The Belgrade daily specifies today that some 2,300 hectares are still suspected of being contaminated with cluster bombs, while mine fields stretch on 150 hectares.

In addition, 60 aircraft bombs dropped by NATO planes have not been defused and “could go off at any moment”.

Serbia needs to spend some USD 35mn to clean the countryside of unexploded ordnance, and should donations – which make the job possible – arrive at the current pace, the operations will not be finished in the next ten years.

Currently, Russian experts are working to demine the Niš airport. Director of the Mine Action Center Petar Mihajlović told the newspaper he plans to travel to Moscow and propose to the Russian authorities to undertake the bomb clearance operation in all of Niš, and Sjenica in western Serbia, where estimates say NATO dropped bombs on some four million square meters of space.

Experts believe that unexploded aircraft bombs are still on 43 locations in the country, some of them weighing as much as 930 kilograms, capable of burrowing their way 20 meters into the ground.

Tomislav Nikolic went too far for party hardliners

The head of the main opposition party in Serbia has resigned after senior colleagues refused to back the country’s efforts to join the EU.

Tomislav Nikolic had recently persuaded his Serbian Radical Party to approve the ratification of an important agreement with the European Union.

But there was a party revolt over the issue, with critics saying it meant abandoning Serbia’s claim to Kosovo.

Kosovo unilaterally declared itself independent from Serbia this year.

The BBC’s Nick Thorpe in Belgrade says Mr Nikolic had steered his party towards the centre of Serbian politics, focusing on social issues such as unemployment and poverty, rather than the militant nationalism of the past.

Mr Nikolic is officially the deputy president of the party as its leader, Vojislav Seselj is facing charges at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

His endorsement of the Stability and Association Agreement, signed earlier this year but still awaiting ratification by the Serbian Parliament, was a bridge too far for many of his party colleagues, our correspondent says.

A meeting of the party leadership on Friday night reversed the decision to endorse the agreement with Brussels.

Mr Nikolic resigned in protest, both from his position as de facto leader of the party, and as the head of its group in parliament.

The parliamentary vote on the agreement with the European Union is expected next week.

According to the Kohavision television outlet, after arriving at the Priština airport, Holbrooke said that he is visiting Kosovo in order to directly familiarize himself with the situation there.

Holbrooke said that the visit would be “very emotional,” but did not comment on the situation, stating that it is too early in the visit for impressions.

The television station reported that he met with Kosovo Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuci after arriving in Priština.

Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu’s cabinet stated that he would be meeting with the former American diplomat today.

“We will try and stop them,” the foreign minister told FoNet news agency after meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Abul Gheit yesterday in the Egyptian capital, adding that official Cairo itself “is strongly opposed to recognizing Kosovo independence”.

Gheit is hosting today’s Arab League summit.

“I will meet with the foreign ministers and Secretary General of the Arab League Amr Moussa. A number of Arab countries are thinking about recognizing Kosovo. We will try and stop them. Egypt is firmly against this and will help us in tomorrow’s lobbying. I hope that we will succeed,” Jeremić said last night.

He will also present Belgrade’s initiative, due to be taken before the UN General Assembly later this month, to have the International Court of Justice, ICJ, give its opinion on the legality of the Kosovo Albanians’ unilateral declaration of independence.

“I will explain that it is the legal road forward, which guarantees peace and stability in the region and the preservation of international law,” Jeremić said.

The diplomatic sources in Cairo have been saying that Saudi Arabia is preparing to recognize Kosovo Albanians’ unilateral declaration, and that this country looks to convince other Arab states to follow suit.

However, the same sources said, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya are all opposed to this.

COMMENTARY:

In anticipation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, President Bush said “Georgia’s territorial integrity and borders must command the same respect as every other nation’s.”

Critics of Russia’s action include Sens. Barack Obama, Joseph Biden and Joseph Lieberman; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke; and many others in the bipartisan establishment.

Among the specific criticisms are Russia’s violation of the sovereign territory of Georgia, a fledgling democracy and a member of the United Nations; a disproportionate response to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s attempt to settle South Ossetia’s status by force, including Russian military operations well outside of South Ossetia; and Moscow’s tardiness in withdrawing its forces under a deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Evidently irony is not much appreciated in Washington. It seems critics have forgotten President Bush’s recognition of the independence of Kosovo, a province of democratic, U.N. member Serbia. President Bush’s reference to “every other nation” whose “territorial integrity and borders must command the same respect” apparently has at least this one exception. If he can violate the United Nations Charter and the Helsinki Final Act, which guarantee sovereign borders, what right does he have to accuse others of doing the same?

If Moscow stepped over the line in its crushing military response to Mr. Saakashvili’s offensive, what do we call 78 straight days of NATO’s bombing throughout Serbia, destroying most of that country’s civilian infrastructure? If Russia is to be faulted for imperfect implementation of the Sarkozy agreement, what can be said about Washington’s violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, which ended the 1999 Kosovo war and reaffirms Serbian sovereignty in the province?

The standard reasons cited for making Serbia an exception to the rule we demand in Georgia is that NATO intervened to stop genocide of Kosovo’s Albanians and that they will never again accept being part of Serbia. But after the war actual casualties among all ethnic groups - whether by military action, atrocities committed by both Serbs and Albanians, and the toll of NATO’s bombing - proved to be far fewer than those cited in justification for the war. Compared to South Ossetia’s much smaller population, mutual accusations of genocide against South Ossetians and Georgians, respectively, are proportionally larger than those at issue in Kosovo. And are South Ossetians and Abkhazians less adamant that they will not submit to Tbilisi’s rule than Kosovo’s Albanians are with respect to Belgrade?

It also should be kept in mind that Kosovo’s legal status is very different from that of entities in the former Soviet Union. Under the Yugoslav constitution - the same authority that justified the secession of Croatia, Slovenia, etc. - Kosovo, part of Serbia since before Yugoslavia was formed, has no legal claim to independence. In contrast, the 1990 Soviet law on secession - which was the legal basis of the independence of Union Republics such as Georgia - required that autonomous entities within their borders be allowed, via referenda, to remain in the Soviet Union, and by extension its successor, Russia.

Thus, while Kosovo’s status as part of Serbia is unquestionable, South Ossetia and Abkhazia can make a good case they were part of Soviet Georgia but never the current independent state of Georgia. (The same would apply to Transdniestria with respect to Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh with respect to Azerbaijan. When will they follow suit?)

By trashing the accepted international “rules of the road” on Kosovo, Washington has created what amounts to the rules of the jungle. Each power acts as it will, either to suppress restive minorities or to compromise other countries’ borders: The United States tries to force Serbia to accept Kosovo’s independence and pressures other countries (without much success) to recognize it; Georgia tries to subdue the Ossetians and the Abkhazians and fails; Russia moves to establish the Ossetians’ and Abkhazians’ independence and now also will try to secure wider recognition. In turn, the U.S.-supported separatist Kosovo Albanian administration itself threatens a miniature version of Mr. Saakashvili’s South Ossetia offensive to subdue Serbian enclaves, where the remaining one-third of the province’s prewar community finds refuge. Where does the logic of “big fish eat little fish” end?

