THINGS ARE NOT AS WELL AS THEY APPEAR, MR. CLINTON The reception he got today in Pristina is certainly one Clinton would not have gotten anywhere else. Whenever he has visited Europe, he has been met by masses of demonstrators protesting his retrograde policies which have inflicted damage to the U.S. and Europe alike. The fact that a politician of considerable political and moral disrepute has been greeted by such ovations in Kosovo, overrun during the last four years of international "peace" by lawlessness and crimes against the weak and defenseless, perhaps is only becoming for Clinton at the end of his political career.
TOP ERP KIM INFO SERVICE September 19, 2003 "I pleased to see things look so well." These were the first words of former U.S. president William Jefferson Clinton as he exchanged embraces with Ibrahim Rugova, who, together with thousands of Kosovo Albanians, prepared an unforgettable reception for him today in Pristina. Mr. Clinton probably did not even ask where are the members of the communities whose representatives he met during his last visit to Kosovo and Metohija in autumn of 1999 and whom he had promised that the Province would become an oasis of peace and tolerance. Such memories are hardly à propos in an atmosphere vividly reminiscent of former welcomes for Communist leaders for whom streets, public squares and towns were renamed and whose placards dominated all the key points. The colors of the flags and political manners have changed, it is true, but the mentality remains unchanged from the 1980s when Albanian demonstrators demanded that Kosovo become a part of the empire of Enver Hoxha. Nevertheless, behind the raucous and festive façade of a happy Kosovo hides a far more tragic reality, one which neither Bill Clinton nor the numerous other diplomatic visitors who come here for their one day "safaris" in Pristina wish to see. It is the reality of isolated Serb enclaves, children who cannot go to school out of fear for their safety, dug up cemeteries and desecrated churches. Is this the kind of Kosovo envisioned by the former Western leaders who initiated military intervention against Serbia? Wasn't the phrase most frequently repeated to justify the intervention that it was to enable the creation of a multiethnic society? If we judge success on the basis of that purported goal, Kosovo and Metohija is less multiethnic today than it has ever been in its long history. It is the patent absurdity of the Kosovo peacekeeping mission that the southern Serbian province, which has been under the rule of the UN Mission and NATO forces for the past four years, represents the most unstable part of the Balkans, a perpetual hothouse of ethnic violence, organized crime and drug smuggling While Ibrahim Rugova persistently attempts to prove to his Albanian compatriots and, very likely, to himself, that the billboards advertising "Winston" cigarettes and the plethora of U.S. flags are a sure indicator of economic progress and democratization of Kosovo, extremists continue their activities, not even sparing the Serbian children of Gorazdevac who were unable to go to the Montenegrin seaside like tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians but sought refreshment from the summer heat in the small river next to their village. During his visit to the Pristina airport of Slatina, on Pristina streets and at the University, Bill Clinton today met only Albanians, heard only the Albanian language and saw only the monoethnic society that represents the strongest evidence of the (lack of) justification for his policy toward the Balkans. At Pristina University Clinton accepted an honorary doctorate without asking himself why no Serbian students or professors were present. Perhaps the former president would not have even cared if he had known they were not there. For him, like for so many other Western politicians, all residents of Kosovo and Metohija are one amorphous mass of half-civilized "Kosovars" whose misfortune served just in time as a means of realizing far broader strategic interests and goals of the most powerful countries in the world. At the end Mr. Clinton did not forget to make a few statements calling for ethnic reconciliation. But he explained the acts of violence committed against Serbs and non-Albanian minorities after the war exclusively as acts of revange "which deserve understanding but not justification", as he explained during his previous visit to Kosovo in November 1999. Speaking of "vengeance which belongs only to God" to people among which a large majority turns a blind eye towards massacres of innocent Serb children (Gorazdevac, Aug 03) or entire families (Obilic, June 03) can very easily be understood as an attempt to interpret systematic campaing of ethnic terror as a natural consequence of frustration - "OK, dear "Kosovars" you had enough, let the rest into the hands of the Almighty". But the Lord is teaching us that any crime, especially against the innocent, is a crime against God himself and that any attempt to rationalize a crime becomes a crime itself. The reception Bill Clinton got today in Pristina is certainly one he would not have gotten anywhere else. Whenever he has visited Europe, he has been met by masses of demonstrators protesting his retrograde policies which have inflicted damage to the U.S. and Europe alike. The fact that a politician of considerable political and moral disrepute has been greeted by such ovations in Kosovo, overrun during the last four years of international "peace" by lawlessness and crimes against the weak and defenseless, perhaps is only becoming for Clinton at the end of his political career. Editorial by Fr. Sava (Janjic) http://www.kosovo.com/erpkim20sep03.html#7 Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
