Take the time to read the comments: if this reflects popular opinion then there has been a change!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/11/22/dl2202 .xml#comments The Kosovo conundrum Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 22/11/2007 When talks began between the Serbs and Kosovans over the province's future, the tone was optimistic: there was the prospect, said Serbian President Boris Tadic, of "a historic compromise". But on the central issue, there has been no compromise at all. Belgrade is prepared to offer Pristina "home rule", with extensive autonomy within the framework of the Serbian state. The majority ethnic Albanian Kosovans are clear: they want independence. And if they do not get it by the time the talks end on December 10 and the matter is referred to the UN Security Council, they will, at some point in the next few months, claim it anyway. advertisement Should this happen, Russia would use its veto on behalf of its client, Serbia, to ensure that the UN did not recognise the new state. Britain, the EU and America would probably recognise it anyway. Such an impasse would not augur well. There are certainly reasons to be cautious about granting Kosovo independence. It could lead to the renewed harassment of the few remaining Serbs in the province, and a return to the fighting of previous years. An embittered Serbia would turn its back on the EU, stirring up trouble where it could. Ethnic Albanians in Macedonia and Greece might clamour to join the new state, while other minorities, such as the Basques in Spain, would agitate strongly and perhaps violently for their own independence. Russia has threatened, none too subtly, to recognise separatist enclaves within Georgia, a Western ally, as a tit-for-tat gesture. This situation has the diplomatic world biting its nails: both Liam Fox, the Conservative defence spokesman, and Foreign Secretary David Miliband have warned of the danger of renewed conflict in such a troubled region. But the truth is that the only real option is the "supervised independence" suggested by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari - an EU-managed, UN-endorsed protectorate of the kind adopted in Bosnia, giving cast-iron protection to the Serbian minority. As the party platforms in last weekend's elections there made clear, Kosovo will under no circumstances remain a part of Serbia. Separation seems inevitable: the only question is how traumatic it will be. Have your say Print this page as text only Email this story Post this story to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit Related articles News: It's war if Kosovo breaks away, say Serbs Comments Doni- you really are full of it. Nobody believes the lies anymore and these terrible massacres in Kosovo you insist happened. Ask all objective observers and they will agree these gross exaggerations have done all those with an interest in the peace and prosperity of Kosovo a disservice, and you're the last person to realise it. Posted by Zeka on November 22, 2007 1:59 PM Report this comment The Kosovo war was about placating Islam. It didn't work. Hell with them. I'm with Serbia and Russia on this one. Posted by charles USA on November 22, 2007 1:56 PM Report this comment Kosovo has never been part of Albania, or independent in any way. It has always been part of Serbia - it just has a majority of Albanians living there. So does this mean for example that Tower Hamlets or Newham will be able to claim independence and impose Sharia law as the number of Muslims increases in those areas? Is the principle not the same? A case of we are in the majoity and we want this part of the country to belong to us, under our rule? If an area or province of a sovereign state becomes heavily populated by members of a different culture, race or religion, it is still part of that sovereign state. To say otherwise is a very dangerous precedent to make. Posted by londoner on November 22, 2007 11:39 AM Report this comment If we allow the UN to sanction the breakup of a sovereign state, where will it stop? I agree with Serbia that autonomy should be allowed with cast-iron guarantees to both sides, but the message given by the albanians is one of a 100 years ago -violence is the means to an end. Revenge has been sweet for the albanians, with over 200,000 serbs driven out of the country. Posted by Matt Baker on November 22, 2007 11:25 AM Report this comment So on the pretext of fighting against Greater Serbia, British troops and money were, and are, being used to pursue the goal of......Greater Albania. "Fools rush in......." Posted by Nicholas on November 22, 2007 10:40 AM Report this comment Kosovo will remain Serbian, no doubt about it. The west is just trying to find a way of breaking this news to the albanians. Posted by Max on November 22, 2007 10:34 AM Report this comment It might be easy to cast Russia as a villain in this piece - but isn't the reality here that a pragmatic view of many nation states reveals they have very mixed ethnicity - national borders, whether carved recently or long ago, bear little relation to the