Kosovo: Pumping thugs with invincibility

Mr. Bozinovich has a great post on his blog.

As the negotiation process on the status of Kosovo inches towards its final end, the already hardened Kosovo Albanian side seems to have been propped up with an additional sense of recalcitrant invincibility by a rhetoric of President Bush that comes inches close to endorsing Kosovo’s independence that the only thing preventing it is his word “aspire”.

Read rest here Pumping thugs with invincibility.

From the Wisdom of Suffocating Serbia

Montenegro seceded from Serbia. Albanians of the Presevo Valley demand "regional self-rule". The EU severed ties with Serbia. The USA cancelled a 7 million Dollars aid package to the Serbian government. Serbia is run by a fractious minority coalition. Economy is not going well. And the ultra-nationalists gain more support every day. Will the independence of Kosovo be the borderline where the suffocated Serbia explodes in a last self-destructive effort...

EU anxious

During the EU foreign ministers summit in Brussels last week where were discussed ways to keep Belgrade on board there was a sense of uneasiness about the current relations between the Union and Serbia.

On 3rd May the EU froze pre-membership talks with Serbia because it failed to extradite the Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic. Serbs were told that talks can be resumed only when Mladic is apprehended.

Obviously the Europeans are now a bit alarmed about possible consequences of this too categorical decision. A poll of 9th June indicates that support for Serbian Radical Party (SRS) is over 40 percent in Serbia. The EU fears that Serbia go to "wrong direction" and fall into the nationalism trap once again.

The stick-and-carrot method works only when the stick and the carrot are balanced. The EU must have thought twice before calling off the talks with Serbia, which is still a country in a fragile transition period after all. Now that there are rumours about early elections and serious concerns about a possible Radical victory, the EU urged deeper economic and trade links with Serbia. However, will this remedy really make ordinary Serbs forget the bitter aftertaste of 3rd May?

The EU must be aware that if Serbia is "lost" this will not only Serbs' failure, but theirs as well. In a crucial time when Kosovo's final status is being discussed between Albanians and Serbs, the EU offered a precious present to Serbian Radicals to justify their argument that the EU did and will always sacrifice Serbian interests.

One cannot help remembering the great biblical wisdom, "anyone of you is without sin let him be the first to throw a stone at her". The EU just watched the Bosnian tragedy for three years. Isn't it now too simple to get rid of the heavy moral responsibility, only by accusing Belgrade of hypocrisy about extraditions?

Kosovo the borderline?

On 16th June, municipal elections in Kosovo, which normally had to be held in October, were postponed in order to guarantee that politicians remain focused on the status talks. Next month, Albanians and Serbs are expected to discuss the future status of Kosovo.

If at the end of the negotiations Albanians and Serbs cannot come to an agreement, the UN Security Council is expected to vote on Kosovo's fate by the end of the year. And the Security Council seems to lean towards independence more and more.

The international community can impose any decision indeed. Yet, the question is to know whether this decision will be a short-term or long-term solution. For one, who is slightly acquainted with the Balkan history, the prospect of such a "Diktat solution" is not bright.

That the Serbs in northern Kosovo declared a state of emergency and severed ties with Albanian government is a foretaste of worse events to come if Kosovo becomes independent.

The Serbs are a nation of great exodus. Those of 1690 and 1915 are the most famous ones.

It would not be a problem for the Kosovo Serbs to immigrate en masse to Serbia. Serbian newspapers claim that there are "contingency plans" for over 70.000 Serbian refugees if Kosovo becomes independent. The UN does not deny the allegations.

Even without this stock of angry and frustrated Serb refugees, Serbia is already going through very hard times.

Montenegro seceded from Serbia. Albanians of the Presevo Valley demand "regional self-rule". Vojvodina pleads for more autonomy. The EU severed ties with Serbia. The USA cancelled a 7 million Dollars aid package to the Serbian government. Serbia is run by a fractious minority coalition. Economy is not going well. And the ultra-nationalists gain more support every day.

Will Kosovo's independence be the borderline where the suffocated Serbia finally explodes in a last self-destructive effort? After all, it is always dangerous to force a desperate cat into a corner.

SRS the Serbian bogey

Analysts are worried about the possibility that Serbia see the redemption in an ultra-nationalist government. Over 40 percent voter support for SRS is not a negligible rate indeed.

Current speeches of SRS members give a clue how parliamentary life would be like under their rule. The language used to criticise the Minister of Agriculture Ivana Dulic-Markovic in a recent secession clearly shows the political culture of SRS.

Full of resentment that their colleague is accused of being an "Ustashi" just because she is a Croat, G17+ denounced the "language of hatred" and started a petition, which demands the ban of SRS.

How just the initiative may be, it is just a symbolic gesture. For Serbian democrats cannot win killing mosquitoes, they should dry the bog, which produces these mosquitoes. Even if SRS was banned, another party of similar ideology would appear the next hour.

Otherwise the vicious circle would not be broken. At the elections, SRS would obtain over 40 percent of the votes. In order to prevent them to come to power, several democrat parties, which are normally bitter rivals, would form a coalition government. Because of inner conflicts, this government could not be functional enough to solve the serious political and economic problems. And at the next elections, what is most feared would happen.

Today Serbia needs a renewal from down below. Only this could direct the country to the "right direction". Yet, the essential question is this: Would it all be Serbia's fault alone if what is most feared happens one day? To tell someone that he should follow the right way is not always sufficient. It is also necessary to show him the right way. In this regard, today one cannot say that the EU is a good guide, for they are about to deprive Serbia of that little light at the end of the tunnel - the EU membership.

Russia: Kosovo's final status could serve as precedent for breakaway Georgian regions

MOSCOW-Russia views the decision on Kosovo's future as a precedent for determining the final status of two breakaway regions in the Caucasus Mountain nation of Georgia, a news agency reported Thursday.

Moscow has opposed giving ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo independence from Serbia, a country that is a staunch Russian ally, and has sought to link the issue with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions that broke away from Georgian government control in the 1990s.

Russia has long backed Abkhazia and South Ossetia, granting many of its residents Russian citizenship and incurring the ire of Georgia, a U.S. ally that is seeking to bring the regions back under government control.

Russia plans to raise the issue of the Kosovo status talks during next month's summit of leaders from the Group of 8 major industrialized nations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said.

Kosovo "will serve as a precedent, particularly in the search for a path for resolution of the so-called 'frozen conflicts'" in the former Soviet Union," he was quoted as saying.

The United Nations, along with Russia and five other nations, is sponsoring talks on the future of Kosovo, which has been under U.N. administration and NATO peacekeepers since the NATO military intervention in 1999.

The statement echoed comments made earlier this month by President Vladimir Putin, who warned that the international community should not encourage separatist territorial claims, saying a dangerous precedent could trigger a chain reaction.

The statement also came just days after a group of U.S. senators and congressmen called on leaders attending the July 15-17 summit in St. Petersburg to rebuke Russia for actions "inconsistent with G-8 democratic norms," leading to speculation that Russia might take aim at Georgia if Washington and other Western nations try to raise Russia's record on democracy or other issues during the summit.

Serb burns car rather than pay fine

BELGRADE (Reuters) - A Serb man set his car on fire when he heard how much he had to pay to reclaim it after it was towed away for illegal parking.

An attendant told the daily Press the man was very calm.

"He went to his car, took a few things then opened the hood and set the engine on fire. When it was well ablaze he got back on his bike and rode off."

Petersen Misinformed Annan on Kosovo

Southeast Europe Theatre - Kosovo: Belgrade - Tehran/Pristina - Tehran; UN Security Council - Annan - Misinformed on Kosovo by UN Representative Petersen - 70 Albanian Attacks in Recent Months

Night Watch: PRISTINA - AKI reports the disturbing news that the Secretray - General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan and the Security Council, have been misinformed by their own representative in Kosovo, Danish diplomat Soren Jessen Petersen who has been strongly presenting a case for Kosovo independence and therefore has presented a false picture of the reality on the ground. His report was to have been made today and it appears that Petersen has been giving the false impression that there are no serious security problems in the province.

