From kosova at jps.net Wed Sep 4 03:07:19 2002 From: kosova at jps.net (kosova at jps.net) Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 00:07:19 -0700 Subject: [Prishtina-E] FW: What is Kosova's final Status? Message-ID: Advocates for Kosova's Independence (AKI) August, 2002 - Part II ================================== ** AKI Newsletter, Issue 11 ** ================================== FROM A USIP SPECIAL REPORT (7/02)--"Kosovo's final status, left undecided at the end of the Yugoslav-NATO war in June, 1999, will need to be discussed sooner rather than international community anticipates; a roadmap will need to be drawn and the issue decided within the next three to five years." The full report of 8 options for final status can be found at the USIP web site, www.usip.org/specialreports/ In July, 2002, the United States Institute of Peace issued a special report on the need to resolve Kosova's final status. Members of the discussion group included Balkan experts and former diplomats such as James Hooper, Louis Sell, Julie Mertus, and the director of the Balkans Initiative, Dan Serwer. The report recommends that discussions between Belgrade and Prishtina start as soon as possible and they list eight options- ranging from various forms of conditional independence to remaining a protectorate indefinitely. Discussion group member, Eric Witte, said that immediate independence was ruled out as an option because the Albanians do not: 1. Demonstrate responsibility for acts of violence against minorities, 2. Show disinterest and hostility towards returns of displaced peoples, and 3. Fail to abide by rule of law. Albanians, like other ethnic groups in the Balkans, and indeed like all of us, have a tendency to think of their own needs as important and to downplay the plight of others. Missing populations can easily become forgotten populations. The situation of the Roma in the Skopje ghetto is an international disgrace. ======================================= A R T I C L E S ======================================= ROMA REFUGEES PROTEST TO UNHCR ABOUT RETURN TO KOSOVA Balkan Human Rights Group report, 8/9/02 " The protest by some 350 Roma refugees outside the UNHCR building in central Skopje entered its llth day on Friday, despite moves by Macedonian authorities to end the demonstration. The demonstrators, protesting on behalf of more than 3,00 Roma refugees housed in two camps, as well as private houses, say they do not want to stay permanently in Macedonia. For the past three years, while living in ever worse conditions in Katlanovo and Suto Orizari camps, they have been fed on UNHCR promises of a "safe return" to homes in Kosovo. Many of their houses have been burned, other occupied. Now, the UNHRC and UNMIK admit opposition to their return means security cannot be guaranteed. Those Roma who remained inhabit small, protected ghetto-like enclaves." (full article below) It could be argued that these attitudes are endemic region-wide. Indeed, hostility to Roma refugees is Europe-wide. But it's the Albanians who are under scrutiny here, and for the time being, it seems they must step up to the plate and begin to show leadership in these three areas. Moral leadership will not come from the three main political leaders, which means such moral leadership must come from civil society. And civil society in Kosova, for the moment, is without any such leaders. So the circle of seeming indifference to the plight of those who are different continues. And what it means for the Kosova Albanians is, at best, conditional independence until those crucial problems are resolved. At worst, it could cost them independence for the foreseeable future. If Albanians do not want a future as a protectorate, they had better organize and address these issues on their own, the sooner the better. ======================================= ROMA REFUGEES PROTEST TO UNHCR ABOUT RETURN TO KOSOVA Balkan Human Rights List, Ustiben reports: The protest by some 350 Roma refugees outside the UNHCR building in central Skopje entered its llth day on Friday, despite moves by Macedonian authorities to end the demonstration. The demonstrators, protesting on behalf of more than 3,00 Roma refugees housed in two camps, as well as private houses, say they do not want to stay permanently in Macedonia. For the past three years, while living in ever worse conditions in Katlanovo and Suto Orizari camps, they have been fed on UNHCR promises of a "safe return" to homes in Kosovo. Many of their houses have been burned, other occupied. Now, the UNHRC and UNMIK admit opposition to their return means security cannot be guaranteed. Those Roma who remained inhabit small, protected ghetto-like enclaves. Beatings, bomb attacks and abductions continue to occur weekly. Altogether nearly 100,000 Roma fled Kosovo as armed Albanians of the KLA carred out "ethnic-cleansing" of the Romani quarters in towns and villages throughout the province. The largest quarters, in Pristina, Mitrovica and Pec, were raised to the ground and have not been rebuilt. Heavy rains have flooded Katlanovo and refugees are appealing to the UNHCR to improve