," he told the flag-waving crowd.
Most Serbs regard Kosovo as their religious and cultural heartland.
Ripped flag
The United States expressed outrage at the attack.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the Serbian government should be reminded "of its responsibility to protect diplomatic facilities".

The main rally outside parliament was peacefulSerbian President Boris Tadic appealed for calm.
"This only keeps Kosovo distant from Serbia," he said.
About 1,000 protesters attacked the building, throwing flares through the window while others scaled walls to rip down the US flag.



At the time there appeared to be no police protecting the embassy, but riot police later intervened, firing tear gas.
The fires raged for half an hour, and when firemen finally managed to get inside the building they found a charred body.
The body has not been identified, though US officials said all embassy staff of US nationality had been accounted for.



State department spokesman Sean McCormack said the protesters had entered the chancellery but did not breach the embassy's secure area, and the entire compound had now been cleared.
Washington received assurances from Mr Kostunica that there would be no repeat of the incident, he added.
Kosovo 'stolen'
Several other embassies were also attacked by crowds. There are reports of various businesses and restaurants being attacked.

Up to 100 people are believed to have been injured.
Serbia, supported by Russia and China, says Kosovo's Sunday declaration violates international law.
During Thursday's rally, ultra-nationalist leader Tomislav Nikolic accused the US and EU of trying to steal Kosovo.



"Hitler could not take it away from us, and neither will today's [Western powers]."
After the speeches, the crowd marched to the city's biggest church, the Temple of Saint Sava.
Thick, black smoke had also earlier billowed from the crossing point at

"We are here in support of the Serbs who still live in Kosovo," Dejan Milosevic, one of the organisers, told the Associated Press news agency.
The Kosovo police, backed by Czech troops from the Nato-led peacekeeping force, put a steel barrier across the road and were able to hold their line.
Protest rallies were also held in the Bosnian Serb republic (Republika Srpska). There were unconfirmed reports of injuries as several hundred protesters clashed with police outside the US consulate in Banja Luka.
In the coming weeks, an almost 2,000-strong EU mission will be deployed to help the country develop its police force and judiciary.

Cheers to the new future- U.S. recognizes independent Kosovo

(CNN) -- The United States officially recognized Kosovo -- the Balkan state which split from Serbia on Sunday -- as an independent nation on Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a written statement.

"We congratulate the people of Kosovo on this historic occasion," Rice said. "President Bush has responded affirmatively to a request from Kosovo to establish diplomatic relations between our two countries."

European Union nations Monday were also starting to recognize Kosovo as the world's newest nation, agencies have reported.

Britain, Germany and France were among EU member states which said they would establish official diplomatic ties with the Balkan state following a meeting of European ministers in Brussels Monday, according to The Associated Press. "We intend to recognize Kosovo," France foreign minister Bernard Kouchner told reporters afterwards.

EU foreign ministers decided that the bloc's 27 member nations should decide individually whether to recognise Kosovo.

They agreed its secession was a one-off under international law, justified by Belgrade's oppression and rejection of a negotiated final status for the region.

But other EU nations including Greece, Spain and Romania have signalled that they would not follow suit amid concerns about the precedent that such a move would set.

Facing severe economic problems and high unemployment, Kosovo is banking on the support of Western powers including the United States and key EU nations to give it immediate backing.

But while independence is broadly favored by the West, U.N. Security Council members Russia and China have expressed outright opposition and "grave concern" over Kosovo's unilateral decision.

Serbia insists it will not respond with violence to Kosovo's sovereignty claim, although it refuses to recognize the move.

In the Serb-dominated northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica, scores of Kosovo Serbs took to the streets waving Serbian flags in a demonstration against independence.

U.S. President George W. Bush said he acknowledged Monday Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia, but stopped short of a formal recognition.Watch mixed reaction to independence declaration

"We'll watch and see how the events unfold today," Bush told NBC News from Tanzania. "But the Kosovars are now independent. It's something that I have advocated, along with my government."

Asked earlier Monday whether the United States would officially recognize Kosovo, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: "Stay tuned."