A couple of days ago Kosovo police discovered a powerful explosive less than two miles outside the provincial capital Pristina, near buildings that house a number of international organizations and a Serb police station. Kosovo Serb leader, Milan Ivanovic, told a press conference in Belgrade that in the past few months there have been 70 attacks just in the northern district Kosovska Mitrovica, what he described as "Albanian terrorism" against Serbs. Two-thirds of the Serbian population have evacuated since 1999, after the NATO bombing against Serbia placing the UN in control of Kosovo. 100,000 Serbs remain and are forced to live in isolated enclaves with no real security or freedom of movement. He actually told Petersen the province is a "black hole" for Serbian human rights and that the Serbs risk annihilation.

The German daily Die Welt has also severely citicized Petersen in an article Monday by saying he has been aggressively promoting the Albanian cause of independence before his departure at the end of this month. Since talks on Kosovo began last October there have been 180 attacks against Serbs. Since 1999 3,000 Serbs and non-Albanians have been killed while 150 Orthodox churches have been damaged or destroyed.

With the ongoing conflict, monitored and perhaps encouraged by Tehran, overshadowing the negotiations, Serbia and Iran signed a security agreement in January. Tehran knew of the Albanian attacks knowing it would force the Serbs to eventually strike back but not at just the Albanians, but also the international organizations, UN-NATO, that support the Albanian community and its demand for Kosovo independence. It is not surprising the news has recently reported that the most popular political parties in Serbia are the radicals, the ones less cooperative with the international community.

Nothing would please Tehran more than to see Vienna become obsessed with renewed fighting on this front. It would attract Vienna's attention away from Tehran's nuclear program which is intended to annihilate Vienna. This is the old world chaos the "New World Order" unleashed when the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), headquarted in Vienna, led and recognized the division of Yugoslavia 15 years ago and assumed the orchestrated crisis could be solved diplomatically. They underestimated the impact of weapon dealers.

Tehran knew another front had been established which they can use as they have been using Iraq-Afghanistan. Keep the West busy elsewhere instead of attacking Iran. In the Balkans case, the region can also be used as Tehran's avenue of invasion into Europe and the invasion will be assisted by all Balkan people who hate Vienna again perhaps even more than Tehran does.

Night Watch Information Service http://www.crossfirewar.com

Croatian Serbs calls on Zagreb to do more to help refugee return

Croatian Serbs urged Zagreb authorities on Tuesday, on the occasion of a UN-sponsored World Refugee Day, to step up efforts to help the return of Serbs who fled the country during the 1990s war. "Since a large number of refugees are still waiting to return, Croatia has to make additional efforts... to enable all those who want to return to do so," the Serb Democratic Forum (SDF) non-governmental organisation said in a statement.

Zagreb should also pass measures to ensure that returnees are well integrated back into society, it said. Croatia's proclamation of independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 sparked a four-year war with Serb rebels, who were backed by the Belgrade regime. According to United Nations figures, some 280,000 ethnic Serbs fled Croatia during and after the war. About 40 percent of them have returned so far.

"During the past few years the Croatian government has made significant efforts ... to solve the refugee issue," the SDF said. "However, despite these efforts the issues facing refugees and those who return are still of concern." SDF cited among the unresolved issues the increasing number of attacks against Serb returnees in 2005 and this year, problems with recuperating Serb returnees' property and difficulties in getting Croatian citizenship.

The Serbs are Croatia's largest minority, accounting for 4.5 percent of a population of 4.4 million. Their return and persistent ethnic tensions are among the key issues facing Croatia as it pursues its goal of joining the European Union by the end of the decade.

Public relations experts to help Serbia ditch negative image

The Foreign Economic Relations Ministry of Serbia is to bring on the services of a public relations advisor in a bid to help the country create a new international image, the local B92 Radio reported on Monday.

Serbia, commonly associated with instability, is seeking to distance itself from its generally negative image among the international community, the report said.

The outside world would have a less negative impression of Serbia if investments were made in public relations to improve its image, said Borka Tomic, an expert of Serbia and Montenegro research in Brussels.

Most positive things in Serbia are unknown, while bombings, Mladic and Milosevic remain its most well known brands, he added.

Yet Vice President of the Foreign Investment Council Goran Pitic believes that if Serbia does not progress in needed reforms and in creating a positive investment climate, having someone to help the country build a new image will fail to bring many results.

Troubling storm clouds linger over the Balkans

Serbia's long tragedy looks like it is coming to an end. The former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, is dead. A few weeks ago Montenegro voted for independence, and an independent Kosovo, too, is inching closer.

The wars of the Yugoslav succession have not only been a trial for the peoples of that disintegrated country; they also raised huge questions about the exercise of international justice. Do international tribunals of the sort Milosevic faced before his death promote or postpone serious self-reflection and reconciliation in damaged societies? Do they strengthen or undermine the political stability needed to rebuild wrecked communities and shattered economies?

The evidence on these questions is mixed. Indeed, the record of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), based in The Hague, may be instructive in judging the credibility of the strategy of using such trials as part of the effort to end civil and other wars. In 13 years, the ICTY, with 1,200 employees, spent roughly $1.25 billion to convict only a few dozen war criminals. Moreover, whereas members of all ethnic groups committed crimes, in its first years the ICTY indicted and prosecuted far more Serbs than others, fueling a perception, even among opponents of Milosevic's regime, that the tribunal was political and anti-Serbian.

We may regret that Milosevic's own trial ended without a conclusion. But a conviction only of Milosevic, however justified, without parallel penalties for his Croat, Bosnian Muslim, and Kosovo-Albanian counterparts would hardly have contributed to serious self-reflection within the post-Yugoslav nations.

To be sure, the arrest of General Ante Gotovina, adored by many Croats as a hero, but responsible for the brutal expulsion of a quarter-million Serbs from Croatia and northwest Bosnia - the biggest ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II - improves the ICTY's standing. But Milosevic's Croatian and Bosnian Muslim counterparts, Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic, respectively, remained unindicted when they died. So, too, the main commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Ramush Haradinaj, the prime minister of Kosovo, was accused but later released from detention.

I have always been convinced that Milosevic should have been put on trial in Belgrade. After all, Milosevic's critics and political rivals such as the journalist Slavko Curuvija and Milosevic's former mentor, Ivan Stambolic, were assassinated by Serbian police agents, who also tried three times to murder opposition leader Vuk Draskovic. There was, moreover, ample evidence of corruption among Milosevic's inner circle, including members of his immediate family.

Holding the trial in Belgrade might have served better to catalyze a sober examination of the past. The atmosphere was certainly favorable. The majority of Serbs hold Milosevic responsible for the decline of their society. Even before his fall, the opposition controlled most big Serbian cities, and in 2000 Milosevic lost the election that he called to shore up his authority. The relatively small turnout at his funeral confirmed that only a minority of Serbs considers him a national hero. http://www.dailystar.com.lb

Meanwhile, with the exception of Slovenia, the democratic transformation in the post-Yugoslav region remains uneasy. Wars, ethnic cleansing, embargoes, and sanctions created not only psychological traumas, but also black markets, smuggling, large-scale corruption, and de facto rule by mafias. The bombing of Serbia by NATO in 1999 heavily damaged its economy, with serious consequences for neighboring countries.

The definitive end of what remains of Yugoslavia may - at least today - pose no danger of war, but the Muslim Sandjak region will now be divided by state boundaries, and Albanian extremists, with their dreams of a Greater Albania, believe their influence in a separate Montenegro will be reinforced now that there has been a "yes" vote on independence. Most Serbs and Croats in Bosnia believe that the best solution to the problems of that sad country would be to join the territories that they inhabit with their "mother" countries.

Then there is the unresolved status of Kosovo, where the Albanian majority demands independence, and extremists threaten to fight for it. As one Kosovo Liberation Army commander warned: "If we kill one KFOR soldier a day, these cowards will leave." With independence, the extremists would gain a territorial base from which to undermine Macedonia, southern Montenegro, and southern Serbia, jeopardizing stability in the entire region.

Serbia is offering Kosovo the formula "less than independence, more than autonomy." It demands security guarantees for the Serbian minority and cultural monuments, as well as control of the borders with Albania and Macedonia to stop traffic in arms, drugs, and women, and to prevent the use of Kosovo by Albanian extremists.

Any resolution of Kosovo's status is problematic, but the international community should not repeat old mistakes. In 1991, the principle that only a politically negotiated division of Yugoslavia would be recognized was abandoned. Now, as then, a change of boundaries without the consent of all concerned parties would not only violate international law, but could also lead to violence.