In Kosovo, Washington sowed the wind, and now Georgia has reaped the whirlwind. Only a return to the negotiating table to address comprehensively Kosovo, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and similar trouble spots elsewhere can prevent this malignant precedent from spinning further out of control with incalculable consequences for global peace and security. With each step down this road it will be harder to put the genie of might-makes-right back in the bottle.

James George Jatras is a lawyer and director of the American Council for Kosovo in Washington, an activity of Squire Sanders Public Advocacy, LLC, and Global Strategic Communications Group, which are registered agents for the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija. Mr. Jatras formerly served as a foreign policy analyst of the U.S. Senate Republican leadership.

Speaking at the Foreign Direct Investment Conference for South East Europe, which is under way in Belgrade, Dinkic based his assertions on the fact that Serbia would have a government that would “drive the country towards the EU.”

He said that Serbia could become an EU member by the end of 2012, before the end of the new government’s mandate.

The minister added that Serbia would have three prerequisites for attracting investment—political stability; it would not be an EU member, which would be an advantage over current members like Romania and Bulgaria; while the third condition was that it would undoubtedly be on a clear path to the Union.

He said that the future government would have its work cut out because it was not possible to achieve social accountability without economic growth, adding that direct tax on investors would be reduced, output increased, unemployment cut, and progressive taxation measures introduced.

Dinkic also said that “Serbia would continue to enjoy robust economic growth of seven percent a year in the next four years,” and reiterated that in the last two years, foreign direct investments in Serbia had amounted to USD 9bn.

Documentary “The Milosevic Case — Glosses at a Trial” also demonstrates the Hague Prosecution witnesses were given written guarantees and unique protections from any future criminal proceedings, that they were often bought and/or threatened and pressured to lie and commit perjury to help NATO convict Serbian political and military leadership, President Milosevic foremost, in order to take all the blame off the Western powers involved in destruction of Yugoslavia and Serbia.

Emperor’s Clothes which translated, edited and helped bring the RTS documentary “Judgment” to the Western audience, wrote: “In August 1992, millions of people were shocked to see photographs of a supposed Bosnian Serb death camp.

“The photos were produced by ITN, the British TV news giant, from footage shot by an ITN film crew which spent a long day in Bosnia. The film was shot in a refugee center in the town of Trnopolje. (Pronounced Tern-op-ol-yay)

“Most of the photographs featured a tall, emaciated man with a deformed chest, stripped to the waist, apparently imprisoned behind barbed wire. Do you remember those pictures?

“They were a hoax.”

Documentary Judgment exposes the fraud, revealing how the world was fooled with the fake imagery, prompting the Westerners to demand punishment for the Serbs. Western mainstream media-instigated mass hysteria served as a green light for the US-led NATO leaders to openly side with Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians in the Yugoslav civil wars against the Serbs, to help expel Krajina and Slavonia Serbs from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo-Metohija Serbs, and to repeatedly bomb Bosnian Serbs and Serbia in the 1990s.

Neither the film crew which created the fraud, nor the British ITN which employed them to either find or create the imagery sufficiently explosive to convict the Serb nation in the public opinion arena, have ever suffered any consequences for the irreversible damage they have directly caused with this hoax.

In several respects, two contemporary conflicts, the Serbo-Bosnian War in former Yugoslavia, and the Arab-Israeli struggle, are intertwined. Their linkage should be explained.

First, a well known fact, documented in detail in specialized literature, is largely ignored by the general public and neglected by the media all over the world: a number of present-day Palestinians, who consider themselves and qualify or pose as “Arabs,” are recent descendants of Muslim immigrants from European lands, from Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular.

When the Ottoman Empire lost Bosnia to Austria in 1878, huge numbers of Bosnians were resettled in the Middle East, in the framework of a general policy of Muslim colonization of Turkey’s troubled areas. Quoting from various former studies, the historian Bat Ye’or explains how Ottoman law granted lands in Palestine to the Muslim colonists, with a 12-year exemption from taxes and military service. In the Carmel region, Galilee and the plain of Sharon and Caesarea, lands were distributed to the Muslim Slavs from Bosnia and Herzegovina; Georgians were settled around Kuneitra on the Golan Heights and Moroccans in lower Galilee.
…
At the same time, measures were taken against non-Muslim immigrants. In the same year 1887, a law was passed forbidding Jews to immigrate to Palestine, to reside there, to buy land, to restore houses, or to live in Jerusalem. It applied only to Jews….

In the course of the 19th century and well into the 20th, the Turkish authorities settled over two million Muslim colonists from the Balkans and Crimea in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia and Anatolia, in order to Islamize these countries and to undermine the national aspirations of the indigenous populations…

The pretense of the Palestinian “Arabs” to be the only natives in a country where Jews are deemed newcomers and intruders, is a myth. Great numbers of Palestinian “Arabs” are Arab in name only, and immigrants of more recent date than many Jews, whose presence in the land of Israel goes back 3,500 years. Many “Palestinians” immigrated even after the mainwaves of Zionist Jews: they came to the land of Israel in the thirties of the 20th century, attracted by the economic prosperity engendered by the Zionists.

Other facts ignored in good faith by some, or concealed and fabricated, belong to the history of a recent Palestinian-Bosnian partnership in war crimes.

In 1942, during World War II, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin El-Husseini, leader of the Palestinian Arab activists, settled in Berlin in order to add to the German war effort and to pour fuel on the flames of the Shoah. (He was later listed as a war criminal by the Western democracies.) The mufti met Eichmann, Himmler and Hitler and visited the extermination camps. Many relevant written documents have survived about the mufti’s role, including exhortations to speed up the deportation of the Jews and to prevent their escape. In 1943, the mufti created a legion of Waffen-SS, the “Legion Handjar [alternate spelling: Handzar; Hanschar],” recruited among Muslims from Bosnia. These 19,000 murderers were…abundantly utilized in the Nazi media and the propaganda war. A number of photographs depict the Muslim German-clad muftis and mullahs. The military value of the legion appears to have been close to nil. But the Muslim SS committed various atrocities against the Resistance and the Jewish population in Yugoslavia. They participated in the guard of the railway link between Auschwitz and the Balkans…

It happened half a century ago. But the Palestinian Arabs have neither forgotten nor forfeited their link with their Muslim brothers in Bosnia. During the summer of 1992, a delegation of Arab Israelis visited former Yugoslavia, pledging to establish a camp for Bosnian children in the Jewish State.
…
The Muslim Bosnians are strongly connected with the Arab-Muslim world. They supported Saddam Hussein during the Kuwait crisis and the Gulf War. [Recall that Yasser Arafat did the same, briefly becoming a pariah in the Muslim world.] Libya is assisting them militarily.

