Thread: Russian Envoy Warns NATO Over Kosovo

Russian Envoy Warns NATO Over Kosovo

Friday, February 22, 2008 2:00 PM

MOSCOW -- Russia's envoy to NATO warned the alliance Friday against overstepping its mandate in Kosovo and said Moscow might be forced to use "brute military force" to maintain respect on the world scene.

Dmitry Rogozin said the Russian military also might get involved if all European Union nations recognize Kosovo's independence without United Nations agreement and despite strong objections from Russia and Serbia.

The comments were the latest harsh rhetoric from Moscow protesting Kosovo's declaration of independence, which has sparked violent protests in Serbia and international disagreement over whether to recognize the fledgling nation.

The comments also sparked quick reaction from the U.S. State Department, which urged Russia to repudiate them.

Rogozin couched his threat, however, assuring that Russia was not currently making plans for a military confrontation.

"If the European Union works out a single position or NATO goes beyond its current mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will conflict with the United Nations," Rogozin said in a televised hookup from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

If that happens, Russia "will proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute military force," he said.

The U.S. ambassador to NATO, meanwhile, said Washington was "very disappointed" by Russia's hostility over Kosovo, and Nicholas Burns, the U.S. State Dept.'s third-ranking official, called Rogozin's statement "highly irresponsible."

"This cynical and ahistorical comment by the Russian ambassador should be repudiated by his own government," Burns said responding to questions in an online discussion.

Later, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Russia's envoy to the European Union, used a more conciliatory tone, saying the Kosovo problem should be resolved exclusively by political means.

Rogozin _ an outspoken nationalist known for his tough rhetoric _ told NATO that its 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo must "remain neutral" over the contentious declaration.

"Under no circumstances should the alliance get involved in politics," Rogozin said. However, Moscow already was alarmed by reports that authorities in Kosovo had closed the border with Serbia.

Local authorities patrol Kosovo's borders, but the main responsibility for security lies with NATO peacekeepers. On Friday, they sent back several busloads of Serbs seeking to join a rally in the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Kosovska Mitrovica.

Russia has staunchly supported Serbia's to Kosovo's secession, and has vowed to block any efforts in the United Nations to recognize its independence.

In what appeared to be a contradictory comment, Rogozin assured that "Russia was not planning to get involved in any armed confrontation over Kosovo."

"There will be no war between Russia and NATO over Kosovo," he said, though the Kosovo issue "will certainly hamper our dialogue."

Nations that recognized Kosovo's statehood had made "a strategic mistake, similar to the invasion of Iraq," he said.

Other Russian officials have called the recognition illegal and said it could effectively split Kosovo in half. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Kosovo's secession could lead to regional instability.

More than a dozen nations have recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany. Russia has been joined in its opposition by China and others, including EU member Spain.

Rogozin called the violent protests that took place Thursday in the Serbian capital "national wrath that will be hard to curb," and criticized the West for making "a step toward a very cruel and emotional ethnic conflict" in the Balkans.

Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo _ which has been governed by a U.N. mission and patrolled by NATO peacekeepers since 1999 _ had been widely expected to declare independence from Serbia after internationally mediated talks on its future fell apart last year.

http://www.newsmax.com/international/ru ... 74770.html

Sounds like Mexifornia in the making

Kosovo Independence Equals Problems for U.S.

Thursday, February 21, 2008 3:27 PM

By: Diane Alden

The current disaster in Serbia, including the attack on the U.S. embassy in Belgrade was predictable. That is, if you know the history of the region, our involvement under Bill Clinton and now George W. Bush, and the U.S. State Department’s craziness about how to create "democracy" and markets in the 21st century.

The Gerard Intelligence Report indicated Monday that Serbia was about to blowup in our faces. You didn’t hear a word about it in the mainstream media. It was barely mentioned as Bush stood signing the paper that gave our stamp of approval to Kosovo "independence."

The rush to do this may have a lot to do with resource issues as much as encouraging democracy to take root — which hasn’t been happening under Clinton or Bush.

Gerard Report advises its clients:

Muslims who represent 90 percent of Kosovo's two million people, have stated their claim on the new state. According to our source, a systematic ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's remaining Christian inhabitants has been going on for several years and will now likely escalate.