The international community must not be gulled into thinking that war-crimes trials marginalize, rather than mobilize, extremists and nationalists. Pressure on Croatia and Serbia to arrest and hand over suspects - a condition of European Union accession negotiations - has yielded several extraditions and may result in more. But further trials alone are unlikely to bring about the long-term settlements that the region's fragile states need in order to ensure stability and democratic development. The people of the Balkans should feel that the EU offers them political and economic support. They deserve it.

Jiri Dienstbier was foreign minister of Czechoslovakia and special rapporteur of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the Balkans.

Greek Investments in Serbia

The Hellenic Petroleum Company is a contender in the imminent privatization of the Serbian Petroleum Corporation-NIS. Hellenic’s CEO, Panagiotis Kavoulakos recently visited Belgrade and had extensive talks with the Serbian Minister of Economy. It is assumed that the Serbian government will sell 25 percent of NIS, plus management to a strategic investor, most probably during autumn.

The Hellenic Petroleum Company has also been in talks with the Austrian OMV and Hungary’s MOL, in order to make a joint offer. The successful bidder for NIS would have the obligation to restructure the company’s business model and offer capital for the upgrade of NIS installations, something that would be positive for the overall performance of Serbian industry.

A second investment on the horizon is the National Bank of Greece’s interest in the imminent privatization of Vojvodjanska Bank. The Greek chairman, Mr. Takis Arapoglou, was also recently spotted in Serbia having high-profile conversations with Serbian government officials. Should the investment go ahead, the NBG has earmarked around 700 million euros to buyout Vojvodjanska.

Update June 20 2006.
National Bank of Greece (NBG) was the only contender for Vojvodjanska bank to submit a binding offer for the acquisition of the 99,4 percent of the capital of this bank, news agency Beta quoted informed financial sources. According to the unofficial information, NBG has offered a total of about USD 500 million for a majority package of Vojvodjanska bank shares.

List of major Greek investments in Serbia:

Telecom Serbia: 370 million euros invested by the Greek telecom company

Jubanka: 152 million euros invested by the Greek bank Alpha Bank; 17 million euros by the Greek bank Alpha Bank IBP Beograd; 106 million euros by the Coca- Cola Hellenic Bottling Company

Yugopetrol Kotor (in Montenegro): 110 million euros invested by the Hellenic Petroleum Company

EKO Yu: 40 million euros invested by EKO Hellas

Post Banka: 30 million euros invested by Eurobank

EFG Eurobank: 20 million euros invested by Eurobank

National Stedionica: 80 million euros invested by Eurobank

Fabrika Cementa Kosjeric: 55 million euros invested by the Titan Cement Company

Secerana Zabalj: 9 million euros invested by the Hellenic Sugar Company

Deljug: 32 million euros invested by the DELTA foods company

Super Vero: 30 million euros invested by the Veropoulos super market chain

Atlas Bank: 29 million euros invested by the Bank of Piraeus

National Bank of Greece: 30 million euro self-investment

Metropol Hotel: 29 million euros invested by Grecotel

Alumil YU: 17 million euros invested by the Alumil Corporation

ASCO Vidac: 8 million euros invested by ASCO

Eurosoles: 6 million euros invested by Mamadas Bros. Eurosoles

Yugolot: 4 million euros invested by the Intralot Corporation

source:balkanalysis.com

Secession of Republika Srpska from Bosnia-Herzegovina

Right after the independence referendum in Montenegro, Prime Minister of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik suggested that a similar referendum should be applied to the Serbs of Bosnia. The Bosnian leadership has always worried that the Serbs use any pretext to secede. Today that is only an opportunistic and theoretical suggestion. What will happen after Kosovo's independence? Will this suggestion become reality?

Bosnia-Herzegovina backwards

Bosnia-Herzegovina is very uneasy nowadays. The Croatia-Brazil match in Germany provoked vandalism acts and street fights between the Croats and Bosnians in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It seems that every little occasion gives the three different ethnicities of Bosnia-Herzegovina to show their general dissatisfaction with their situation in the country.

As to the Serbs of Bosnia, they caused a real shock. Prime Minister of Republika Srpska (RS) Milorad Dodik stated that an independence referendum similar to that in Montenegro should be held in the RS. Before the general international reaction, Dodik stepped back. Not completely though as he stated thereafter: "If Sarajevo persists in claiming that the Bosnian Serb entity RS should not exist and is a genocidal creature, they will get the answer called 'people' and 'referendum'". Dodik then defied the EU, claiming that even if they put the threshold to 90 percent, the will of Bosnian Serbs would confirm their aspiration to independence. After the constitutional reform was rejected in Parliament at the beginning of May, these statements caused new disillusionment among the international community as long as the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina is concerned.

Three points are important. These statements come from a politician, who fought against the nationalist Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), once led by the indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic. They come from the chairman of a moderate party, Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). And finally, they come from the Prime Minister of the RS.

These three facts are disturbing enough. The timing is also conspicuous: right after the independence referendum in Montenegro. This makes one think ponder on what will happen after Kosovo's independence one day.

It was easy to refute the parallelism that Milorad Dodik has been keen to establish between the case of Montenegro and that of the RS. The right for secession is a constitutional right for Montenegro. Montenegro had always been a republic, first within former Yugoslavia, then in the state union of Serbia-Montenegro. However, when it comes to Kosovo, which has never been a republic but an autonomous region within Serbia, things become much more complicated indeed.

Serbian Prime Minister supports the attitude of Milorad Dodik and warns that the independence of Kosovo would lead to the secession of the RS from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Just as the Albanians of the Presevo Valley (southern Serbia) who warn that if Kosovo is partitioned they will secede from Serbia to unite with Kosovo, now Kostunica "blackmails" the international community with the secession of the RS. And if the RS secedes, it would be no surprise that the Croats demand unification with Croatia in their turn. More that the Montenegrin independence, the Kosovo question will have a decisive effect on the future of the Balkans.

Another interesting point. Right after Milorad Dodik's referendum suggestion, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement Ollie Rehn stated that, instead of referendum, the RS should follow the constitutional framework and opt for "evolution rather than revolution". The reaction of Dodik to that statement was more than interesting. He calmly suggested that "Europe had more than once changed its mind about policy in the Balkans" and added "the fact that Europe does not allow a referendum in Bosnia-Herzegovina at this time does not necessarily mean that it will not in future". The cynical Dodik is absolutely right. The EU, by its incessant hesitation in its Balkan policy, has indeed lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of the Balkan peoples in general.

It seems that until the general elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina on 1st October and the definite solution of the Kosovo question, the refrain of the RS leadership will be that of this well-known Clash hit: "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"

Election manoeuvre

Bosnia-Herzegovina will go the polls on 1st October. Milorad Dodik, with his somewhat not unexpected statements, already got the upper hand over his nationalist rivals. No wonder that President of the RS and chairman of SDS Dragan Cavic condemned his Prime Minister's statements as "pre-election propaganda": "Statements of this kind are simply raining down because of the political needs of the election campaign".

Milorad Dodik cunningly made a good electoral investment indeed. It will take sometime for other nationalist parties like SDS to be more nationalist than SNSD. If this nationalistic competition goes on increasing until the day of election, the Bosniak-Croat Federation must be prepared to witness a most disturbing pre-election campaign in the RS. And if the Bosnian and Croat parties, in their turn, decide to react to the Serbian parties, then the international community must be prepared to witness an explosive election campaign in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In such an election campaign overdosed with conflicting nationalisms, multi-ethnic parties like Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA) or Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SDP) would have no chance at all. With three parties' nationalists clashing with one another, they would have no more legitimacy to call for tolerance and cooperation.

The parliamentary elections being scheduled for 1st October that date is dangerously close to November when the international community is intended to conclude the Kosovo status talks. One can assume that by that time Kosovo's fate will be clearer than it is now. This will of course add an extra tension into the Bosnian elections.

The international community would like to reduce in future the powers of either republic in order to re-establish a more centralised Bosnian-Herzegovinian state. During the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords in November last year, Richard Holbrook enumerated the RS among those "mistakes" that had been made at that time. On a more symbolic level the flag, the coat of arms and the anthem of the RS, which have been deemed unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina, are due to be replaced by September 2006. All these would push the Serbian parties to have more dramatic life-or-death tones in their pre-election campaigns.

Given the timing and the context of the elections, it seems that all parties in Bosnia-Herzegovina will neglect vital issues like unemployment, poverty, social security, health care, problems of youth and so on. That the themes would be reduced to the "secession from Bosnia-Herzegovina" on one hand and the "abolition of the RS" on the other seems more than probable.

