Le Monde Diplomatique: Avoid Repeating the Same Mistakes
The West must not repeat its past mistakes in the territory of former Yugoslavia and run hastily and recklessly towards the independence of Serbian Kosovo province, the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique pointed out in its July issue.
Criticizing President Bush’s hasty declarations about severing Kosovo province from Serbia while on a brief visit to Albania, author Ignacio Ramonet questions the reasons behind the rush to create a new state on Serbian territory:
“One might well ask why 50 years has not sufficed to establish an independent state in Palestine, with the tragic consequences we see before us, and why the question of Kosovo suddenly has to be settled without delay,” asks Ramonet.
German and Vatican Eagerness Ignited Wars in Croatia and Bosnia
“In the Balkans diplomatic haste often spells disaster. Remember how German and Vatican eagerness to recognize Croatia’s secession in 1991 precipitated the break-up of former Yugoslavia, the war between Serbia and Croatia, and the war in Bosnia,” Le Monde Diplomatique underscored, adding that apart from the former president Milosevic, who appears to have been declared guilty for everything in France even without the Hague Kangaroo Court’s verdict, “the European powers also bear some responsibility for these bloody conflicts, the worst in Europe since the Second World War.”
So much haste, according to Le Monde Diplomatique, “also played a part in the 1999 war in Kosovo, when some European states and the United States refused to continue negotiations with Serbia, bypassed the Security Council debate and proceeded, without a UN mandate, to use NATO to bomb Serbia for months and force Serbian troops out of Kosovo.”
Plunging Into Another Disaster
The influential French magazine emphasized that today, when the future status of the Serbian province is being discussed, the focus of the attention must be UN Security Council Resolution 1244, according to which Kosovo is a part Serbia.
Reluctant to step out of the frame of official French support for some form of independence, the author stresses the dangers and the consequences reckless plunge towards severing Kosovo-Metohija from Serbia would trigger:
“The immediate independence that Bush wants to see, independence not negotiated within the UN framework, could lead rapidly to the establishment of a ‘Greater Albania’ and this in turn would automatically reignite Croatian and Serbian irredentism at the expense of Bosnia. Not to mention the explosive international precedent it would set for many entities that are similarly tempted to declare unilateral independence: Palestine (Israel), Western Sahara (Morocco), Transnistria (Moldova), Kurdistan (Turkey), Chechnya (Russia), Abkhazia (Georgia), Nagorny Karabakh (Azerbaijan), Taiwan (China) and even, in Europe itself, the Basque Country and Catalonia (Spain, France), to name but a few. Is Bush prepared to support these claims for independence, as he says he will in the case of Kosovo?”
Cartoon by Ranko Guzina (Serbia). The cow has “Kosovo” written on, and the calf “Presevo,” another Serbian region Albanians are laying claims upon.
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