Post by Bozur on Jan 26, 2011 0:31:01 GMT -5
The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION
NATO: Alliance's Kosovo force to be halved to 5,000 troops by March 1
By: The Associated Press
Posted: 01/24/2011 9:36 AM
BRUSSELS - NATO says its 10,000-strong peacekeeping force in Kosovo will be cut in half by March 1. Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday that security in the world's newest nation was stable and warranted the drawdown. NATO took control of Kosovo following a brief aerial war with Serbia, part of an international effort to end the crackdown by then-President Slobodan Milosevic against the ethnic Albanian majority in Serbia's southern province. The international force, which originally numbered nearly 50,000 troops, has been shrinking ever since. Kosovo proclaimed its independence from Serbia in February 2008.
www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/breakingnews/nato-alliances-kosovo-force-to-be-halved-to-5000-troops-by-march-1-114483694.html
__________________
Serbia Says Kosovo Moves in North May Be ‘Fatal’ for Peace
By Misha Savic - Jan 5, 2011 7:43 AM ET
Serbia will continue to challenge Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence and any moves to take control of the Serb-dominated north may be “fatal” for the peace process, Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said. The nation of 2 million, mostly ethnic Albanian, people that declared independence from Serbia in February 2008 held its first unsupervised elections in December, with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci retaining power. Jeremic warned Kosovo’s predominantly ethnic-Albanian government against trying to assert its authority over the biggest remaining Serb enclave in the former province, a 120,000-strong community living in the northern part of Kosovo. “Should anything like this happen, the peace process may be dramatically, perhaps even fatally, undermined,” Jeremic told a gathering of ambassadors in Belgrade today. Most Western powers have recognized Kosovo as a state, including 22 out of 27 members of the European Union and the U.S. Serbia has vowed never to accept Kosovo’s independence and considers it cultural cradle of the Balkan country, hindering Serbia’s efforts to eventually join the European Union. Kosovo also wants to win EU membership to strengthen its economy. Serbia’s stance has been backed by Russia and China, among others that reject Kosovo’s secession. Jeremic called for a dialogue with the former province in order to reach a “strategic compromise” on its status. Serbia will try to block Kosovo’s admission to international organizations and there should be a “prompt, thorough and impartial criminal investigation” into alleged 1999 murder-for-organs in Kosovo, Jeremic said. Thaci has dismissed a report by Dick Marty, a Swiss member of the 47-member Council of Europe, that implicated the premier in organ trafficking and drug smuggling in the 1990s. At the time, Thaci was a guerrilla leader of Kosovo’s separatist ethnic Albanians.
www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-05/serbia-says-kosovo-moves-in-north-may-be-fatal-for-peace.html
___________________
The hidden crimes of Kosovo
By Chuck Sudetic
Saturday, January 8, 2011
THE HAGUE
Americans should feel betrayed by the contents of the Council of Europe's report on organized crime in mostly Albanian-populated Kosovo, a country that owes its existence to the United States. The report, authored by Swiss prosecutor Dick Marty, includes allegations that Kosovo leaders have committed heinous crimes and allegations that American and European diplomats and U.N. officials in Kosovo overlooked wrongdoing to preserve "political stability."
Kosovo's leaders have waged an ugly media campaign to discredit Marty and his findings and have threatened to launch a witch hunt against Albanians who aided the inquiry. Washington's voice is needed now to stop the incitement in Kosovo and to turn public opinion toward an international criminal investigation and, if necessary, prosecutions.
The report draws upon Albanian eyewitnesses and insiders as well as Western intelligence and police agencies, and not upon the Albanians' foe, the government of Serbia. The findings speak of the trafficking of drugs and women. They include accounts of the abduction in Kosovo of almost 500 Serbs, Albanians and members of other ethnic groups; the delivery of these kidnapping victims to secret camps in Albania; and the murder of almost all of those abducted, including some whose internal organs were allegedly sold for profit. The report alleges that these killings occurred from mid-1999 to mid-2000, after NATO's bombing campaign drove Serbia's forces from Kosovo. The report names Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, who has for years been America's golden boy in Kosovo, and a number of Thaci's former comrades in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an amalgam of local insurgencies that rose against Serbia.
ad_icon
Washington knew of the kidnappings weeks after NATO occupied Kosovo in June 1999. U.S. diplomats quickly responded to Serb appeals for help by demanding that KLA commanders halt the kidnappings. The abductions tapered off. But nothing was heard of the victims. Afterward, political stability became the top priority in Kosovo for the United States and the United Nations, which refrained from launching criminal inquiries into the kidnappings. According to Albanian and U.S. sources, during the spring of 2008 - after a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte of Switzerland, published a memoir that mentioned these killings and reported credible assertions of organ harvesting - senior U.S. diplomats in Kosovo advised Thaci and other Kosovo leaders to do nothing except wait out the storm. Kosovo's and Albania's governments have since issued only blanket denials of wrongdoing.
Marty's report does not attack Kosovo's legitimacy. Many, if not most, Albanians know this but are too terrified to say so in public. This is in part because corruption and violence are so prevalent in Kosovo and in part because Thaci and other leaders have condemned the report as an assault on Kosovo's sovereignty, the Albanian people and the KLA's legacy. On Christmas Day, Kosovo's press reported a threat by Thaci to name every Albanian who assisted Marty. In a land where witnesses to crimes are killed to silence them, Thaci's words could incite attacks on members of minority groups, political opponents, journalists and foreigners.
This danger and the long-term need to foster rule of law in Kosovo and Albania make it incumbent upon the United States to make a forceful public statement and conduct tough closed-door diplomacy. The United States should question every detail of the Council of Europe report and demand a briefing with Marty to discuss the sources he cannot publish for security reasons. If it finds the evidence and sources to be credible, the United States should join the European Union in establishing an entity capable of carrying out a criminal investigation and, if necessary, prosecutions; this entity should be capable of protecting witnesses. Washington should demand that Kosovo and Albania cooperate fully. If they fail to, the United States and its allies should use their leverage to force the resignation from public office of those responsible for the lack of cooperation. Washington should also ensure that Serbia, Russia and other countries do not misuse the Council of Europe report to undermine Kosovo's legitimacy.
Chuck Sudetic reported from the Balkans during the 1990s and worked for the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia from 2001 to 2005. He co-authored Carla Del Ponte's memoirs, "Madame Prosecutor."
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/07/AR2011010705928.html
____________________
Kosovo PM named crime don
Tags: body parts trafficking, News, Hashim Tachi, World, Politics
Kosovo Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, has been identified as one of the "biggest fish" in organized crime in his country, according to classified NATO military intelligence reports leaked to The Guardian. In a report released last month, the Council of Europe accused Thaçi of leading the region’s biggest criminal clan and having exerted "violent control" over trade in heroin and human organs.
english.ruvr.ru/2011/01/25/41156139.html