Peter Handke And The Watch Dogs Of War

Last April 8, the director of the Comédie-Française, Marcel Bozonnet, announced his decision to cancel a planned Paris production of Peter Handke's play, Voyage au pays sonore ou l'art de la question. The cancellation was in reaction to a short item in the Nouvel Observateur, attacking the Austrian playwright for having been present when Slobodan Milosevic was buried in Pozarevac, Serbia, three weeks earlier. The item fancifully described Handke as "waving a Serbian flag" and "approving the Srebrenica massacre and other crimes committed in the name of purification."

In fact, Handke stood discreetly in an icy rain among the hundreds of thousands of people who quietly paid tribute less, probably, to the former President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia than to the prisoner who died in The Hague before he could conclude his surprisingly effective and convincing defense.

The Soviet press used to start many affirmations with the expression, "everyone knows." Today, thanks to Western media, "everyone knows" all about former Yugoslavia, even if they know nothing. In France, "everyone knows" because they read about it in Le Monde, whose Belgrade correspondent, Florence Hartmann, has gone on to be spokeswoman for the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague. The same media that had already convicted Milosevic ignored most of the trial except for complaints by the Prosecution that Milosevic was impeding justice by being ill and insisting on defending himself. Even his dying was treated in the media as a dirty trick. Only those who watched the proceedings on Serbian television or on the web could know that the main accusation against him, of masterminding a "joint criminal enterprise" to create a "Greater Serbia," had collapsed by last August, and that no evidence whatever linked him to the Srebrenica massacre.

The defendant's death saved the ICTY judges from having to render a verdict. The media has enthusiastically done the job for them. Handke explained that what moved him to go to Pozarevac was precisely the stereotyped language of the media that "knew everything," endlessly recycling words like "the butcher of Belgrade"... Handke's one-minute statement simply suggested that if "the world," meaning the media, "knew everything," he did not. He hoped for a more thoughtful, questioning language. (1)

Far from "approving" the Srebrenica massacre, Handke has described it as an "infernal vengeance, eternal shame for the Bosnian Serbs responsible." (2) He has simply tried to put it in context, and that is considered sacrilege. "Srebrenica" is not an event to be studied and put into context but a sacred cult. It must simply be ritually deplored as "genocide" and "the worst massacre since World War II." Anything else is stigmatized as an "insult to the victims" and a form of "revisionism" or "negationism."

Now, history involves a constant process of revision. But today what is implied by "revisionism" is "Holocaust denial," which is a crime in a dozen European countries. By analogy with the Holocaust, history of even such recent events as the war in Bosnia is being replaced by "the duty of memory" which means reverent repetition of the designated victims' version of the past.

Memory or history?

The transformation of "memory" into a sacred cult silences dissent and prevents open-minded examination of recent events and their context. To understand the conflicts that tore apart Yugoslavia, there needs to be much more free inquiry, more information, more analysis. But all that would imply "revisionism." The ideological watch dogs are there to bark and snarl at any deviation, frightening the mass of conformists back into the sheepfold.

Today it is an unquestioned dogma that recalling atrocities is a "duty of memory" to the victims, something that must be endlessly repeated, lest we forget. However, constant reminders of past atrocities may simply prepare the next wave, which is what has already happened in the Balkans, and more than once. In reality, the dead victims cannot profit from such memories. But the memory of victimhood is a moral and political capital of great value for the heirs of victimhood and especially for their self-appointed champions. The dominance of the Holocaust in contemporary consciousness has created a sort of "Holocaust envy" among other groups who see advantages in being recognized as victims.

Every community involved in a civil war has a natural tendency to see itself as pure victims. "Memory" enforces group identification, because each group tends to cultivate its own memories. To a large extent, the ferocity of the fighting that broke loose in 1992 was a resumption of the vicious cycle of massacres and vengeance that devastated Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1941-44, because the secession of Yugoslav Republics resounded in the Serb community's memory as a repetition of the Croatian Ustashi attacks on Serbs after the first Yugoslavia was broken up by Nazi occupation.

Western media and politicians echo the charge that the Muslims of Bosnia were the target of a deliberate project of "genocide," because this justifies their illegal 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. It distracts from their own responsibility in reducing Yugoslavia to a mutually unfriendly cluster of dependent mini-states, and from the persecution of the non-Albanian population of Kosovo. It also fans hatred between communities. Some politicians in the West may hope that focusing on Serb crimes will convince Muslims (despite Palestine) of Western concern for their well-being, but it tends to backfire. Constantly claiming that the West stood by while Bosnian Muslims were the object of "genocide" can only further inflame Islamists against the West. It does not make them forget Israel and Palestine. It only contributes to an ominous mood of "conflict of civilizations."

It would be more helpful to point out that wars lead to massacres, and that evacuating women and children to safety (as the Serb forces did when they captured Srebrenica) is not a usual feature of what most people understand by "genocide." There have long been indications of Serb willingness to admit guilt for whatever really happened at Srebrenica, but only for what really happened, and in return for recognition that atrocities of the same sort were committed on all sides. If the desire for revenge (against earlier massacres of Serb villagers by Muslim forces based in Srebrenica) spurred the massacres at Srebrenica, revenge now also motivates the insistence of the Bosnian Muslim party on branding the Serbs as "genocidal." Muslim leaders in Bosnia hope it will enable them to force Serbia to pay billions of dollars of reparations -- a prospect which would be about as helpful in promoting peace as the reparations imposed on Germany after World War I, which led to the Nazi victory.

To promote reconciliation, what is needed is more history and less "memory." Certainly, group memories and myths must be recognized as factors in behavior, but not accepted as holy writ which cannot be challenged. Acknowledging that Muslims suffered the greatest number of casualties in the 1992-95 war (3) does not mean that this was not a civil war, for which Izetbegovic bore major responsibility and in which Muslim fighters, notably foreign Mujahidin, committed atrocities.

War is the condition that leads to massacres. Had the war in Bosnia been prevented, there would have been no Srebrenica massacre. It could have best been prevented, not by U.S. or NATO bombing, but by stopping civil war from breaking out in Bosnia Herzegovina to begin with. This prevention was possible if the "international community," meaning the NATO powers, Europe and the United States, had firmly insisted that the Yugoslav crisis of 1990 should be settled by negotiations. But first of all, Germany opposed this, by bullying the European Union into immediate recognition of the secession of Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia, without negotiation. All informed persons knew that this threatened the existence of Bosnia Herzegovina. A moderate Muslim businessman, Adil Zulfikarpasic, proposed a settlement accepted by Serbs and others. The European Union proposed a cantonization plan for Bosnia Herzegovina, not very different from the present arrangement, which was accepted by leaders of the Bosnian Muslim, Serb and Croat communities. But both these compromise agreements, which would have prevented war, were rejected by the Muslim party leader Alija Izetbegovic, encouraged by the United States. Throughout the subsequent fighting, the U.S. put obstacles in the way of every European peace plan. Without this US interference, there would have been no Srebrenica massacre, which occurred in the last weeks of the three-and-a-half-year war.

This rejection of compromise, which plunged Bosnia-Herzegovina into fratricidal war, was supported at the time by a chorus of humanitarian absolutists, claiming that Bosnia must be a centralized State for the sake of "multiculturalism." These were the same humanitarians who had applauded the breakup of multicultural Yugoslavia -- which in fact created the crisis in Bosnia. They have been silent as Serbs and other non-Albanians are being "ethnically cleansed" from Kosovo, in the presence of NATO forces.

It is remarkable that more media attention and public indignation is devoted to the search for General Ratko Mladic than to the US destruction of Fallujah and other Iraqi cities.

The West's dominant media and politicians promote war policies that lead inevitably to massacres, while posturing as moral guardians by constantly recalling a massacre that occurred over ten years ago in a war that was largely a result of their own irresponsible encouragement of secessionist forces in Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, the victims of Western massacres continue to pile up in Afghanistan and Iraq. The "Srebrenica genocide" -- because it was committed by "them" and not by us -- is essential to Western claims of moral superiority. The watch dogs cannot tolerate the rivalry of a poet, such as Peter Handke, who tries, against all odds, to inspire genuine moral reflection.