From this past May in the San Francisco Sentinel, by Seth J. Frantzman, a doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose MA thesis was on the Christian Arabs in the 1948 war: Fascist Muslim Group Expected to Loot Tel Aviv in 1948

On a pleasant Thursday in December 1948, Emilio Traubner, a correspondent for The Palestine Post, found himself near Abu Kabir, not far from Jaffa. Trenches and expended cartridges were strewn about, reminders of the fighting between units of the Irgun and local Arab forces that had taken place there seven months previously. There was a large Arab villa from where Traubner recovered a diary. It turned out to be the daily record of Yusuf Begovic of Pale, a town near Sarajevo in modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it Begovic had described his activities as a cook for the “Arab Army of Liberation.”

Traubner described who Begovic had been serving: “35 Yugoslav Muslims who had a good reason to expect to be among the first to occupy and loot Tel Aviv, were part of a group of some thousands who came to the Middle East to join the jihad against Israel.”

What were Yugoslav Muslims doing in Jaffa in 1948? How had they managed to get themselves all the way to the Holy Land? What had motivated them? Who had recruited them? What was the Bosnian or Albanian connection to the Palestinians, if there was one?

There was a Bosnian connection: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, had been in Bosnia in the 1940s. Had he recruited these men? What had become of them?

It turned out that in 2005 a Bosnian had given an interview in Lebanon to a Croatian newspaper and claimed to have fought in the 1948 war. The story began to crystallize.

The Long Shadow of Haj Amin

In October 1937, Haj Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Arab Higher Committee, was hiding from the British authorities in the Haram al-Sharif, the holy sanctuary atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. On October 13, disguised as a Beduin, he fled to Lebanon via Jaffa. In Lebanon he received sanctuary from the French mandatory authorities but he fled again with the outbreak of war in 1939. This time he made his way to Baghdad disguised as a woman. In Baghdad in 1940 and 1941 he increased his contacts with Germany, offering to aid the Nazis in return for their help in gaining independence for the Arab states. The Italians helped him enter Turkey, and then he made his way to Rome on October 11. He met with Mussolini and then with Hitler on November 28. After the failure of various schemes to create an Arab military unit he eventually settled for recruiting Muslim volunteers to aid the Nazis from the Balkans, Bosnia and eventually Kosovo.

In speaking to potential recruits, Husseini stressed the connections they had to the Muslim nation fighting the British throughout the world: “The hearts of all Muslims must today go out to our Islamic brothers in Bosnia, who are forced to endure a tragic fate. They are being persecuted by the Serbian and communist bandits, who receive support from England and the Soviet Union… They are being murdered, their possessions are robbed and their villages are burned. England and its allies bear a great accountability before history for mishandling and murdering Europe’s Muslims, just as they have done in the Arabic lands and in India.”

Three divisions of Muslim soldiers were recruited: The Waffen SS 13th Handschar (”Knife”) and the 23rd Kama (”Dagger”) and the 21st Skenderbeg. The Skenderbeg was an Albanian unit of around 4,000 men, and the Kama was composed of Muslims from Bosnia, containing 3,793 men at its peak. The Handschar was the largest unit, around 20,000 Bosnian Muslim volunteers. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, “These Muslim volunteer units, called Handschar, were put in Waffen SS units, fought Yugoslav partisans in Bosnia and carried out police and security duties in Hungary. They participated in the massacre of civilians in Bosnia and volunteered to join in the hunt for Jews in Croatia.” Part of the division also escorted Hungarian Jews from the forced labor in mine in Bor on their way back to Hungary. The division was also employed against Serbs, who as Orthodox Christians were seen by the Bosnian Muslims as enemies.

The Handschar division surrendered to the British army on May 8, 1945. As many as 70,000 Bosnian Muslim POWs and their families were moved by the British army to Taranto in Italy. The creation of Marshal Tito’s Yugoslavia at the end of the war meant that former Bosnian Muslim volunteers in the German SS units could not return home for fear of prosecution or internment. George Lepre, a scholar on the history of the Handschar and author of Himmler’s Bosnian Division: The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943-1945 describes their fate: “Those Bosnians who elected to remain in the camps eventually found asylum in countries throughout the Western and Arab worlds. Many of those who settled in the Middle East later fought in Palestine against the new Israeli state.”

But first they had to get to the Middle East.

The formation of the Bosnian unit in 1947

The Bosnian Muslims, usually referred to as “Yugoslavs” in period newspaper accounts as well as in intelligence reports, remained in DP camps in Italy until 1947, when it was reported in The Palestine Post on April 18 that there was a “request from the Syrian government for the transfer of 8,000 Bosnian Moslem refugees at present in Italy. Yugoslav quarters here say that the Arab League has written to all Arab states, urging them to assist these Moslem DPs, and that some financial help has already been received. Yugoslav officials say that they too want these 8,000 Moslems back, as they are the Handschar Division of the German Wehrmacht which surrendered to the British… The Yugoslavs state that they view with the gravest concern the possibility of the transfer of this group to the Middle East.”

By December 1947 a nucleus of former Handschar officers had made their way to Syria and were beginning to reconstitute their unit in Damascus. A report by Israel Baer in the Post noted that “the latest recruits to the Syrian army are members of the Bosnian Waffen SS… It is reported that they are directing a school for commando tactics for the Syrian Army.”

No doubt the fledgling Syrian army which had been born in 1946 was in need of officers and trainers with experience. Emilio Traubner, writing on December 3, 1947, noted that the International Refugee Organization (IRO) was even convinced to fund the travel of Bosnian Muslims from Italy to the Middle East so that they could find homes since they refused to be repatriated to Yugoslavia.

In January 1948 Arab agents were working to recruit Bosnians for the fight in Palestine. On February 2, it was reported that 25 Bosnian Muslims had arrived in Beirut and were moving to Damascus to join 40 other Bosnians already there. A report by Jon Kimche on February 4 further noted that up to 3,500 were being transferred to Syria to fight alongside Fawzi Kaukji’s Arab Liberation Army (ALA) in its invasion of Palestine. On March 14 a party of 67 Albanians, 20 Yugoslavs and 21 Croats led by an Albanian named Derwish Bashaco arrived by boat in Beirut from Italy. They were hosted by the Palestine Arab Bureau and made their way to Damascus to join the ALA. In the first week of April another 200 Bosnians arrived in Beirut.

A lengthy report by Claire Neikind on March 2 described the procedure by which Arab agents were recruiting volunteers among the DPs in Italy. Men between 22 and 32 were sought and in return they would receive free passage to Beirut and their families would receive maintenance. According to Neikind, 300 men had already arrived and 90 Croatian Ustashi were also making there way. Fifty-seven were sent to Amman. Between December 1 and February 20 a total of 106 were sent to Syria. Neikind noted that “as soon as their families are settled, they enter Arab military service.”

If one accepts merely the low totals from newspaper accounts it appears that there were at least 520 Bosnians, 67 Albanians and 111 Croatians in Syria or Beirut, as well as 135 Bosnians on their way to Egypt and 57 Bosnians in Jordan. Thus 890 volunteers from Yugoslavia and Albania were in the Middle East by April 1948, before Israel’s declaration of independence on May 15, 1948.