areas different groups view as their homelands? Russia has this problem in spades and from time to time is accused of being heavy handed in dealing with it. What is a large nation state to do when pieces of it want to unhelpfully fragment the whole out of self-interest. Can it not be posited that the Moscow regime is trying to preserve the whole - because the sum of the parts is so much less? China has very many ethnicities within her borders, languages too, and has expanded unhelpfully from time to time. She appears to get a lot less flak for how she minds her internal business. You really don't get much in our western media about secessionist desires in parts of mainland China. The issues in relatively new composite states such as Iraq or Serbia illustrate the problems of political map-making. A Europe of increasingly smaller fragmented states is going to be a pathetic cobble up of competing interest groups - one which will be deftly manipulated not by elected politicians but by faceless Eurocrats for those parts in the EU. Why the UK is even contemplating this sort of thing beggars belief. The US, Russia and China, even India, are strong in part because they do not brook minority secessionist aims and have made collective national identity an important part of the message of the state to the people. There was a time when being British - despite our interested being spread across the globe meant even more than those national identities - as we saw in two world wars. Serbia and Kosovo, England and Scotland - why can people not see it is better to be IN the tent? Posted by simon coulter on November 22, 2007 10:25 AM Report this comment But there's no oil in Kosovo and the ethnic majority are Muslims. Yet the USA and Britain support them! Bit of a conundrum for the Guardianistas and the BBC. Blimey, they may even be forced to criticise the Russians - quel horreur! Time for Nelson's telescope. Posted by Graham King on November 22, 2007 10:05 AM Report this comment Kosovo should for another three hundred years belong to Serbia. Independence would be rewarding the KLA's decade-long terrorism which led to the Serbian army's action. If the EU sanctions this land theft, why not support ETA and Basque independence? Wrting as a life-long anti-communist, I can only admire Milosovic's action and Russia's policy. Blair and Clinton made a dreadful mistake. Posted by J Foreman on November 22, 2007 10:04 AM Report this comment We backed the wrong side in 1999. A Muslim (and gangster) state in Europe is not to our advantage at all. Posted by cg on November 22, 2007 9:11 AM Report this comment There is no mention in your article that at the end of the 1999 Kosovo conflict, UN Resolution 1244 was signed and agreed by the very countries which are now keen to award independence. Within this resolution it states quite clearly that Kosovo legally remains part of Serbia. To those who think that Russia is somehow being unreasonable when refusing to back a therefore illegal independence, it should be remembered that the US and the UK have used their veto in the UN Security Council many times more than the Russians. The veto is there to protect international law and structure, not to undermine it. There has to be a compromise sought. Apart from anything else, there cannot be an award of 15% of another nation's territory to a mono-ethnic group (the Kosovo Albanians who have 'cleansed' over 200,000 other residents out of Kosovo since 1999) just to 'keep things quiet'. This is a terrible, dangerous and short-sighted precedent. Posted by Kate Thomas on November 22, 2007 8:43 AM Report this comment Move in, breed like crazy and another domino falls. Serbian associates of mine are aghast at the Fijisation of their territory where no single place name has any Albanian root or history. The media helps the Albanian cause by failing to mention that "ethnic Albanian" is code for muslim. Kosovo is an obscure place some distance away but the English Midlands and the mid-Lancs to mid-Yorks crescent are very much closer. Demographics twinned with democracy will surely work the same trick there. Posted by Doomsayer on November 22, 2007 8:41 AM Report this comment The leader alludes to "Ethnic Albanians in Macedonia and Greece (who) might clamour to join the new state", and what of this new ethnic Albanian state simply merging with Albania proper to form Greater Albania? Kosovo by itself is not economically viable. Perhaps the Greek minority in Albania will in turn also want to be recognised. And what of the Serbs in Kosovo? Will they be ethically cleansed while the rest of the world looks away feeling that the Serbs, who behaved badly in Bosnia-Herzogovina in the 1990s, have asked for it? The EU and America did nothing when 300,000 Kryianian Serbs were unceremoniously expelled from Croatia, where they had been for centuries; so the West is hardly going to bother if 100,000 Serbs are expelled from Kosovo. The Americans are over-stretched anyway and won't intervene, and the EU's forces, with the exception of Britain and perhaps France, have no reputation for military prowess. So they'll