conditions in the camps. But their main hope is to be accepted by third countries, until - if this is every possible - a return to Kosovo is organized. Meanwhile, many thousands of Kosovo Roma who have been seeking asylum in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and elsewhere, face the threat of "forced deportation" either to Kosovo or Serbia. The justification for this is that adults hold the old red passports of former Yugoslavia. However, many of the children were born in the host countries. Below is an appeal by local mediator Zenelj Berisha for outside support. The protesters urgently need funds to pay for transport - as, starting Monday, they will be barred from public buses. Pictures of the protest and the camps available on request. Balkan Human Rights List ======================================= ### Questions/Comments, email AKI-NEWS at aki at alb-net.com AKI Website: www.alb-net.com/aki/ From kosova at jps.net Wed Sep 4 03:07:27 2002 From: kosova at jps.net (kosova at jps.net) Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 00:07:27 -0700 Subject: [Prishtina-E] FW: Leaders with opposing views on Kosova's path Message-ID: Advocates for Kosova's Independence (AKI) August, 2002 - Part I ================================== ** AKI Newsletter, Issue 11 ** ================================== Leaders with opposing views on Kosova's path What biases and backgrounds do foreign policy experts and UN administrators bring to the contentious problem of Kosova's status? Carl Bildt, the UN special representative on the Balkans, and Michael Steiner, the chief administrator of UNMIK, differed sharply in early August on the all-important issue of resolving Kosova's final status and when that should occur. At the same time, Javier Solana seemed to take a sidestep, saying that Kosova would be resolved separately from his proposed reorganization of Serbia/Montenegro. To what extent do academic and cultural memories of Munich, 1938 and the dismemberment of Czechoslavakia still have influence on Eastern European foreign policy today? In 1999, The 19 member NATO committee was itself deeply divided on intervening in Kosova. Steiner's Germany was reunited by the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, a treaty that downplays the concept of self-determination advanced by Wilson and the League of Nations and the end of colonialism during 1950-1960. Each foreign leader brings a bias into his considerations of how to resolve conflict in Eastern Europe. Surely, though, the resolution of Kosova's final status regarding self-determination should be decided by the people who live there, after due consideration of outsiders. A solution imposed from the outside, or no solution at all, is not what is meant by the UN Declaration's inviolable right of "the will of the people." The following article takes us a step back to see the Kosova conflict through Czech eyes. ======================================= A R T I C L E S ======================================= ? But the experience of the event known in the Czech lands as the Munich treason is deeply engraved in the national memory, and it has undoubtedly shaped the way in which the Czech public has understood the Kosovo crisis and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Feature: Why Klaus opposed the Nato action Eastern Europe After Kosovo-- Czech Attitudes Toward the War from the Summer 1999 NYU Law Journal ????? MILAN ZNOJ Milan Znoj is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Charles University, Prague, and chair of the Department of Moral and Political Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. With some exceptions, the Czech political elite was taken aback when NATO loosed its air strikes on Yugoslavia at the end of March. President Vaclav Havel welcomed the attack, satisfied that NATO had finally gathered the courage to take action against the evil pervading the Balkans. Without hesitation, the leaders of the two smaller right-wing parties the liberal Freedom Union (FU) and the Christian Democratic Union- People's Party (CDUPP), each of which are favored by roughly 10 percent of the voters )also supported the bombing. But other party leaders were more reluctant, or even hostile. The Czech government, for obvious reasons, officially supported the air strikes, though in practice its approach smacked of equivocation. The government had approved the military intervention based only on consultations between the prime minister, Milos Zeman, and the foreign minister. Initial reactions revealed the government's regret that the simmering conflict could not have been resolved diplomatically. The Communists, who are in the opposition and are supported by 14 percent of the population, expressed unanimous disappointment that the negotiations had broken down and that a military option was being pursued. As is their custom in such cases, they invoked various tenets of international law to support their opposition to the bombing. NATO had violated Yugoslavia's sovereignty, sidestepped the UN, and was, in their opinion, an aggressor with imperialist ambitions. The Communists' position