"We will not recognize Kosovo independence because we do not consider it in line with international law," said Spain's foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos before Monday's meeting. "There is a division within the international community, division in the Security Council and division in the European Union, and we don't know what will be the consequences for the region," he said. Spain has struggled with separatists in its Basque region.

"Our position is that this declaration should be disregarded by the international community," as well as by the head of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, Moscow's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin said on Sunday.

In Beijing Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao expressed grave concern over Kosovo's move for independence.

"Kosovo's unilateral act can produce a series of results that will lead to seriously negative influence on peace and stability in the Balkan region ..." Liu said, according to China's Xinhua news agency. He called on Kosovo and Serbia to seek a solution under international law.

Fireworks lit the skies and crowds filled the streets of Kosovo's capital Sunday after the territory's parliament declared independence from Serbia.

"The day has come," Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, a former separatist guerrilla leader, told his parliament. "From this day onwards, Kosovo is proud, independent and free." Watch how U.N. is divided over Kosovo's future

The province has been under U.N. administration and patrolled by NATO troops since a 1999 bombing campaign that halted a Serb-led campaign against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

Thousands of people swarmed Pristina's streets ahead of Sunday's parliamentary declaration, singing, dancing and holding signs in freezing wind after the vote was announced. But Serbs consider the territory the cradle of their civilization, and protesters clashed with police outside the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade as the declaration was issued.

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Serbia said it will not oppose independence with violence, but Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said his country will never accept the establishment of a "false country" on its territory.

Russia expressed similar concerns at Sunday's emergency Security Council meeting in New York.

"Our concern is for the safety of Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo," Churkin stated, adding that Russia will "strongly warn against any attempts at repressive measures should Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with this unilateral proclamation of independence."

About 100,000 Serbs still live in Kosovo, making up about 5 percent of the population, and Kostunica said Serbs have been killed or lost their land in the eight-plus years the country has been under international rule. But Fatmir Sejdiu, the nascent republic's president, pledged to create a nation "where all citizens of all ethnicities feel appreciated."

"Today is probably a day of trepidation for some of you, but your property and your rights will be respected in the future," he said.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched a crackdown against ethnic Albanian insurgents led by Thaci in 1998 and refused to yield to Western pressure to halt the campaign. When NATO responded by launching airstrikes against Serbia and Montenegro, the last remaining Yugoslav republics, Yugoslav troops drove hundreds of thousands of Kosovars out of the region and killed thousands more.

Milosevic died in 2005 while awaiting trial for war crimes before a U.N. tribunal in The Hague.

The United States and leading European nations, including France, Britain and Germany, have supported Kosovo's move toward independence. But Russia, the Serbs' historical ally, has opposed independence, fearing it would incite other separatist movements in its backyard.

But no country supported the Russian call for the U.N. to declare Sunday's declaration "null and void," said Sir John Sawers, the British ambassador to the world body.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged all parties "to refrain from any actions or statements that could endanger peace, incite violence or jeopardize security in Kosovo and the region."

The European Union decided Saturday to launch a mission of about 2,000 police and judicial officers to replace the U.N. mission that has controlled the province since 1999. And U.S. State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States had "noted" that Kosovo had declared its independence and was reviewing the issue.

New beginnings?Could 2008 see the Balkans finally shake off the shadow of war?

Dramatic 2008 beckons for Balkans
By Nick Thorpe BBC News

Among the many strange ironies of history, consider this: the independence of Kosovo in the first half of 2008 will be overseen by Slovenia, as rotating president of the EU.


The richest corner of the old Yugoslavia - and the first to escape from it in 1991 - will steer, from Brussels, the rocky road to independence of its poorest segment.
It took Yugoslavia, that once amiable giant, 17 years to die.
2008 is set to be a dramatic year in the Balkans, though probably not as tragic as some prophesy.

Kosovo, Bosnia, and Macedonia all have intricate safety nets, thanks both to the international presence and the experience gathered in many previous storms.
Serbia has perhaps the greatest potential for international isolation and misery.
The new government and assembly in Kosovo will begin quietly implementing the Ahtisaari plan for conditional independence, despite the sometimes dignified, sometimes desperate, protests of Belgrade.