Notes

1. "Le discours intégral de l'écrivain autrichien sur la tombe de Milosevic," Libération, 4 May 2006. (back)

2. Peter Handke, "Il faut maintenant sortir de la vision unilatérale de la guerre. Les Serbes ne sont pas les seuls coupables; Parlons donc de la Yougoalvie", Libération, 10 May 2006. (back)

3. Ever since the Sarajevo ministry of information in 1993 launched the figure of 200,000 killed in Bosnia, the media have repeated the figure without question, sometimes raising it to 250,000 or even 300,000. The first systematic nominal study of losses in Bosnia-Herzegovine, by the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center headed by Mirsad Tokaca, has concluded that around 100,000 people died, slightly over 66 % of them Muslims, about evenly divided between soldiers and civilians. (back)

About the Author

Diana Johnstone is a widely-published essayist and columnist who has written extensively on European and international politics. She is the author of The Politics of Euromissiles: Europe's Role in America's World (Verso, 1985).

Related Links:
Original article
Peter Handke, Milosevic and Serbia
German Politicians to Block Prize for Milosevic Sympathizer

Lights out for Serbs in Lipljan

Local administrations in Lipljan have turned off electricity for houses in the Serbian section of the city and nearby villages.

Lipljan Municipal Coordination Centre Director Nikola Zivkovic said that Albanian officials in Lipljan were ordered by officials in Kosovska Mitrovica to turn off electricity and water supplies for the Serbian homes, and are waiting for further instructions to arrive from Pristina.

The Serbian homes in Lipljan and the surrounding villages have been without electricity since yesterday afternoon, and the turning off of water is ongoing, Zivkovic said. He said that the communal services company in Lipljan is asking the Serbian households to pay in between 15 and 150 euros a month for water, depending on the amount of consumption.

The administration of the three municipalities in the northern part of Kosovo, where a majority of Serbs live, decided recently to break all ties with the temporary Kosovo institutions until the cases of recent armed attacks on Serbs in the region are solved. Recently one Serb was killed in such an attack and several were wounded.

USA uses Bulgarian intelligence service in the Balkans

Excerpt from report by M.V.R. and D.Z: "Bulgarian spies followed Pedja" published by Montenegrin newspaper Dan on 13 June

The chairman of the Socialist People's Party [SNP - Predrag Bulatovic] who is also the leader of the pro-union bloc was being followed by foreign intelligence services. This fact was confirmed by Georgi Koritarov, member of the Bulgarian State Security Service, in his confession published by the Belgrade-based Blic newspaper. He admitted that this service was very interested in Montenegrin opposition leader Predrag Bulatovic.

Military-political analyst Milovan Drecun believes that the fact that foreign intelligence services were following Montenegrin opposition leader Predrag Bulatovic is not an unexpected development, considering the fact that he has so many supporters that it was always a possibility that he might take over as the leader of Montenegro. He believes that there was a time when such an event definitely did not suit the American interests in the Balkans.

"Lately the Bulgarian intelligence service has become a faithful long arm serving the American interests in the Balkans. Three American bases are to be opened in that country, but it is particularly interesting to note that the Bulgarian intelligence service now has a new role to play in the Balkans. Whenever the American intelligence services cannot or do not want to do something efficiently, they do it through Bulgarian services. My sources tell me that Koritarov's statement is absolutely true," Drecun says.

He adds that everything the Bulgarian intelligence service has been doing in Montenegro and Kosovo-Metohija has been done on behalf of the USA and in the course of executing orders issued by its intelligence services.

"One former Bulgarian general from the Macedonian area is intensely busy among members of the Albanian National Army [ANA] and the [Kosovo] protection corps. His task is to control actions of the Albanian mafia and [Kosovo politician] Hasim Taci, because America is starting to lose control over that mafia.

He points out that, beside the CIA, Al-Qa'idah has its headquarters in Sofia, too. Its head was the ideologist of this terrorist organization, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and then his brother Muhammad. "Daut Haradinaj, brother of [former Kosovo Prime Minister] Ramus Haradinaj, visited Sofia in order to contact him after Kfor arrived in Kosovo. Daut Haradinaj is the main connection between the former KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army], which has now become the Kosovo Protection Corps, and Al-Qa'idah.

Kosovo: Over 70 ethnically-motivated incidents against Serbs

UN envoy for Kosovo status talks Marti Ahtisaari has held talks in Kosovska Mitrovica with representatives of the Serb National Council [SNV] of northern Kosovo who warned him that democratic standards are not being achieved in Kosovo despite UNMIK [UN mission in Kosovo] claims to the contrary.

SNV chairman Milan Ivanovic told a news conference that Ahtisaari was informed about 70 ethnically-motivated incidents which had recently taken place in the Mitrovica region.

Ivanovic said that the Finnish diplomat was warned that representatives of Kosovo institutions were trying to conceal the background to crimes against Kosovo Serbs.

"We told Ahtisaari in no uncertain terms that an independent Kosovo is unacceptable for the Serbs and that it would lead to ethnic cleansing of the Serb community," Ivanovic said.

Bomb damages Kosovo customs vehicle

Unknown persons hurled a bomb at a Kosovo Customs Administration vehicle in front of the UNMIK [UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo] building in Zubin Potok in northern Kosovo at about 1600 [1400 gmt], Kosovo Police Service spokesman Ranko Stanojevic has told SRNA.

"There were no casualties or injuries, although considerable material damage was caused to the vehicle," Stanojevic said.

He said that a Kosovo police investigating unit immediately came to the scene and started an on-site investigation.

Visoki Decani monastery in the middle of Kosovo conflict

A picturesque valley in the western province of Kosovo is home to the largest and most urgently preserved monastery in Serbia. The 14th century Visoki Decani monastery has not only survived the passage of time but also the ravages of war. Even though around half the Serb population fled a wave of revenge attacks after the war, the 100,000 who stayed are still targeted by sporadic violence. Stoning of police and attacks on individuals are not uncommon.

In 1998, Slobodan Milosevic, who was president at the time, led troops against Albanian forces in an effort to reclaim parts of Kosovo. The following year, NATO airstrikes in Kosovo ended the war when the United Nations intervened, offering a treaty between the two sides.

But ongoing tensions and violence between Kosovo's Serbian and Albanian populations don't simply affect the people who live there -- there's also a real physical threat to that region's centuries-old churches and monasteries.

If you wish to admire the Visoki Decani monastery, you must first pass a heavily armored military checkpoint and a thick 600-year-old wall. Inside lies the pearl of the Serbian Orthodox Church, such an important symbol of an endangered cultural heritage that its protection is at the top of the agenda of the latest diplomatic effort in the Balkans.

Seven years after that NATO intervention, ethnic Albanians and Serbian officials met a few days ago in Vienna to discuss the protection of the region's religious sites thus far guaranteed by international peacekeepers.

Nestled at the foot of the Prokletije Mountains in western Kosovo, on meadows that shepherds roam with their flocks, the Visoki Decani monastery seems centuries removed from modern politics. The mostly young monks lead a life that has changed little since medieval times, with one exception.

Father Sava juggles his mobile phone with his computer hooked up to the Internet, surrounded by piles of newspapers -- essential tools for this outspoken activist, who has been telling the outside world about his church and the plight of minority Serbs in the UN-governed former Yugoslav province.

"Living in a medieval setting does not mean accepting a medieval mentality. The Internet enables us to speak from the pulpit of a keyboard," said Father Sava, whose use of modern technology earned him the nickname "cybermonk," he told me the first time I met him in July 2000.

Six years later, not much has changed. While sipping coffee under the wooden porch with two Serbs who the monastery is hosting because they cannot return to their homes due to the ongoing still-ethnic tensions with the Albanians. Father Sava regrets the slow progress in building a truly multiethnic, respectful Kosovo.

"The monastery is a thorn in the eye for some people, he explains. "Symbolically, it is very important as a Christian monument, which proves that Serbs have been living here for centuries, and Kosovo has always been multiethnic, not monoethnic."

Life in Kosovo has been a struggle for Serbs since June 1999, when NATO air bombing halted Belgrade's repression against independence-seeking ethnic Albanians. Since then, this region has been a United Nations protectorate.

With the region still formally part of Serbia, negotiations aimed at resolving its status began in February. Ethnic Albanians say they will settle for nothing less than complete independence. And Serbs won't surrender land they consider the cradle of their civilization.

For them, Kosovo is "Metohija," the land of monasteries. The deadlocked region of fertile plains and snowcapped mountains is dotted with religious buildings, many of which are more than 400 years old.