Upon arrival the volunteers found their way to a camp at Katana, a military base west of Damascus that the Syrian army had provided for use by the Arab Liberation Army being assembled to invade Palestine. Here they met their commander, Fawzi Kaukji for the first time. Kaukji, 58, was a former Ottoman soldier who had fought in the Arab Revolt. Hagana intelligence estimated as many as 4,000 volunteers had joined his army.

In December of 2005, Hassan Haidar Diab, a journalist in Bosnia, was able to locate Kemal Rustomovic, a Bosnian who had served with the Yugoslav volunteers. He claimed to have been a member of the Arab Salvation Army where 150 of his fellow Bosnians served under a Bosnian officer named Fuad Sefkobegovic.

The Role of the Bosnians in the War of Independence

Since the fall of 1947 Arab forces under Abdel Khader Husseini and other locals had harassed Jewish traffic and supplies moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. A mixed Bosnian-Arab unit of the ALA had been dispatched to aid in the siege of Jerusalem and this unit found itself embroiled in the battle for Castel between April 3 and 8, 1948. This battle was part of the Hagana’s Operation Nahshon which was intended to relieve the siege of Jerusalem. It is not clear what became of the Bosnians who fought at Castel. Some may have retired to Ramallah, where it was reported on April 16 that Muslim foreigners including Yugoslavs had taken over the best hotels and “molested” the local population.

The next battle that the Bosnian units participated in was at Jaffa between April 25 and May 5. Jaffa had been allotted to the Arab state in the UN partition plan, but it was surrounded by territory allotted to the Jewish state. The battle began when the Irgun launched an attack on the city. According to the Hagana, there were 400 “Yugoslavs” and 200 Iraqis defending Jaffa. On April 28, Michel Issa, the Christian Arab commander of the Ajnadin Battalion, received orders from Kaukji to move from the Jerusalem foothills to relieve the siege of Jaffa. On the same day, Hagana intelligence noted that there were 60 “Yugoslavs” among the defenders of Jaffa. Issa arrived in Jaffa on April 29 ; the commander of Jaffa, Maj. Adil Najmuddin, deserted the city on May 1, leaving Issa and his Yugoslavs. According to Issa’s telegram to Kaukji, “Adil left [the] city by sea with all [the] Iraqis and Yugoslavs.” Prior to their departure the Yugoslavs had been billeted at local homes and their unit even included a cook.

Kemal Rustomovic recalled in his interview that he had first been at Nablus, then Jaffa and finally at Jenin. Between the evacuation of the Yugoslavs by sea from Jaffa and their reunion with the ALA, the State of Israel was born on May 15, 1948. On the same day five Arab armies invaded Israel and the war became much wider.

The ALA became a disorganized and largely spent force by the time it saw fighting again around Nazareth again in July. During the fighting in the North, Kaukji’s army of 2,500 men was reduced to only 800 and it was driven from Nazareth into northern Galilee. Rustomovic was one of these men according to his interview. The Post reported that the ALA still included “Yugoslavs.” On July 18 the Post reported that the British government’s intelligence had acted to “systematically sabotage [the] Palestine partition scheme” and provided as evidence the fact that England was aware of the presence of Bosnian volunteers in Syria. [This briefly mentions how the Brits helped terrorize both Jews and Serbs.]

During the fighting in October the IDF conquered the entire Galilee and parts of Southern Lebanon. A report on November 1, detailing the capture of the Galilee, noted that some “Yugoslavs” had been captured during the fighting that had driven the ALA and the Lebanese army from Palestine and actually found the IDF in Lebanon.

The Bosnians and the 1948 war, strange bedfellows?

It is not known what became of the Bosnians who served with the Arab forces in the 1948 war. Rustomovic, who was born in the village of Kuti in central Bosnia in 1928, joined the Lebanese army in 1950. He served his adopted country for 30 years, married a local woman and had seven daughters and five sons with her. He was granted Lebanese citizenship, unlike the Palestine refugees who fled to Lebanon, and retired from the army in 1980. According to him, none of the Bosnians who had served in the SS ever returned to Yugoslavia. Some ended up in the US, Australia and Canada. It is assumed that some also settled in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East. Today many would be in their 80s and 90s and it is doubtful that many of them survive.

In the 1990s during the Balkan wars, Arabs would journey to the Balkans to participate in war between Bosnians and Serbs. In a strange twist they would be repaying the debt incurred when 900 or more Bosnian Muslims gave up their homes and past to come to the Middle East to serve the Muslim Arab cause. The involvement of these Bosnians may be seen as an early version of the linkage of Muslim conflicts throughout the world. This has gained increased exposure lately due to the involvement of foreign Muslim volunteers in the Algerian, Lebanese, Kashmiri, Sudanese and Afghani conflicts among others.

From “The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism by Chuck Morse:

The mufti was also a mentor to Yasser Arafat, who is believed to be Husseini’s nephew. Overlooked in the history books is the fact that about 100,000 European Muslims fought on the Nazi side in World War II. They included two Bosnian Muslim Waffen SS Divisions, an Albanian Waffen SS Division in Kosovo and Western Macedonia, the Waffengruppe der-SS Krim, formations consisting of Chechen Muslims from Chechnya, and other Muslim formations in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Bosnian Muslims, who were in the Croatian pro-Nazi Ustasha, were especially brutal toward the Christian Serbs. In 1943, a report on Ustasha activities stated:

“The Ustasha terror began in Mostar. The Ustashi, the majority of them local Mohammedans, are arresting, looking, and shipping off Serbs or killing them and throwing the bodies in the Neretva River. They are throwing Serbs alive into chasms and are burning whole families in their homes. Outside of Zagreb the strongest Ustasha hotbed is Sarajevo. The Muslims committed unbelievable barbarities for they murdered women and children even with scissors.”

As to the Bosnian wartime leader whom the U.S. threw its support behind, and for whom organized American Jewry lobbied for, here is a snippet about him from Srdja Trifkovic’s recent piece “Karadzic’s Arrest: Bosnian Myths Rehashed“:

Already as a young man during World War II, Izetbegovic was a member of the Young Muslims organization (Mladi Muslimani). His was a radical Islamic political organization inspired by the teaching of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Al Husseini, who toured the German-occupied Europe preaching that the Third Reich and the Muslim world had a natural community of interests that demanded personal commitment of every able-bodied Muslim. Izetbegovic’s ideas subsequently matured into a comprehensive, programmatic statement in the Islamic Declaration (1970), the document that led to his imprisonment by the communist authorities in 1983.

The Declaration became Izetbegovic’s de facto political platform. Reprinted in Sarajevo at a key moment in 1990, it startled the public. In the language familiar to the students of militant jihad everywhere, it called for Islamic moral and religious regeneration, and for the strengthening of different types of Islamic unity—up to, and including, armed struggle for the creation of an Islamic polity in countries where Muslims represent the majority of the population.