Kosovo Police Service
The European Union will rapidly phase in its civilian, 1,800-strong law and justice mission, just as the UN phases out.

A poll win for Tomislav Nikolic could damage Serbia's EU hopes
The crucial role in ensuring a peaceful transition to independence will be played by the multi-ethnic Kosovo Police Service (KPS).

The 7,000-strong force, with many Serbs in its ranks, will be in the frontline at a local level, reassuring people with their presence, and searching cars to minimise the movement of weapons.

Behind them the UN police - in place until mid-2008 - can provide extra muscle.
And, finally, the Nato-led peacekeepers of K-For are on call to intervene if law and order breaks down. But that may not be necessary.

If Tomislav Nikolic of the Serbian Radical Party wins January's presidential elections, the potential for Serbia's public anger, and international isolation grows exponentially
As Kosovo slips quietly away, radical Serb leaders in the predominantly Serb north will declare that they want nothing to do with an independent Kosovo.

Theirs is above all a defensive position. They will prepare for "Albanian attacks". But the Albanians will be on their best behaviour, under the watchful eyes of the EU.
The KPS, UN police force, and K-For will continue to patrol in the north too. UN Security Council resolution 1244 speaks of both an "international civilian and military presence".

EU countries and the US say that is quite enough to legalise the new EU mission.
President Boris Tadic of Serbia has already announced that his country will, quite properly, take its case to the International Court of Justice.

Serbia's promised economic blockade will affect less than 20% of Kosovo's imports, and can be sidestepped easily with increased imports from Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania.
Threats to cut off the water and electricity supply from the Gazivoda reservoir in the north are serious, but would rebound on the north.

Water is treated in the south, then sent back. KFOR soldiers are set to secure the reservoir.

Presidential race
The central question of the year is how Serbia copes with the trauma of the loss of Kosovo.

Kosovan towns such as Mitrovica are divided over independence
The presidential election due on 20 January will influence that.
If Boris Tadic of the Democratic Party wins again he will keep Serbia firmly on the road to EU integration - despite Kosovo.

If Tomislav Nikolic of the Serbian Radical Party wins, the potential for Serbia's public anger, and international isolation grows exponentially.
Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, is a nationalist who only appears moderate when set against the radicals.

His Serbian Democratic Party is being squeezed all the time between Tadic's pro-Europe stance, and the blood and thunder rhetoric of Nikolic and his master, Vojislav Seselj, on trial for war crimes in the Hague.

This looks like the year Kostunica will have to choose one camp or the other. The presidential race will be close.
If Nikolic wins, the EU can be expected to turn its back on Serbia again. Investment will dry up. And other parts of the Balkans may benefit from increased international help.
If Tadic wins, the pro-Europe camp wins with him.

Quarrelsome politicians
In Bosnia, a compromise in November over a police reform which goes some way to re-integrating the country, was a precondition for further steps to EU membership.

Many in the Balkans hope EU entry will lift living standards
The sudden shock of being thrown to the end of a very long queue to join the EU seems to have done Bosnia's quarrelsome politicians some good.
The Bosnian Serb leadership are interested above all in preserving their own fiefdom - the Serb Republic in Bosnia. Theirs is a tale of power and money, coloured with identity.

With the sun from Brussels shining a little brighter in the streets of Banja Luka, as well as Sarajevo, there is no reason why Kosovan independence would encourage them to revive their long-lost dream of joining Serbia. The Nato summit in Bucharest in April will be crucial in terms of the overall stability of the Balkans. Macedonia, Albania and Croatia have all worked hard on securing their invitations to join the alliance.

Despite what its president describes as "a wasted year" in 2007, the promise of Nato membership should soothe troubled brows in Skopje.
None of Serbia's neighbours - Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria included - are in any hurry to recognise an independent Kosovo.
But the future of the Balkans will depend on investment, and wages - not the race to set up diplomatic representation in Pristina.
2008 could be the year the clouds of war finally disappear.