In 2004, UNESCO listed Visoki Decani on the World Heritage List, citing its frescoes as "one of the most valued examples of the so-called Palaeologan renaissance in Byzantine painting" and "a valuable record of the life in the 14th century."

"Serbian Orthodox heritage in Kosovo is probably one of the most important parts of Serbian heritage in general. It is part of the Serbian identity," says Father Sava. But it's an identity in danger: Since 1999, more than 100 churches have been the target of Albanian extremists. The continual violence culminated in March 2004, when holy sites were targeted.

The city of Prizren, the jewel of the short-lived Serbian empire of the 14th century, suffered the worst damage, with four medieval buildings badly harmed.

The church of Bogorodica Ljeviska, completed by King Milutin in 1307, was burned down by a mob. Slobodan Curcic, professor of art and architecture at Princeton University and UNESCO consultant, considered it "one of the finest examples of late Byzantine architecture anywhere. For Curcic, "the destruction of these monuments are in fact acts against Byzantine cultural heritage."

At the meeting held in Vienna on the protection of this precious heritage, Ylber Hysa, a Kosovo Albanian negotiator, said that Kosovo's capital city, Pristina, is offering "full recognition of the rule and the status of the church in Kosovo." The ethnic Albanian-dominated government, Hysa added, is committed to "provid[ing] legal guarantees, physical protection, along with benefits like tax exemption, and creation of special zones."

For the moment, though, the international military presence seems to be essential. "We need long-term security, says Father Sava, as the monastery is not only Serb, it's part of a Christian heritage that belongs to the whole of Europe."

An important sign of reconciliation and recognition arrived when Fatmir Sejdiu -- the Kosovo Albanian president who took office last February after the death of independence-icon Ibrahim Rugova -- visited the Visoki Decani monastery to mark the Orthodox Easter, the first icebreaking gesture since the end of the conflict seven years ago.

Yet much remains to be done. "The problem," Father Sava reflects, "is that there is a very ethnic-based approach in Kosovo, where the Serbs are neglected, with a lack of responsibility in ensuring that Serbs should live like normal citizens. I wish we had a leadership that would take care of the citizens of Kosovo as a whole."

More pictures at Decani Igor Jeremic
More about Decani

Janusz Bugaski: Kosovo partition a legitimate way to protect Serb minority

Political analysts who follow the U.N.-sponsored negotiations on the future status of Kosovo told a congressional panel Thursday they are worried about the lack of any progress in the talks.

Since February the United Nations has brokered six rounds of talks in Vienna between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians over the status of the Serb province. A vast majority of Kosovars, who are ethnic Albanians, support independence from Serbia.

Daniel Serwer, of the US Institute of Peace, told the congressional Helsinki (human rights) committee that so far, Belgrade has not been constructive in the talks. He said Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica probably hopes for an eventual partition of Kosovo, from which Serbia was forced to withdraw in 1999.

"Kostunica's backward-looking attitude extends to Kosovo as well, where Serbia is determined to maintain governing authority over Serbs (there) on a clearly defined territory. This may not be partition, but it is too close for comfort. Ethnocentric partition of this sort would set a precedent that Albanians would want to follow in southern Serbia as well as in Macedonia," he said.

Partition in Kosovo, said Serwer, could lead to further fragmentation in neighboring Bosnia Herzegovina, which is already divided into two entities.

Janusz Bugaski, the Balkans expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, says partition might be a legitimate way to protect Kosovo's 10 percent Serb minority. But he would support partition only with strict conditions. "It wouldn't be a disaster if it were done under three conditions. One, that Pristina and Belgrade recognize each other as independent states. Two, that the negotiations over any kind of territorial transfers would be done between the two governments. And thirdly, that the international community be involved in any population movements afterwards," he said.

Serwer says the Kosovo Albanians are also to be blamed for lack of progress in the status talks. "The failure of its institutions of provisional self-government to get (refugee) Serbs back to their homes safely and securely is the biggest single obstacle to determining final status, which should be done this year. Kosovo's elected leadership must take responsibility for this failure," he said.

UN negotiators concede that they may not be able to get the Serbs and Albanians to agree on Kosovo's future. If that happens, Kosovo's status would likely be imposed by the six nation contact group that is guiding the UN negotiations. The group consists of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

Kosovo: New position paper on protection and return of refugees

UNHCR has just released a new position paper aimed at guiding states and others making decisions about whether individuals from Kosovo should continue to receive international protection in an asylum country or can be returned to Kosovo. We have periodically issued such position papers since the 1999 Kosovo crisis.

The major change from the previous paper of March 2005 is that members of two specific Roma communities in Kosovo - the Ashkaelia and Egyptian - are no longer considered to be among those at risk. This is mainly due to positive developments within the inter-ethnic environment. The paper says the return of individuals belonging to these two groups should, nevertheless, be approached in a phased manner due to the limited absorption capacity of Kosovo.

The report says UNHCR remains concerned about Kosovo Serbs, Roma and Albanians in situations where these groups constitute a minority. The fragile security environment and serious limitations these people face in exercising their fundamental human rights shows they should continue to be considered at risk of persecution and should continue to benefit from international protection in countries of asylum. Return of these minorities should be strictly voluntary, based on fully informed individual decisions. UNHCR also opposes their forceful return to other parts of Serbia. Other groups at risk are persons in ethnically mixed marriages, persons of mixed ethnicity, persons perceived to have been associated with the Serbian-Montenegro authorities after 1990, and victims of trafficking.

The report notes that although the overall security situation in Kosovo has progressively improved since March 2005, it remains fragile and unpredictable. Minorities continue to suffer from ethnically motivated or criminal incidents. Many incidents remain unreported as the victims often fear reprisals from perpetrators. Confidence in the rule of law remains weak. The cumulative effect of these factors also reinforces perceptions of insecurity in the Serb and to a lesser extent Roma communities. Whether real or perceived, insecurity is still felt by minorities in the province and it consequently limits their freedom of movement.

Serbs and Roma continue to face serious obstacles in accessing essential services in health, education, justice and public administration. Discrimination as well as low representation of minorities in the administrative structures further discourages minorities from exercising their basic rights. With regard to housing, land and property issues, the current repossession rate of illegally occupied properties remains limited. There is still no effective mechanism for property restitution and compensation.

As the outcome of the status negotiations may significantly affect the position of minorities from Kosovo UNHCR shared this position paper with the office of Martti Ahtisaari, the UN Special Envoy for the Kosovo future status process.

There are still more than 200,000 refugees and persons of concern to UNHCR from Kosovo in western European and other countries, with an equal number of IDPs in Serbia and some 18,000 persons of concern in neighbouring Montenegro.

Bosnia admits US terrorist renditions violated human rights law

Bosnia-Herzegovina: Bosnia-Herzegovina has admitted ignoring legal norms to hand six Algerian-born men to US forces, who then flew them to the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison.

No other member of the 46-nation Council of Europe has acknowledged violating the European Convention on Human Rights by helping the US government in what the council has called a "spider's web" of abductions and transfers of terror suspects. Bosnian foreign minister Mladen Ivanic said the six men were placed in US custody on January 18th, 2002, and a "formal and legal procedure for extradition was not carried out, instead this was labelled as a 'handover'".

The day before, Bosnia's top court had ordered the men's release, and the US embassy in Sarajevo had offered "to place the alleged persons under its supervision, since it believed they had been involved in international terrorism", Mr Ivanic said.

The council said in a statement: "Bosnia-Herzegovina admitted that the applicants had simply been handed over to the custody of the US forces despite a decision by the Supreme Court ordering their immediate release."

The six men - Lakhdar Boumediene, Mohamed Nechle, Hadj Boudella, Belkacem Bensayah, Mustafa Ait Idir and Saber Lahmar - were flown to the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, where they are still being held as so-called enemy combatants.

Police arrested the men, four of whom held Bosnian citizenship, on suspicion of planning attacks on US and UK embassies in Sarajevo and a US military base near the town of Tuzla.

Having failed to find sufficient evidence to try the men, however, Bosnian authorities tried to deport them to Algeria. When that failed, they gave them to US forces.

A lawyer for the detainees, Stephen Oleksey, told the European Parliament committee in April that he believed an aircraft arrived at Tuzla from the US military base at Ramstein in Germany, picked up his clients and continued to Turkey, where it collected more prisoners before heading for Guantanamo Bay.

He said US officials had threatened to cut aid to Bosnia unless it handed over the men.