Since we have been supporting democracy in Kosovo, and have ignored the strong Albanian Islamic influence in political affairs there, we have opened the gates to a new Islamic state, complete with terrorist training camps on the ground and a global network through which to funnel their graduates.

This begins a trail that leads to (but does not end in) New York City, where the Albanian Mafia has taken over much of the drug and organized crime trade. The combination of the legitimization of their terrorist activities in Kosovo, their links to the U.S., and the fall of Serbia (partly self-inflicted) may spell a new era of unrest and confusion that will mean danger for U.S. interests everywhere.

The breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the late '80s and '90s took place partially because the only thing holding it together was dictator Tito and Russian troops. Part of the reason for the breakup was economic. Insane actions of U.S. and international monetary experts as well as financial gurus at the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization facilitated the collapse of the former Yugoslavia into tiny sectors of ethnic and religious bickering and hatreds that are now causing U.S. problems.

Following World War II, industrial development took place in northern Yugoslavia, while the southern half of country produced raw materials. As the price of raw materials fell, serious economic inequalities between the various states grew. This in turn led to discontent and a desire for independence in the industrial north.

The International Monetary Fund then took over economic policy, implementing a number of all too familiar shock therapies; devaluation, a wage freeze, and price decontrol, designed on the Harvard/MIT economic textbook principles meant to drive the wage rate down to a level where it would be internationally economically competitive."

But the interference of the IMF caused revenues to the central government to shrink and that in turn forced the IMF to insist on raising taxes in Yugoslavia in order to balance the budget.

As the Cold War was ending in the late '80s, the Federal Republic began to splinter. At the same time, servicing the national debt became hopeless.

As a result, the attempt to comply with IMF demands made a shaky economic situation even worse.

Between 1979 and 1985 a quarter of the national income was taken up with debt service. As a result, the economy began to implode and ethnic conflicts erupted. Thus, the current conflict in the Balkans may be partly explained by economic factors as much as by ethnic hatreds and rivalries.

All this should be some indication our experts do not know what they are doing. Neither do our political leaders, it appears, in the modern world of splintering into religious, tribal, and ethnic groupings.

In the '90s, the breakup of the various ethnic and religious provinces accelerated when Europeans, the international press, and State Department whiz kids saw ethnic cleansing only on one side blaming Christian Serbs and ignoring atrocities by the other side. Some believe interference by the Clinton administration was just an attempt to get his troubles off the front page. That intervention for whatever reason had unintended consequences and now America is seeing some of the blowback.

During Bill Clinton's era of screwing things up in the Balkans, his end runaround congress on the conduct of that war is something I vividly remember. The Clinton administration had a contract with U.S. mercenaries to go to Bosnia. At an estimated $50 million the objective was to integrate and build up the Bosnia army of Muslims and Croats against the Serbs. The U.S. State Department’s incompetence and flaky policies in the region gave the go ahead for religious cleansing of Christian Serbs to accommodate Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.

Along with the DoD under Richard Cohen and the U.S. State Department, our leaders hired a firm of American mercenaries allowing the Muslim Croats to create a national army which successfully ejected 150,000 Croatian Serb civilians from the country. This success brought lucrative financial contracts from Islamic countries elsewhere. It was with the help of certain Islamic states that funding for participation by the American firm was concluded.

George W. Bush signing the acknowledgement that Kosovo was an independent nation is one more finger in the eye of the Orthodox people of Central Europe.

It fails miserably to recognize the extent of Islamic Wahabbi Saudi funded mosques in the region and what that portends for the rest of Europe. Recognition of Kosovo independence will do nothing to promote democracy in that part of the world.

More likely it will mean more problems for the United States and Europe in the region. We now have another nation in the heart of Central Europe that is a home to drug cartels, mafia, and frankly, many potential Muslim terrorists.

Recognition of Kosovo’s independence also drives another stake into what is left of our shaky relationship with Russia. Our policies since the end of the Cold War towards that nation may just doom us to relive another Cold War of sorts. Isn’t it odd that former atheistic Soviet Union is supporting a Christian society of Orthodox believers while the last two American administrations enable a growing arc of Islamic power and Arab militarism to form in the suburbs of Europe.

http://www.newsmax.com/alden/kosovo/200 ... 74508.html