And from Andrew Bostom:

Mr. Izetbegovic was a youthful recruiter for Himmler’s Nazi Bosnian Muslim Handschar Division….Here are some of Izetbegovic’s “moderate” views, including his wish to destroy Israel (“occupied Palestine”), as expressed in this 1970 Islamic Declaration… “under the leadership of Zionists, started an action in Palestine which is not only inhumane and ruthless but also shortsighted and adventuresome. This politics takes in account only temporary ratio of power and forgets about overall ratio of power between Jews and Muslims in the world. This politics in Palestine is a provocation to all Muslims of the world. Jerusalem is not only a question of Palestinians, neither is it a question of Arabs only. It is a question of all the Muslim nations. To keep Jerusalem, the Jews would have to defeat Islam and the Muslims, and that — thank God — is outside their power.”

On the subject of the aforementioned Albanians, meanwhile, here is a short but interesting excerpt from the liberal Hamburg-based weekly “Die Zeit” by Theo Sommer, as translated for World Press Review in May, 1996: “A Balkan Intifada? The struggle for Serbia’s ‘Jerusalem’”

Literary historian Rexhep Qosja has emerged as a spokesman for the impatient. “This peaceful strategy is getting nowhere. It has achieved nothing. We have lost six years. The intifada, on the other hand, did get the Palestinians someplace.”

An intifada. That would be it, an answer to the view in Belgrade that Kosovo is “the Jerusalem of the Balkans.” Qosja explicitly rejects terrorism. But anyone speaking of an intifada cannot ignore Hamas.

Quid pro quo:

Similarly, for Bosnia we had:

Islamic Jihad official threatens to fight in Bosnia “again” (Excerpt from report by Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA)

Sarajevo, 19 March [2007]: A senior Islamic Jihad official, Ali Abu-Shahin, has said that members of this Palestinian militant organization will, if necessary, fight in Bosnia-Hercegovina [B-H] again.

In an interview for the Bosnian edition of Vecernji list, Abu-Shahin admitted that Islamic Jihad was directly involved in helping “our brothers Muslims in that country” since the start of the war in B-H.

“Apart from the financial help and weapons, we sent them fighters who with their lives gave the greatest contribution to that struggle. This is our pride, and if something like this is necessary again, we shall be available,” Abu-Shahin said. Vecernji list writes that he is in hiding and has strong security because he fears Israel’s revenge.

Abu-Shahin says this Palestinian faction is not surprised by the ruling of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which absolved Serbia of guilt for genocide in Srebrenica.

“Even during the war, our brothers who fought in B-H met Alija Izetbegovic [Bosnian Muslim war-time leader] and told him that these were not conflicts with Chetniks [derogatory name for Serbs], as it was said then, but that behind this was the international community which wanted to eradicate Muslims in Bosnia,” Abu-Shahin said.

He said that Islamic Jihad fears that the new pope, Benedict XVI, “sided with the oppressors whose only aim is to destroy Islam”.

Here is just one hint about Bosnia’s current course, and how Jews are regarded today. Here is another: Balkan Islamists Sponsored the Act of Terrorism in Israel. Related: Bosnian hospital treating injured Palestinian fighters and Bosnian-Palestinian Friendship Society

None of this, of course, stops Jewish newspapers from continuing to provide a platform for Bosnian (and Albanian) Muslims, as The Forward did in May when it gave space to former Bosnian foreign minister and UN ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey so he could persuade the readership that there were no mujahedeen in Bosnia.

But thinking people know better. In case they don’t, there is this Sky News video, as well as a documentary titled “Martyrs of Bosnia.” There is also this report about the mujahedeen that “weren’t” in Bosnia, as well as this former al Qaeda officer expressing his frustrations that Bosnian officials — much like the one the Forward gave space to — disagree when he tells them he was a terrorist and committed many crimes during the war. The mujahedeen who helped fight for Bosnian independence stayed on and were rewarded with their own towns once the towns were cleansed of Serbs. A more forthcoming Bosnian official here: News Flash: Bosnia Admits al Qaeda is in the House.

A post script on the Forward’s hackneyed history of anti-Serb bias, making it just another American Jewish newspaper that succumbed to Nazi-Croatian/Bosnian propaganda. From the letters page on June 10, 1994:

“Wrong Assessment of the Chetniks”

I read with interest “The Muse of Serbia” by Elizabeth Rubin, which was published in the Forward on March 11. I have found it very disturbing to realize that Ms. Rubin is not very well informed concerning the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is also terribly wrong in her assessment of the Chetniks as “bearded thugs…Nazi collaborators, rapists, looters and killers.” For your information:

1. The Serbian Chetnik guerrillas were the first resistance fighters in Europe in World War II against Nazi Germany.
2. The Chetniks rescued more than 500 American airmen shot down by Nazis and their friends, Croatians and Muslims.
3. The Chetnik leader, General Mihailovich, was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Truman and the American Congress on March 29, 1948 […] — Dejan Petkovich, Bayside, N.Y.

“Reviewing the Experience of the Serbs”

I look forward to the day when you shall give a few moments of critical review to the experiences of the Serbian people. In a piece by Elizabeth Rubin in the Spring Books section, the Forward, in glowing style, has all but labeled the Serbs and their nation as “Nazis”….How odd that a people who for centuries has had to endure oppression and annihilation has come to be the perpeterators of such crimes. How odd that the anthology that Ms. Rubin reviews, “Why Bosnia: Writings on the Balkan War,” reads more like a piece of propaganda from Goebbels than from actual accounts of the war in the former Yugoslavia. Indeed it is strange that the anthology, edited by Rabia Ali and Lawrence Lifshultz, depicts no dead, no mutilated, no displaced, no missing or hungry Serbs. How amazing that an entire nation of people do nothing but murder and “cleanse” all day! Are those of us who know the Serb victims merely dreaming? Are we imagining that our families have disappeared or suffered greatly? Or is that just what you want us to believe?

If, indeed, this course of “historical” writing shall one day replace what we have come to expect from “scholarly,” objective accounts of the human experience, then I dread what we shall one day read about Jewish history, as told by our most dreaded enemies! I believe this is what we have come to label as “revisionism.” […] — Betsy Lalich, President, Jewish-Serbian Friendship Society of America, Chicago Chapter

Finally, a July 3, 1992 letter to the Forward, also by Ms. Lalich, reveals that the Forward had published a Croatian-American Judenrat:

It is with great sadness that I noted the Forward’s recent publication, in editorial-size form, of the letter from Margaret Casman-Vuko (May 1) and the letters from Katarina Mijatovic and Jason Feer (April 3). Ms. Casman-Vuko, described as “an American who has been a member of the Jewish community of Croatia for the past 20 years,” sounds to me to be a “good Croatian” indeed. She dismisses facts from numerous Jewish and non-Jewish sources and refers to “Serb-backed Yugoslavia” and “Serbian expansionist designs.” She exploits the sensitivity of Jewish readers in particular by citing the existence of “Serbian concentration camps” presently in operation and states that the Serbian people were partners with the Nazis in the Holocaust! She defends Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman, who, in his recent book “Wastelands of Historical Reality,” diminishes and condones genocide, and even blames its victims for their fate! Finally, Ms. Casman-Vuko accuses the remaining Serbian enclaves, survivors of the Holocaust, of “aggression upon sovereign states.” She does not mention that several sources have accused these sovereign states of embarking upon their goal by first attempting to rid their population of “foreign” elements, i.e., Serbs. When the Jewish community first noted the neo-fascist character of Croatia and its allies, they blew the whistle. Croatia and its allies, specifically Germany, know they must never again tread upon Jewish lives or sensibilities. Because of this, they have sought to distort history and prey upon our good will. We are not so dumb.