A council report last week accused the US of co-opting European help with "renditions". It said Bosnia-Herzegovina, Italy, Sweden and Macedonia had allowed residents to be abducted, called Poland and Romania the likely sites of secret jails, and named several states, including Ireland, as places where rendition aircraft refuelled.

Decision on Kosovo's Status to Be Announced November 15th

Belgrade. The international community reached an agreement the decision on Kosovo's final status to be announced at the UN Security Council session on November 15th 2006, Serbian newspaper Glas Javnosti reads today citing diplomatic source.

According to the source it is very possible Kosovo not to receive full independence on November 15th but everything will be formulated in such a way so that in fact the Balkan country will be independent, the newspaper notes.

Serbs in northern Kosovo proclaim self-governance

The representatives at the Leposavic municipal assembly proclaimed the introduction of special measures on the territory of this municipality in Northern Kosovo and terminated all relations with the Kosovo interim institutions. After Zvecan and Zubin Potok, this is the third municipality in Northern Kosovo that decided to terminate its contact with the Kosovo government, due to the “alarming deteriorating of the safety situation” in this part of the province, announced the Coordination Center international press service.

At the top of the decision for the Serbs to refuse to accept any pay from the Kosovo institutions, the representatives at Leposavic municipal assembly also adopted the general proposal to self-organize protection, which was presented at last week’s protest meeting in Zvecan.

This means ending the trust to the Kosovo police service regional units, since they are mostly Albanian, and introducing a closer cooperation with the local KPS units, which consist mostly of Serbs.

The self-defense program will include members of the civilian protection and an ex-member of the Serbian interior ministry from this region. One of the Leposavic requests is to respect the UN Resolution 1244, which includes the return of the Serbian army and police to Kosovo and Metohija, and a greater responsible role for UNMIK and KFOR.

It is also mentioned that if the previously mentioned suggestions are not implemented, then the Leposavic municipal assembly is ready to take part in the hiring and financing of 999 Serbian policemen.

General Wesley Clark lied about Kosovo

Our media are ready and eager to pounce on Bush whenever he is perceived to have made a misstatement, but a retired General and former Democratic presidential candidate tells blatant lies about Kosovo and gets away with it.

Senator John Kerry, the defeated 2004 Democratic candidate for president, was the subject of a May 28 New York Times article about how he is once again trying to rebut allegations about his military service made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. With a sympathetic media, such as that represented by the Times story, Kerry thinks he might be able to rehabilitate himself and try another presidential run. The Times endorsed Kerry for president in 2004.

But Kerry may have some competition. On Memorial Day, another former Democratic presidential candidate, retired General Wesley Clark, tried to rewrite the history of the war in Kosovo in order to make himself into a great military hero. "Last week," he said, "I returned to Kosovo for the first time since I retired from military service. For me, this trip was very personal. In 1999, I commanded the NATO forces that stopped the genocide against ethnic Albanians by Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian forces."

That sounds pretty impressive-commanding the forces that stopped genocide. Too bad it's not true.

Genocide is defined as seeking to eliminate an entire group of people. But the number of dead found in Kosovo after the war was said to be only 2,108. That was the figure given by Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, at a December 1999 press conference. But it wasn't clear they were all Kosovo Albanians. Indeed, many may have been Serbs. That's a terrible loss of life, but it's no genocide.

That figure also didn't include the number of Serbs killed in Serbia by the NATO mission commanded by Clark and ordered by President Clinton. The mission was both illegal and unconstitutional, since Clinton never received the authorization of Congress to conduct the war.

In his message, Clark went on to tell another whopper. Referring to the NATO campaign, he said, "This was an example of how we CAN do it right: diplomacy first, strong leadership, working with others, and using force only as a last resort. We had a plan for what to do after the operation before we began air strikes."

Working with others? Congress was bypassed. And what was that plan? Serbia today is being dismembered, so that a Muslim state in Kosovo can be established. Clark didn't mention that most of the Albanians in Kosovo who want independence are Muslims.

He referred his supporters to photos of his visit to Kosovo. Previously, however, Clark had posed for a photo with Hashim Thaci, leader of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), also known by the initials UCK. This is the group laying siege to Serbian Christian churches in Kosovo today.

For those interested in this largely untold (by the media) story, go to the website of Bill Murray, chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, who visited the area in August 2004 and filed this stunning report.

Our media are ready and eager to pounce on Bush whenever he is perceived to have made a misstatement, but a retired General and former Democratic presidential candidate tells blatant lies about Kosovo and gets away with it. In fact, he uses his participation in this illegal and unconstitutional war as a badge of honor.

Bush, of course, will be the favorite target for some time to come. Typical is Frank Rich's forthcoming book about the Bush presidency, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina.

That will be the media theme at least until after the November congressional elections.

Rich and his colleagues will try to make you ignore the fact that while Bush has had a policy of fighting terrorists in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, Clinton, Clark & Company had a policy of helping them gain political power through false charges of genocide.

Slovakia: Gasparovic warns against quick independence of Kosovo

Sajkovac, Serbia, June 14 (CTK) - A quick independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo could threaten relations between local Serbs and Albanians, Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic said during his visit to the Slovak KFOR unit in Kosovo today.

Gasparovic added that Slovakia would support such a solution to the Kosovo problem that would satisfy both Kosovo Albanians and Belgrade. "Kosovo should remain a multi-ethnic region within Serbia or a certain autonomy," Gasparovic told reporters. "I cannot imagine that Serbs who were forced to leave the area could not return to their property and relatives," Gasparovic stressed. Most Kosovo Albanians are striving for their independence while the Serbian government rejects it.

Slovakia has been an elected member of the U.N. Security Council since January, and that is why it will probably participate in the decision-making on Kosovo's final status. Gasparovic was accompanied by the wives and relatives of the Slovak soldiers serving in Kosovo at the Sajkovac base. At the Sajkovac base, Gasparovic today also laid a wreath at the memorial to the victims of the Slovak military plane crash in which 42 people perished.

The Slovak AN-24 plane with 43 people aboard, most of them soldiers, returning home from a KFOR mission in Kosovo, crashed in the mountainous area of northeast Hungary closely before the planned landing in Kosice, east Slovakia, on January 19. Only one soldier, lieutenant Martin Farkas, survived the accident. Over 130 Slovak troops serve in Sajkovac along with Czech colleagues with whom they operated in the same battalion until last year.

Humanitarian wars

Q: What do you call a platoon of heavily armed US marines in armoured personnel carriers on the Kosovo-Macedonian border?

A: Anything you want - until they get air support. As jokes go, it had a limited shelf life. The era of "humanitarian interventions" started just after the first Gulf war in 1991, when allied forces created the "safe haven" to protect the Kurds in northern Iraq, and seemed to end after the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Certainly the chaos into which Iraq has now descended has lessened the enthusiasm for interventions in places such as Darfur.

It was not a particularly glorious story, anyway, given the failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina and the mess that was made of the interventions in Somalia and Kosovo. One clear lesson is that such interventions cannot be conducted on a zero-casualties basis.

As Max Hastings has argued, armies are killing machines. To send them into conflict zones and expect them not to react to the situation in which they find themselves is to misunderstand their nature and purpose. When well-meaning liberals use phrases like "effective intervention" or "the responsibility to protect", what they are actually talking about is the deployment of forces of potentially overwhelming physical violence.

A regular criticism of the "humanitarian interventions" that took place during the 1990s was that western powers were unwilling to commit sufficient numbers of troops or to give them a sufficiently robust mandate to do their jobs. Kofi Annan's comment that the Dutch soldiers in Srebrenicia were mandated only to "deter attacks" on the enclave rather than to actually defend it was more than a point of legal semantics. UN troops proved utterly incapable of protecting Muslims from "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia. Nato was equally useless in stopping 250,000 Serbs and Roma from being driven from their homes in Kosovo. This was not because of personal cowardice by individual soldiers but because of the context in which they were forced to operate, for which the ultimate responsibility lay with politicians.

Although humanitarian aid workers have a rather fluffy image, a surprising number actually have military backgrounds. We also share the same experiences: of being lonely and scared in a foreign country, hearing and seeing gun and bomb attacks and their bloody, immediate aftermath, and dealing with the grief of losing colleagues and friends. I remain haunted by the television image of familiar faces staggering from the rubble of the UN headquarters in Baghdad where five of my former colleagues from Kosovo were killed.