surprised no one. The lightening bolt, rather, was the unexpected attitude of the strongest right-wing liberal party, the Civic Democratic Party (CDP), and especially that of its chairman, former prime minister Vaclav Klaus. After a day of attacks against Yugoslavia, Klaus went on record, stating that use of force could not produce a sound or long-term solution. His forthright anti-NATO stance stunned not only President Havel, the other liberal parties, and the influential liberal, right-wing media but, to a certain degree, members of Klaus's own party as well. The Czech Republic?s accession to NATO had been one of the linchpins of the CDP's agenda. While the CDP, from time to time, has offered up some mild criticism of the EU and its Brussels bureaucrats, it never leveled negative comments against NATO, which it had always perceived as guaranteeing the Czech Republic?s pro-Western orientation. Yet enthusiasm for joining the West did not necessarily breed enthusiasm for NATO's military action in Yugoslavia. Until fairly recently, CDP members and sup-porters were suggesting that anybody opposing NATO and its eastward expansion belonged politically to the East and was in effect a crypto-communist. But now, Klaus, the CDP chairman himself, voiced his doubts about NATO's air strikes and thereby confused his party's rank and file. Czechs even heard Miroslav Macek, a CDP vice chairman, stating on television that, in addition to various other goals in Yugoslavia, NATO needed to test its new airplanes. Even the Communists had not gone this far. Efforts were made to prevent these differences in opinion from damaging the Czech Republic's image abroad. Foreign Minister Jan Kavan repeatedly denied in public that there was any discrepancy between Havel's opinions and those of the government, and he insisted on many occasions that the government supported NATO and the military action. But heated discussion continued in the domestic political arena, and, on various occasions, differences of opinion, held in private, spilled into open public debates. Vaclav Klaus's provocative claim that the mass expulsion of Kosovar Albanians started only after NATO began its air strikes was met with disapproval and challenge. Indeed, Klaus was attacked in the media and in parliament, and the FU even contemplated seeking his resignation from the speakership of the lower house. A similar clash occurred when it looked as if NATO would be undertaking ground operations. Prime Minister Zeman preemptively announced that Czech soldiers would not participate in a land invasion. In response, President Havel accused him of betraying the alliance. Their ensuing verbal duel ended with a meeting between the foreign minister, Kavan, and the president. After the meeting, Havel remarked that, although he had explained his point of view to the foreign minister, he doubted that his opinion would be accepted. Similarly, a Czech- Greek peace initiative led to equally heated debates. It was somehow characteristic of the political atmosphere that the moment the Communists sought a parliamentary debate on the initiative, it was blocked by the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSDP). The CSDP was obviously happy to sweep the whole issue off the table. Zeman's and Klaus's utterances about the crisis in Yugoslavia were criticized by their parties' members and supporters, though on different grounds. Some regional CDP groups criticized their leadership for failing to support the bombings, while CSDP's leadership was criticized, on the contrary, for supporting NATO's air strikes. According to Senator Petr Smutny (CSDP), for instance, the Czech Republic had become a participant in a collective aggression. The situation at the CSDP's congress in April was especially delicate. The party leadership made every effort to mute all discussion of the government's activities and of the air strikes in Yugoslavia. Their efforts notwithstanding, a relatively large number of delegates signed a letter protesting the bombings, but party leaders labeled this a private initiative.How are we to understand these awkward maneuverings on the Czech political scene? One explanation is that party leaders were merely reflecting or mimicking public sentiment. As a matter of fact, the public was even more hesitant to support NATO than were the politicians. As the bombings continued, the proportion of those opposing the operation increased from 40 to 54 percent, and supporters declined from 40 to 29 percent. The attack against Yugoslavia was openly supported only by FU voters, and the number of those in agreement with the policy prevailed only slightly in the case of CDP supporters, although even the number of supporters in that party was decreasing. Adherents of the other parties, by and large, were against the bombings. The Communists, of course, opposed them unanimously. In the end, only 29 percent of the public regarded the air strikes as justified. Proposed ground operations in Kosovo were supported by one-third of the respondents surveyed, a figure that, by the end of the campaign, had dwindled to 25 percent. Those