Equally disturbing are letters from Ms. Mijatovic and Mr. Feer. Ms. Mijatovic accuses the Serbian people, citing obscure sources, of being “one of the most anti-Jewish” in the world. She freely refers to “Serbo-communists” and suggests that Serbs, not Croats, ran the death camps [of WWII]. She does not refer to Croatia’s foreign minister, Zvonimir Separovic, who has attributed the current Serbian-Croatian war to a “Jewish-Serbian conspiracy” (source: The Wiesenthal Center). Nor does she address other disturbing facts that the Wiesenthal Center has cited over the past year.

Mr. Feer, who has been reporting from Croatia, is doing an excellent job of presenting Croatian aspiration and know-how. We should all be pleased that “no evidence” of anti-Semitism is “widespread” in Croatia. And we should not wonder about the motivations of pouring “2 million German marks” into the Croatian-Jewish community.

Unfortunately, the American community, and to a lesser extent the Jewish community, has been unaware or in denial of the facts about Yugoslavia and its history, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It should not be distorted or forgotten. Remembrance does not mean war, unless peace is distorted and one-sided. One should examine the evidence detailed extensively from Jewish sources before judging the Serbs, who historically have been allies, both politically and culturally, of the Jewish people.

Kosovo Serb Fleeing Reports ‘Untrue’ (June):

The UN in Kosovo has denied reports of Kosovo Serbs fleeing the town of Decan/Decani.
…
“In the past two days, media have erroneously reported that Kosovo Serb returnees living in Decan/Decani had fled the city,” the statement says.
…
Earlier, media reported that in protest to the decision by UNMIK Chief, Joachim Ruecker to return land to the nearby Serbian Orthodox Monastery, local Albanians had held protests forcing recent Serb returnees to flee again.

According to UNMIK, the returnees had complained to the mission’s Office of Communities, Returns and Minority Affairs that the reports were incorrect.

Hearing the possibility that tales of Serb returnees fleeing Decani were untrue, Albanians rectified the situation this week:

Serb returnees attacked in Dečani

The Dečani municipal chief says ten Serbs were assaulted by ethnic Albanians today.

The Serbs, Zoran Barović explained, were in this Kosovo enclave as members of a working group for the return of the Serbs driven out of their homes.

Barović told KiM Radio that a group of local Albanians attacked them physically and verbally, shouting offenses and telling them “you are not welcome here, there can’t be any good days for you here”.

The incident took place in front of the town hall. The working group members were told that they can return to Kosovo “only if they recognize the state of Kosovo”, while should they represent Serbia, “they are not welcome in Dečani”.

Kosovo police, KPS, intervened to escort the Serbs to their vehicles and to Peć, in the western part of the province.

In Peć, however, local KPS spokesman Avni Davukaj denied there was any physical assault on the Serbs, and said, “it’s possible verbal conflict took place between them”.

I guess UN officials in Decani weren’t attacked either. Whew.

Moreover, I don’t want to launch any new talks on big political issues, but on resolving practical problems in Kosovo,“ Zannier explained to Vienna daily Presse, adding that he saw UNMIK’s future role primarily as a mediator between Serbs and Albanians.

“Channels must remain open for political dialogue, and since we’re recognized by all sides we can talk with everyone,“ stressed the UNMIK chief.

“Since the Kosovo institutions have now assumed responsibility, we will no longer have any role in administration,“ he acknowledged.

Zannier added that although Security Council Resolution 1244 still gave him de facto power in Kosovo, he did not have the instruments to implement it, since the Kosovo Albanians and the countries that had recognized the province’s independence respected only the new Kosovo constitution as the basis for administration and the judiciary.

“We are the link with countries that haven’t recognized Kosovo,“ the UNMIK chief said, admitting that Priština was not very interested in UNMIK.

“I’m still the person that submits reports to the UN Security Council on the situation in Kosovo, and it’s in the interests of the Kosovo government for their work to be positively perceived by the international community,“ he underlined.

Press conference regarding signing of agreement between company Infostud and Ministry for Diaspora was held on September 2^nd in Ministry for Diaspora facilities. Speakers were Minister for Diaspora, Mr. Srdjan Sreckovic, director of company Infostud, Mrs Branislava Gajic and Minister assistant for economic issues of Diaspora, Mr Djordjo Prstojevic.

Director of company Infostud, Mrs Branislava Gajic said that Infostud as the biggest job search website in Serbia, contributed to employment of 35000 people from Serbia in the last year, and that their goal is to include quality experts from Diaspora in that number .

”We have a will to connect this people with companies that could offer them good working condition, and in that way they return will benefit both sides. First step in that direction is targeting needs of our people in Diaspora, problems that they are facing that is stopping them to come back and meeting those needs with needs of our companies that are looking for employees. In that sense cooperation with Ministry for Diaspora is a natural step and we are expecting good results, ”said Branislava Gajic.

In his speech, Minister Sreckovic said that one of priorities of his Ministry is return of young experts in Serbia who will fill the gap that is left after Brain-drainage in 90’s when 500.000 people left Serbia, and where 100000 of them were graduated.

One of the main reasons for signing this agreement is, said Sreckovic, that company Infostud is most efficient employer in Serbia.

Minister added that Ministry for Diaspora and Government of Serbia are showing in this way that every young expert that is promoting Serbia abroad is important.

According to survey that Strategic marketing conducted in July 2007, 50% of people that participated in survey that are satisfied with their life in Diaspora wants to come back to Serbia and 39% of them consider return in Serbia as a realistic option.

Serbia is good place to return because competitiveness is small, growth of GDP is the biggest compared to the neighboring countries, market is quickly developing and that’s a reason way Ministry for Diaspora will conduct different projects with a goal of returning young experts to Serbia as a way of Improving economic development of country.

Priority of Ministry for Diaspora will be to discourage trend of Brain-drainage and to provide opportunities for our citizens in Diaspora to become real partners in economic development of Serbia by usage of their skills, expertise and resources, said Minister Sreckovic.

Mr. Chairman, dear Colleagues

May I first of all thank you for your kind invitation to join you today here in the OSCE Permanent Council for a discussion of recent developments in Kosovo, and in particular the role of UNMIK and of the OSCE Mission as its Pillar.

Nearly a decade after UN SC Resolution 1244 put an end to hostilities and UNMIK/KFOR were first deployed throughout Kosovo, we are going through a dynamic phase of change and transition, which is presenting complex challenges both politically and operationally for all those operating on the ground.

As I reported to the Security Council in July, the ability of UNMIK to perform the vast majority of its tasks as an interim administration has been fundamentally challenged owing to actions taken by the authorities in Pristina and the Kosovo Serbs throughout the year.