open Pandora's Box and step aside will it all turns nasty. Posted by wilson on November 22, 2007 7:44 AM Report this comment My over-riding term of reference is the 2nd world war. The Serbs were the only ones who supported us against the Nazis. We should return that support. NO to independence for Kosovo. Posted by ed lancey on November 22, 2007 7:36 AM Report this comment What a tragedy. The noble and brave Serbs have to plead for their territory. The West aides and abets annexation by a hostile and viscous faction, their eyes on a greater Albania. Pristina is heaving with consultants, desperately producing mountains of pointless reports, washing them down with Chablis, whilst the province goes to hell. Posted by Mark Derek on November 22, 2007 7:27 AM Report this comment The "Kosovo conundrum" that this article refers to is, sadly, what follows when an attempt at statesmanship goes fundamentally wrong. As Slavic peoples, Serbs and Russians have a natural affinity, and as such have a long history of understanding the menace of Islam that exists not just on their borders but in their own territory. Russia has its problems in Chechnya, and of course Serbia had its problems in Kosovo. The real issue over Kosovo was whether Islam should be allowed to seize control of the traditional Serbian heartland, or be repelled. Russia, very wisely, believed that it should have been repelled and that the Serbs should have been supported. Strangely, President Clinton and many others in the west chose not to resist an Islamic seizure of Kosovo but to actually facilitate it. Lenin once called liberals who made it easier for Marxism to seize power in Russia as "useful idiots". From the point of view of Militant Islam, the bloodthirsty bombing of Serbia carried out by the U.S. was also the work of useful idiots. In an era when militant Islam - soon possibly to be nuclear armed - has become the greatest threat to world peace, President Clinton, in what can only be described as an act of madness, engineered a major advance by Islam into Europe. The fact that the Serbs are Christians does not seem to have mattered, though this aspect may not be not surprising since a bete noire of the Clintons and of many western Liberals is the so-called 'Christian Right'. Clinton and the west betrayed the Serbs, they betrayed Europe as a whole, they betrayed Christianity, they alienated the Russians and they gave heart to militant Islamists and their ambitions. Instead of encouraging a relationship of trust between the west and the new, ex-Soviet Russia, Clinton sowed renewed seeds of deep distrust. The effects of this are now being felt, for example, in Russian distrust of U.S. proposals for building radar sites in eastern Europe to counter the potential missile threat from Iran. How can Russians believe in the good intentions of the U.S. after what the U.S. did to Serbia? Western policy on Serbia and Kosovo was deeply mistaken - and foolish. It would be an even greater and more dangerous mistake to now support the independence of Kosovo. Posted by Herbert Thornton on November 22, 2007 4:52 AM Report this comment Well, so we help the Albanians to break away from Serbia. But we force the Serbs (and Croats) to say in Bosnia. Talking about double standards. And why the only option is independence? Because we know the Albanians will start making a mess when they do not get what they want? Let's call that: a bonus for being violent! Posted by Ron on November 22, 2007 3:12 AM Report this comment Kosovo should and will be Independent. There is no other option afer what happened to the Kosovars from the Serbian forces during the 1999 conflict, destruction of homes, rapes on women as well as massacres of men, but also of women and children thats the reason why Kosovo should be Independent. Cheers Posted by Doni on November 22, 2007 1:35 AM Report this comment http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/22/wkosovo122.x ml It's war if Kosovo breaks away, say Serbs Last Updated: 2:36am GMT 22/11/2007 A Serbian extremist group, which claims to have thousands of members, lodged a call to arms yesterday with the Serbian government should Kosovo declare independence. Hadzi Andrej Milic, the leader of the so-called Tsar Lazar Guard, said "a violent invasion will follow in the case of a unilateral declaration of independence" by Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. The Albanian National Army, branded a terrorist organisation by the UN in Kosovo, claimed that it has support throughout the province and was prepared to fight off any threats from armed Serb groups. advertisement Internationally brokered talks are under way between ethnic Albanians and Serbia on settling the long-standing dispute over whether Kosovo will become independent. The province has been under UN control since 1999, when Nato intervened to stop a Serb crackdown. Kosovo's Albanian leaders have threatened to declare independence unilaterally if negotiations fail. Serbia says it is willing to grant autonomy but not independence. Serbian News Network - SNN [email protected] http://www.antic.org/