who favored the air strikes also supported ground operations, but even here disagreement appeared; only 69 percent of the air-strike supporters supported the ground-operations option, while 31 percent were opposed. Political leadership cannot ignore public opinion. But the confused reactions of Czech politicians to NATO's actions cannot be explained by populism alone. For instance, populism does not explain why Klaus and the CDP leadership opposed the air strikes. Had they strongly supported NATO, they would probably have brought their followers along. CDP members probably would have ignored arguments invoking human rights in Kosovo, but they might have been willing to listen to other arguments, such as the advantages of siding with Western powers, the need to distance the Czech Republic from the East and Russia, and especially the idea that Milosevic is basically a crypto-communist. Klaus's opposition to the bombings was certainly not motivated by a desire to ingratiate himself with his voters. Indeed, he came close to being labeled a traitor by his usual right-wing supporters. He must have had other reasons. One plausible interpretation is that Klaus is slowly refashioning the CDP?s image to resemble that of the earlier Czech National Democratic Party. At the beginning of the century and during the First Republic, this was a party of the dynamic Czech bourgeoisie, with a strong national program. The libertarian ideology of the free market, obviously, is no longer appealing, and thus the CDP must conjure up a new ideology that knits support for free markets to the pursuit of a strong national state. If CDP really follows this pathway, future negotiations on EU membership will be truly interesting. The strategies of politicians, however, do not fully explain why the Czech public itself was divided in its views of the Kosovo crisis. Some deeper factors must have been at work. It is not possible to analyze them here in detail, but certain motives merit mention. One explanation begins with the country's general attitude toward NATO. Czechs have always seen themselves as Western, but what attracts them to the West, now, is its developed economy, modern technology, and culture. Military achievements are the last trait they would admire. Paradoxically, NATO membership was the first milestone of Czech westernization, and it was no surprise that NATO accession did not meet with mass approval. Only a narrow majority supported NATO membership without reservations. But NATO membership could not be very actively opposed, since open opposition was poorly regarded. NATO's air strikes in Yugoslavia have drastically changed the terms of debate. Those who opposed NATO membership can now voice their lack of enthusiasm in acceptable terms, citing (for example) the violation of a state's sovereignty and the suffering of innocent civilians. These themes were all offered as sound arguments against NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia. But a more basic aversion toward NATO, in the minds of many, especially of the older generation, lurks behind the criticisms of the air strikes voiced by many CSDP and Communist supporters. This distrust of NATO does not result only from communist nostalgia or ancient ideas of the Czech Republic's Pan-Slavic past, which were still alive in 1918 when Czechoslovakia was established. Today, anti-NATO feelings are primarily due to the Czechs recent ties to Yugoslavia. Not only did Czechs frequently vacation there, but the road to the West most often led through Yugoslavia. Not Pan-Slavism but concrete experience and feelings of mutual understanding shaped public sentiment toward the air strikes.The Czechs notorious skepticism toward big words was also at work. President Havel often offered lofty moral arguments to support the bombing of Yugoslavia. He became a prophet of a new Pax Americana. During the Gulf War, the bombings of Iraq, and the war in Bosnia, he consistently supported resolute military action to counter the various evils spreading throughout these countries. The ethnic cleansing in Kosovo so troubled him that he not only welcomed the strike against Yugoslavia but, to support it, used rhetoric so florid that the public was dumbstruck. As a playwright, Havel often analyzed the latent ambiguity of words. As a politician, he did not hesitate to speak of an ethical war, to claim that, by virtue of air strikes in Yugoslavia, human rights are placed above the legal system. In the end, he regretted only that the military action had not started earlier. Juxtaposed to this sort of rhetoric, statements by NATO generals about collateral damage offered a bleak contrast. Suspicious by their very nature, Czechs could hardly accept the innocence of high moral arguments used to support a military machine, be it their own or NATO's, even if serving a presumably just and humane cause. Czech discussions about the Kosovo war, in other words, must be seen in conjunction with the president's declining popularity. Havel's thinking is frequently influenced by something historically known as the Munich syndrome. On the one hand, the