Following the declaration of independence, the “Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo” came into force on 15 June. Since then, the Kosovo authorities continue to seek to assume powers and responsibilities of a sovereign state. Following the establishment of a Kosovo Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Government has recently announced the opening of Embassies and the appointment of ambassadors to a number of countries. The Assembly of Kosovo continues to pass legislation, which is now promulgated by the President of Kosovo without reference to my powers under UNSCR 1244 or the Constitutional Framework.

Kosovo Serbs have, on the other hand, continued to resist cooperation with the Pristina authorities, stressing that they will cooperate only with UNMIK. This has had significant implications, in particular, for the “rule-of-law” area (police, customs and judiciary) where UNMIK continues to play a prominent role. However, the Mitrovica Court is still closed, large numbers of Kosovo-Serb police officers, who refuse to work within the Kosovo Police Service, continue to be suspended and UNMIK Customs has no presence at the two Northern gates – Gates 1 and 31, with the resulting loss of revenues. I am trying to resolve these and other issues through facilitation of an open dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.

Moreover, as a result of local municipal elections on 11 May, which were declared invalid by UNMIK (my predecessor), new parallel municipal authorities are now operating in all Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo and the Serbian Minister for Kosovo has noted publicly his expectation that UNMIK will eventually recognise them.

As a consequence of this stark divergence of paths taken by Kosovo’s Serbian and Albanian communities, the space in which UNMIK can operate has changed. Exercising my legal powers under UNSCR 1244 and in a status-neutral mode has become increasingly difficult in practice. As I pointed out in the UNSC, attempts to impose my legal authority are simply not heeded by the Kosovo Albanian majority, who now see the Constitution of Kosovo as the fundamental document from which legal authority derives. While I am still formally vested of executive authority under Resolution 1244, I have no tools to enforce it; in fact, these powers can only be exercised if and when they are accepted by all parties. Therefore, very few Executive Decisions have been issued after 15 June.

While UNMIK continues to retain international responsibilities for rule of law functions throughout Kosovo for the time being, the European Union’s Rule of Law Mission - EULEX – continues to plan its deployment to assume its own responsibilities. We expect EULEX to be deployed in the months to come and to operate under UN authority and in accordance with SC Resolution 1244.

As a consequence of all these factors, the Secretary-General has informed the Security Council of his intention to reconfigure UNMIK, based on these changing circumstances. We have already announced that we expect to cut large numbers of our staff as a result, and reorient our principle activities towards a more political role, while not losing sight of the need to ensure continued protection to the communities.

Coming to the OSCE Mission – a pillar of UNMIK and a vital part of the reconfigured UN Mission - I believe that it will continue to have a very important role to play. In fact, as a result of UNMIK’s reconfiguration, the role of the OSCE will become more critical, particularly at the field level, not only to help fill possible gaps but, more importantly, to ensure that the achievements we have accomplished together so far are not dispersed.

With UNMIK’s new role, I see a great opportunity for the OSCE in Kosovo to have even more concrete impact. For instance, the overall UNMIK representation in the municipalities will be scaled down, even though we will continue to retain presences in Peja/Pec, Strpce, Gjilane and of course Mitrovica. With a more efficient cooperation with the OSCE – and in the perspective of an integrated UN strategy which we are developing with the other UN agencies and organisations operating in Kosovo - we can make sure that the minority communities in these regions can continue to rely on a strong international presence to assist in the protection of their cultural heritage, in the safe passage of returns to their homes, and proper access of their community to the full range of local government and social services.

Let me point to specific opportunities for a larger OSCE role. Since 2003, UNMIK’s Division of Civil Administration undertook executive interventions in exceptional cases to resolve local level disputes and governance problems. The new situation on the ground is forcing us to reduce substantially this area of activity. However, since some of UNMIK’s most effective work in civil administration has been through “soft intervention”, a role I would describe as a combination of advisory, mentoring, mediation and providing “good offices”, this is a field where the OSCE could well develop its role by ensuring strong personal ties at the local level.

I can think of a couple of recent examples of this kind of intervention. First, UNMIK mediated extensively in Gjakove/Djakovica when the site of the destroyed Orthodox church was transformed by local authorities into a public park. I used my good offices to bring this to the attention of the Prime Minister in order to seek corrective action to protect this site. A second example concerns the situation in the Serb majority Shterpce/Strpce Municipality, where the so-called parallel Serb structures have forcibly assumed powers from the Kosovo Government appointed Municipal authorities. This has resulted in a partial paralysis of the functioning of the Municipality. Our mediating efforts on the ground have so far prevented potential conflict and escalation of tensions. While we will not abandon this kind of interventions in future, I would personally welcome a more proactive role of the OSCE in similar instances in close cooperation with us.

UNMIK also has had a very specific mandate to monitor returns of families and individuals to their homes and their communities throughout Kosovo. This is an area of real and ongoing concern. We have been providing continuous advice to the Kosovo Ministry of Communities and Returns about the appropriate conditions for sustainable returns. However, results are mixed and statistics are not so encouraging: for this reason, as we streamline our operation, stronger joint action with the OSCE will be of essence.

This interaction will be crucial for the promotion of democratic values, observance of basic human rights within Kosovo and the protection of all community interests.

In my experience, the OSCE has distinct comparative advantages at the regional or “country” level: its neutrality, its “rights-based” approach, and its decentralized network of regional offices and sub-offices. Your organization has already left an important legacy in terms of its contribution to peace and security and to the fulfilment of UNSCR 1244. OSCE has overseen successive elections throughout Kosovo, promoting the observance of international standards. Through its presence in all Kosovo municipalities, it monitors the functioning of the courts and police stations. It has been a strong advocate for the rights of minority communities, whether it is through ensuring access to schools and higher education or fully functioning public transport.

In conclusion, I would say that the changes affecting UNMIK present the OSCE with both opportunity and challenge: an opportunity because it will be in the “front line” in terms of monitoring, mentoring, advising and “sounding the alarm bell” if necessary; a challenge because none of us will have the robust rule-making authority once undisputedly in UNMIK’s hands. Stronger cooperation will be required, and the desirability for more active role of the OSCE in the field may provide you, in this phase of transition, with a good opportunity to reassess the operation in the light of the new realities emerging on the ground.

Belgrade daily Večernje Novosti writes today that the Italians, who when they first started negotiations with Sebia’s Zastava carmaker insisted they would sell “95 percent of cars produced there in the EU market”, while the rest would be offered to Serbian buyers, “have now changed their mind”.

Serbia has a valid free trade agreement with the Russian Federation, allowing it to place most of the goods produced here to the Russian market custom duty free, that is, with one percent costs, prompting Fiat to deduce that its planned production in Kragujevac could make the company very competitive in Russia.

In the meantime, the strategic partnership contract between Fiat and the Serbian government will be ready for signing by the end of September, both sides are saying.

An MoU on the same subject was signed in early May.

However, vehicles 1600 cc and below are not on the Serbo-Russian trade agreement list of customs exempt products.

Therefore, the daily writes, once parliament ratifies the strategic oil and natural gas agreement with Russia, a mixed working group will meet, “with the sole goal of harmonizing a possible expansion of the existing free trade deal between Russia and Serbia”.