spirit of Munich refers to a foolish effort to appease that turned out to be a tacit capitulation before evil. (This, of course, originally meant surrendering to Hitler's demands that Czech territory be incorporated in a greater Germany.) When Havel promoted the spread of NATO's influence eastward, he warned of the dangers of appeasement, denouncing the spirit of Munich manifest in some Western politicians who were overly worried about offending Russia. When he called for a radical move against Serbia in the Balkans, he used the same argument, claiming that democracy could not bow to evil. Pavel Tigrid, the president's ally, argued heatedly that those who had lived through Munich had no option but to support the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, since they knew, first hand, the price to be paid for appeasing a dictator. But this analogy has its limits. Tigrid, for instance, forgot that the Munich syndrome has another meaning. It also refers to and evokes the West's betrayal of the Czechs, and its acquiescence to a dictator without a fight. The Munich treaty was enforced by the West and accepted by the Czech government: the Sudetenland was given away without a fight. Those who saw the Kosovo crisis from this perspective tended to oppose the NATO bombings. Kosovar Albanians are an ethnic minority that rebelled; they do not want to continue living in the same state with the Serbs. So the West helped prepare a peace treaty that was, in effect, territorial amputation by diktat. Under the threat of war, Yugoslavia was confronted with losing part of its territory to the Albanians. All the parallels between Munich and Ram-bouillet are misleading. Still and all, historical sentiments have political bite. Such reminiscences are always present in the minds of Czechs, as was evident in the debate over Kosovo. They tend to surface any time parallels are drawn between the forced expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and when Milosevic is equated (as he sometimes is) with Eduard Benes. Though Munich 1938 and Rambouillet 1999 are incomparable, both stand for attempts to solve ethnic conflicts in Central Europe, and both illustrate the confusion of democracies trying to manage deep and unbridgeable conflicts. Both in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and in Kosovo in the 1990s, crises began as ethnic conflicts and then escalated into demands for national sovereignty. But this is where the parallel ends. While it existed, Czechoslovakia was a democratic state that strove for the peaceful coexistence of its several constituent ethnic groups. In addition, the Germans in Czechoslovakia had their minority rights anchored in the Versailles Treaty. Shortly before the Munich treaty was signed, President Benes accepted a form of German autonomy that bordered on state sovereignty. Certainly he would not have hesitated to sign the sort of agreement that Milosevic refused to sign in Rambouillet, not because he was a coward but because he was a democrat and a politician of pro-Western orientation. This is why Czechoslovakia, during and after the war, was on the side of the Allies, and perhaps why the removal of Germans became a taken-for-granted part of postwar democratic Europe. International circumstances are radically different now. The Munich treaty did not intend to solve an ethnic conflict in a peaceful way. From the very beginning it was understood by Germany as a part of the process that would eventually undo the settlements of World War I and lead to the rise of a New Europe under German hegemony. This is why the Munich treaty was a betrayal of democracy, and why it would have been just to oppose it (by which I am not saying that military opposition to it would have been politically sustainable or reasonable). Benes understood the treatys consequences rather well, and thus he had more foresight than many other Western politicians. In sum, the analogy between Munich and Kosovo crumbles at its foundation, as does the parallel between Milosevic and Benes. Milan Znoj is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Charles University, Prague, and chair of the Department of Moral and Political Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. ======================================= ### Questions/Comments, email AKI-NEWS at aki at alb-net.com AKI Website: www.alb-net.com/aki/ From jeton at hotmail.com Fri Sep 6 18:56:32 2002 From: jeton at hotmail.com (Jeton Ademaj) Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 18:56:32 -0400 Subject: [Prishtina-E] kOSTUNICA at Columbia U friday the 13th! Message-ID: hey all just in case u missed this: > > >Subject: Welcome Back and Harriman Lecture (fwd) > > > Dear Colleagues, > > Welcome back from what I hope was an interesting but restful summer, >and welcome back as well to what I trust will be an intellectually >rewarding new academic year. > > I am pleased to announce that the first formal Institute-wide event we >will be sponsoring this year will be the W. Averell Harriman Lecture, >which will be delivered by H.E. Dr. Vojislav Kostunica, President of >the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. > > President Kostunica's lecture will be held on Friday, September 13, >beginning at 3:30 pm in the Altschul Auditorium of the International >Affairs Building. Tickets can be obtained by contacting Alla Rachkov at >(212) 854-6213, or by email at ar2052 at columbia.edu. Please RSVP as soon >as possible to reserve a seat for what should be a memorable event. >Seats are limited and priority will be given to holders of a Columbia >Univeristy ID. > > I hope to see you there, and at many other Institute events over the >coming months. > > With best wishes for a successful academic year, > > Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy > Director > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From jeton at hotmail.com Sun Sep 8 21:28:11 2002 From: jeton at hotmail.com (Jeton Ademaj) Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2002 21:28:11 -0400 Subject: [Prishtina-E] Fwd: FW: Welcome Back and Harriman Lecture (fwd) Message-ID: here's all i know... Uk, Erkanda feels that u or Gerda can be of help somehow, please let me know. also, re: a protest, I'd be in favor of Albanian-Americans expressing themselves both outside colectively and inside as eloquent individuals, I'd like to be among the latter but i'll help organize (and possibly end-up with) the former... tung >From: "Kevin Hallinan" >To: "Othereurope \(othereurope\)" >Subject: FW: Welcome Back and Harriman Lecture (fwd) >Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 10:31:56 -0400 >MIME-Version: 1.0 >Received: from [128.59.40.140] by hotmail.com (3.2) with ESMTP id >MHotMailBF4209F600B74136E853803B288CFFF30; Fri, 06 Sep 2002 07:43:29 -0700 >Received: from maillist1.cc.columbia.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1])by >maillist1.cc.columbia.edu (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g86EWGHX015673for >; Fri, 6 Sep 2002 10:32:16 -0400 (EDT) >Received: by maillist1.cc.columbia.edu (8.12.3/8.12.3/Submit) id >g86EWGL2015672for othereurope-outgoing; Fri, 6 Sep 2002 10:32:16 -0400 >(EDT) >Received: from dewberry.cc.columbia.edu (dewberry.cc.columbia.edu >[128.59.59.68])by maillist1.cc.columbia.edu (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id >g86EWEHX015664for ; Fri, 6 >Sep 2002 10:32:14 -0400 (EDT) >Received: (from root at localhost)by dewberry.cc.columbia.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id >KAA20915for majordom+othereurope at maillist1.cc.columbia.edu.procmail; Fri, 6 >Sep 2002 10:32:13 -0400 (EDT) >Received: from KPH (dyn-iab-163-120.dyn.columbia.edu [128.59.163.120])by >dewberry.cc.columbia.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA20883;Fri, 6 Sep >2002 10:32:12 -0400 (EDT) >From owner-othereurope at columbia.edu Fri, 06 Sep 2002 07:44:56 -0700 >Organization: East Central European Center >Message-ID: <000c01c255b2$273a3160$78a33b80 at KPH> >X-Priority: 3 (Normal) >X-MSMail-Priority: Normal >X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.2627 >Importance: Normal >X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 >Sender: owner-othereurope at columbia.edu >Precedence: bulk > > >Subject: Welcome Back and Harriman Lecture (fwd) > > > Dear Colleagues, > > Welcome back from what I hope was an interesting but restful summer, >and welcome back as well to what I trust will be an intellectually >rewarding new academic year. > > I am pleased to announce that the first formal Institute-wide event we >will be sponsoring this year will be the W. Averell Harriman Lecture, >which will be delivered by H.E. Dr. Vojislav Kostunica, President of >the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. > > President Kostunica's lecture will be held on Friday, September 13, >beginning at 3:30 pm in the Altschul Auditorium of the International >Affairs Building. Tickets can be obtained by contacting Alla Rachkov at >(212) 854-6213, or by email at ar2052 at columbia.edu. Please RSVP as soon >as possible to reserve a seat for what should be a memorable event. >Seats are limited and priority will be given to holders of a Columbia >Univeristy ID. > > I hope to see you there, and at many other Institute events over the >coming months. > > With best wishes for a successful academic year, > > Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy > Director > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From jeton at hotmail.com Wed Sep 18 15:47:40 2002 From: jeton at hotmail.com (Jeton Ademaj) Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 15:47:40 -0400 Subject: [Prishtina-E] from IWPR's Balkan Crisis Report #368 (9/18/02) Message-ID: this article shows us Kostunica's thoughts and intentions, and indicates just how similiar to Milosevic this guy really is... SERBIA: KOSTUNICA REMARKS FRIGHTEN BOSNIA Yugoslav president may regret perceived attempt to appeal to Serbian nationalists. By Milanka Saponja-Hadzic in Belgrade An apparent bid by federal president Vojislav Kostunica to curry favour with Serbian nationalists has rocked relations between Yugoslavia and Bosnia. While Kostunica was visiting the border town of Mali Zvornik on September 14 as part of campaigning for Serbia's presidential elections, the Democratic Party of Serbia, DSS, leader described neighbouring Republika Srpska, RS, as "part of the family, temporarily separated from the Serbian motherland". Haris Silajdzic, a Bosniak candidate for the Bosnian presidency, described the remarks as "one step away from declaration of war", claiming that "everything achieved in the process of normalisation" between the two neighbouring states had been destroyed as a result. Kostunica - who later described his comments as having been "maliciously misinterpreted" - maintained he has no plan to reunite the RS with Serbia, saying that he had only been calling for the eventual reunion of all of the former Yugoslavia's Serbs within the framework of the European Union. Belgrade officials hurried to convince Bosnia that the president's words did not herald a sea change in Yugoslav policy, stressing that they continued to support the Dayton agreement under which Bosnia was divided into the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb RS. The day after the incident, Yugoslav foreign minister Goran Svilanovic expressed regret over the remarks, blaming them on the heated election atmosphere in both Yugoslavia and Bosnia. "Belgrade is fully behind Dayton and does not want to divide Bosnia in any way, nor damage relations between our two countries," he said. It would now appear that Kostunica was simply playing the nationalist card in the run-up to the September 29 presidential ballot in Serbia. But whatever his intention, it's not just relations with Bosnia that might have suffered. Some of Belgrade's international trading partners and aid donors - who hold the key to Serbia's economic revival - are also thought to have taken offence. Kostunica's main rival in the presidency contest is Miroljub Labus, a reformist supported by the ruling Democratic Opposition of Serbia, DOS. That leaves Kostunica with the support of the large percentage of nationalists, especially tens of thousands of Bosnian Serb and Croatian Serb refugees who obtained voting rights in Yugoslavia. In the event of a second round, it is possible he will also garner the votes of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party leader, Vojislav Seselj. Despite the chorus of general disapproval, there is little doubt that Kostunica's intemperate remarks in Mali Zvornik achieved exactly what was intended - it won him the sympathies of many nationalists in what may be a close-run poll. This is not the first time the Yugoslav president has raised international eyebrows on the subject of RS. Kostunica supported the Bosnian Serbs armed struggle and their goal of creating a Serbian state. His DSS forged close links with the dominant Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, of Radovan Karadzic - indicted by The Hague for war crimes. The fall of Milosevic in October 2000 led to a thaw in relations between Belgrade and Sarajevo. Yugoslavia and Bosnia established diplomatic ties that December and ambassadors were exchanged a year later. Kostunica was a little slow to adjust to the new realities. He caused a diplomatic incident at the start of his presidential term by attending the funeral of a Serb nationalist poet, Jovan Ducic, in the RS heartland of Trebinje. He soon changed his course, though. On his first official visit to Sarajevo in January 2001, he said Belgrade was fully behind the Dayton agreement. However, the ties between Kostunica's and Karadzic's parties were not severed. On July 30, 2001, DSS and SDS signed an agreement on cooperation committing the two parties to "full cultural, economic and spiritual unity between the Serbian people" - although they stressed that this could only be achieved through Dayton. Belgrade and Sarajevo signed two further agreements over the course of the year, on cooperation between their foreign ministries and the establishment of an interstate council. A free trade agreement came into effect this year. Under the pressure of the international community, Belgrade also severed military ties between the Yugoslav army, VJ, and the Republika Srpska army, VRS. With encouragement from Belgrade, the RS complied with a request from Bosnia's constitutional court earlier this year for both entities to change their constitutions to guarantee equality for Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. However, in spite of this progress, relations between the two states have not been fully normalised. Belgrade has used every opportunity provided by Dayton itself to treat RS as a special entity within Bosnia. Yugoslav and RS citizens can travel freely between the two countries using only their ID cards, while citizens from the Federation need passports to enter Yugoslavia. Belgrade maintains such issues need not disturb the continuing improvement in ties between the two countries. Relations are "constantly being improved, without spectacular breakthroughs," a Yugoslav foreign ministry source told IWPR. "This is an irreversible process." Milanka Saponja-Hadzic is a freelance journalist based in Serbia. _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com