In an interview with B92 TV, the EU enlargement commissioner said that after the visit of Chief Hague Prosecutor Serge Brammertz to Belgrade, the European Commission will once again review Serbia’s cooperation with this court, in order to make a decision on the possibility of implementing the interim trade agreement.

Rehn said that the arrest of Radovan Karadžić was an important move by the authorities in Belgrade, which the European Union should recognize, but that Serbia’s further steps toward the EU will require a unanimous decision of all EU members states.

“I said it in July and I repeated it several times since, that in my opinion, which is also the opinion of the commission’s president and the European Commission, we need to start implementing the trade agreement, particularly those parts that are related to economy and trade,” he said.

“I assume that Serbia will continue to cooperate with the court in The Hague in a satisfying, sustainable manner, in order for the remaining fugitives to be arrested,” said Rehn.

“Of course, when it comes to European integrations, other steps need to be made in the future, such as the ratification of the Stabilization and Association Agreement in [EU] member states, giving of the candidate status and opening of association negotiations,” he continued.

“I am speaking about a process during which we expect full cooperation of Serbia with the court in The Hague. Of course, the sooner this chapter is closed the better for Serbia,” Rehn said.

He also repeated that Serbia’s Euro integration and the issue of Kosovo’s status are two separate processes and stressed that further path toward Brussels is not conditioned with acceptance of EULEX or giving up on the International Court of Justice initiative.

“As I’ve said before, my goal is to avoid any linking of Serbia approaching the EU and the status of Kosovo. I hope others will also see it that way, but obviously these are political decision that will resound and the Serbian government has probably considered all the risks that can come about with their implementation,” Rehn said.

He added that, as far as he was concerned, Serbia’s EU integration is high on the list of priorities, despite the Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty and the Georgian crisis.

The full transcript of the interview with Rehn, set to be broadcast on B92 TV this evening, will soon be available on our website.

“If America would surrender a photocopy of the charges brought against Miladin Kovacevic to Serbia, he could be put on trial here,” Snezana Malovic told Belgrade’s Vecernje Novosti daily.

She said that so far no related documents have been sent to Belgrade.

Kovacevic, 20, from the Serbian northern town of Kula and a former student and basketball player at the University of Binghamton in New York State, was allegedly involved in a fight with another student at a campus bar.

Bryan Steinhauer was left in a coma and Kovacevic was charged with assault and inflicting grievous bodily harm.

He was released on bail for US$100,000 (€67,870) and ordered to surrender his passport to US authorities.

However, the Serbian Consulate in New York issued him with new travel documents and he returned home. Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic immediately suspended the New York Deputy Consul and launched an investigation into the case.

Police on Monday detained Igor Milosevic on charges of abusing the office. Read more:
http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/12825

Interpol has issued an international warrant for Kovacevic and the US has demanded his extradition from Serbia.

But Serbia’s constitution bans the extradition of its citizens and Jeremic said Kovacevic would remain in Serbia “until he decides otherwise.”

Last month, Washington threatened Serbia could lose aid over Kovacevic’s case. Read more: http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/12245

Later in August, a US prosecutor reportedly offered Kovacevic a 12-year jail term if he pleaded guilty as charged, but both his family and his lawyer rejected it. Read more: http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/12523

U.S. Army Mps From The 630Th Military Police Company Man A Checkpoint Near Vitina, Kosovo, On July 28, 1999.

Dod/Getty

The weekend war in Georgia at the beginning of August is leading, as it should, to a discussion about the future of the relationships between Russia, its neighbors, and the Western powers. More than any recent event in international affairs that I can recall, the war has also provoked an intense debate about the past. Russia’s insistence that it has national interests to protect, and that it is willing to resort to the brutal use of force to protect them, has reopened old arguments about the way the West behaved in the years following the end of the Cold War.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, recall, NATO membership was extended to the East European satellite states of the Soviet Union and to the three former Soviet republics on the Baltic. In 1999, NATO, ignoring Russian objections, went to war with Russia’s ally Serbia over Kosovo. Just this year, most Western powers recognized Kosovo’s independence, and — while the issue remains unresolved — at the very least considered eventual NATO membership for another two former Soviet republics, Georgia and Ukraine. So the question becomes: Has the West needlessly provoked Russia for more than a decade? Is it somehow to blame for the misery of the Georgian war and the danger that comes in its wake?

In politics, we praise bold and decisive leaders. But caution and prudence have their place in the affairs of men, too. Words and actions have consequences, some of them unintended, which is why I have always thought that politicians and diplomats should be forced to memorize a few haunting lines that the Irish poet W.B. Yeats wrote when he was an old man, looking back over a lifetime of art and political activism. “Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the English shot?”

That lesson was taken to heart by the extraordinarily skillful foreign-policy team around President George H.W. Bush, which was convinced that it was dangerous to rub Moscow’s nose in its own failure. As Western policy shifted in the Clinton years toward doing more to protect those who had suffered Soviet domination, there was no shortage of those who argued that Washington was playing with fire. I remember those debates very well. They were vigorous and impassioned. For all those who warned that it was unwise to poke the Russian bear in the eye, there were those (myself included) who believed that as the principal victims of the Cold War, those who had lived under Soviet oppression deserved any protection they sought. If what they wanted was NATO membership, then that was what they should get.

Kosovo, arguably, was the hardest case of all. At the outset, I opposed the war, not just because the decision to get involved was taken in the teeth of Russian opposition, but also because NATO was openly taking sides in a civil war (Kosovo was legally part of Serbia). As the scale of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo became clear, I changed my mind, coming to believe that there were rare cases when humanitarian intervention — that sly little euphemism for war — was justified. But nobody can say they weren’t warned about what would happen next. In their new book America Between the Wars,, Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier, two former Clinton Administration officials, recount a conversation about Kosovo between Strobe Talbott, Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, and Yegor Gaidar, a pro-Western, reformist, former Russian Prime Minister. “Oh, Strobe,” said Gaidar, “if only you knew what a disaster this war is for those of us in Russia who want for our country what you want.”

Picking over the past, of course, is only useful if it leads to useful prescriptions for conduct in the future. In the case of Georgia, it bears repeating that statesmen should not make promises they cannot keep — or have no real intention of keeping. Yes, the U.S. told Georgia not to provoke Russia, which was itching for a fight. But ever since the Rose Revolution in 2003, Washington’s body language had been different, sending the message that Georgia was a close ally. Fine, but allies come to each other’s defense. If that was never Washington’s intention should Georgia be threatened, its President, Mikheil Saakashvili, should have been told so, over and over again, in words that left no misunderstanding.

Beyond that, the key lesson of the past is a depressing one. There were no good, costless choices over NATO expansion, much less over Kosovo. A decision to withhold NATO membership from Eastern Europe, and to leave the Kosovars to their fate, would have exposed as hypocrites those who had spent the Cold War taking the high moral ground against the Soviet Union. But sometimes, we have just been reminded, good intentions are not enough to ward off tragedy. That’s one reason why it’s always worth keeping a volume of Yeats’ poetry close at hand.