I kept a diary when I lived in Afghanistan, and an entry from two years ago recalls a drinking session with a group of "security consultants" from a company called Global Risk, two of whom were murdered a couple of weeks later. I remember shaking with rage when I read a comment by Michael Moore about a similar killing. "Those are not 'contractors' in Iraq," he wrote. "They are not there to fix a roof or to pour concrete in a driveway. They are MERCENARIES and SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. They are there for the money, and the money is very good if you live long enough to spend it."

But I still find myself agreeing more with George Monbiot than either Ruth Dudley Edwards or Niall Stanage when he, Monbiot, points to the fairly obvious parallels between the British occupation of Ireland and the US invasion of Iraq. We at least have some choice about the situation that we have placed ourselves in; the local civilian population never has any.

I remember once, in Strabane, seeing British soldiers taunt a man whose son had been killed in an explosion a few hours earlier that "one of your own cunts got it today". The fact that so few soldiers were ever prosecuted for killing civilians in Northern Ireland massively alienated large sections of the Catholic population, who had initially welcomed the army as "protectors", and was one of the biggest single factors that caused people to join the IRA. Impunity turns "international peacekeepers" into "occupying armies" and sows dragon's teeth of resistance, from Derry to Croke Park and from Haditha to Basra canal.

The last 150 years have seen attempts to codify the "rules of war" into international treaties such as the Geneva convention. These are also reflected in the disciplinary codes of most modern armies. Where these provisions are violated, offenders must be held to account. Where their superior officers create a culture in which such violations are tolerated, this should be treated even more seriously. Where politicians give the impression that some of the rules do not really apply any more they should also be put in the dock.

Bosnian Serb NGO calls for independence if KosovoBosnian Serb NGO calls for independence if Kosovo goes it alone

Belgrade: Representatives of the Association of Serbs from Bosnia-Hercegovina announced today that potential independence of Kosovo would be "a green light" for the proclamation of a Serb state west of the Drina river.

Dane Cankovic, representative of The Choice is Ours NGO, has said that a plebiscite is necessary due to Bosnia-Hercegovina being non-functional, imposed and unnatural, and due to it being organized by Bosniak politicians to suit their needs, without consideration for the interests of the Serb people.

He said that this organization had started to collect signatures in order to launch the initiative for calling the plebiscite, adding that some 50,000 signatures had been collected in eight towns of the [Bosnian] Serb Republic.

Web of Terror: Bosnian terrorist connection

At 3.55 p.m. on October 19, 2005, a squad of anti-terrorist police rang the doorbell of a ground-floor apartment in the Bosnian capitol of Sarajevo. The door was opened by Mirsad Bektasevic, a 19-year old Bosnian native who had spent most of his life in Sweden, and who held a Swedish passport. According to an official English translation of a Bosnian indictment, the police showed Bekasevic a search warrant and their ID cards, but Bektasevic refused to move out of the doorway and allow them in. Then he started trying to push one of the officers back out the door, exclaiming: "Who are you to search my house, you trash."

Police subdued Bektasevic and barged into the apartment. Inside, they found Bektasevic's room-mate, a Dane of Turkish extraction named Abdulkadir Cesur, sitting on a sofa with his hand under his coat. Police moved to wrestle the coat off Cesur, at which point they discovered he had in his hand a pistol with a silencer. Cesur's finger was on the trigger and a bullet was in the chamber. Police knocked the pistol out of Cesur's hands and wrestled him to the floor. Their search of the apartment proved productive: among items discovered were a home-made "suicide belt," a quantity of factory-made explosives and a Hi-8 videotape with footage demonstrating how to make a home-made bomb. The tape included this bloodcurdling voiceover: "Here, the brothers are preparing for attacks.These brothers are ready to attack and inshallah, they will attack al-Qufar who our killing our brothers and Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan.and many other countries. These weapons are going to be used against Europe, against those whose forces are in Iraq and in Afghanistan." Subsequent analysis by Britain's Home Office determined that the voice on the tape was "more than rather likely" that of the suspect Mirsad Bektasevic.

Within a day or two of the Bosnia arrests, police in Britain had staged their own, related, series of arrests. Two London men were arrested on terrorism related charges, which included allegations that they were in possession of computer images showing how to make car bombs and "martyrdom operations vests." One suspect, Younis Tsouli, was also charged with possessing computer images of "a number of places" in Washington, D.C. (A third suspect faced terror-funding charges.) Counterterrorism officials in the United States and Britain told NEWSWEEK at the time that the evidence suggested some of those connected with the U.K. suspects may have been targeting the White House and Capitol complex for attacks using homemade bombs. As we reported at the time, the British suspects were believed to have been in e-mail contact, via Hotmail accounts, with a suspected jihadist recruiter who used the Internet nom de guerre Maximus. According to the officials, Maximus was initially based in Sweden and moved to Sarajevo, where investigators believe he helped run a network recruiting European youth to go to Iraq.

Private researchers, as well as counterterrorism officials in both the United States and the United Kingdom, subsequently alleged that the Sarajevo suspect from Sweden, Bektasevic, was the suspected jihadist recruiter who went by the name of Maximus (who Bosnian authorities say, in turn, was in contact with a militant imam in Denmark named Abdul Basit). According to the Bosnian indictment, documentation acquired during the raids in Sarajevo and London also indicated that Maximus and London suspect Tsouli (and one of Tsouli's co-defendants) were discovered to have been in possession of both Swedish and Bosnian telephone numbers which Maximus had used.

U.S. and U.K. officials now acknowledge that the arrests in London and Sarajevo were part of a wide-ranging terrorism investigation that has spread to North America, including both the United States and Canada. The officials say the terror network exposed by the investigation appears to be an archetypical model of the post 9/11, post Iraq-invasion of what Al Qaeda has morphed into: a widely dispersed movement of radicalized, alienated Muslim militants, most of them youthful, who have essentially become self-recruiting, self-indoctrinating, self-training microcosmic cells of what was once a centrally-directed movement. While there are indications, for example, indicating that Maximus and his co-defendant were involved in recruiting fighters for Iraq, and intended to use their home-made terror gear to mount an attack against a European target linked to the Iraq war, there is no evidence that their recruitment, planning, or indoctrination in any way was directly linked to Al Qaeda or what remains of Osama bin Laden's central command. There is some evidence, U.S. and U.K. officials indicate, of at least indirect contact between members of the network and Zarqawi's organization in Iraq, though the precise nature and closeness of these contacts is unclear.

U.S. and European investigators say that the organizational model for the Internet-based Al Qaeda network of Maximus and the London suspects also tracks how two of Europe's most notorious recent terror attacks--the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombings and last summer's London tube and bus bombings--were planned. In both of those cases, authorities said, local extremists, perh aps with some tentative, but mysterious contacts to Pakistan or elsewhere in the Islamic world, managed to recruit themselves, brainwash themselves, and arm themselves for a series of deadly bombings.

What's particularly scary about this model, investigators say, is that it means would-be jihadists can be out there pecking away at their computer keyboards, watching footage from Iraq on TV and their monitors, working themselves into a lather, and downloading instructions on how to make home-made bombs--all without having any contact with other known terrorists or even radical mosques, and all in the privacy of their own homes. It's an enemy much more difficult to detect, and much more potentially pernicious, than the model established by flamboyant and publicity conscious Al Qaeda leaders like bin Laden and the late Zarqawi.

Another development worrying investigators is the considerable technical expertise, both in computers and weapons, that the new cyberspace jihadis are perfecting. Earlier this year, both official investigators and private anti-terrorism investigators, including researchers for the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith and for the SITE Institute, an East-coast group led by terror investigator Rita Katz, made a further breakthrough: they identified the London suspect Tsouli, the man with the Washington DC pictures on his computer, as a notorious Islamic computer hacker who went by the login "Irhabi007" -- "irhabi" being an Arabic word for "terrorist." According to a paper produced by SITE , Irhabi 007 had become known as an "infamous hacker whose teaching and contributions to the jihadi Internet community reigned unparalleled." Among the Internet operative's feats, the institute said, were the successful dissemination of "violent material" including weapons manuals, recruitment videos and gruesome beheading videos made by Iraqi insurgents. According to SITE, when Zarqawi's Iraqi group posted its very first Internet communiqué, Irhabi007 was the first to respond online to the message after it was posted. (NEWSWEEK first reported Irhabi007's story back in March but was asked at the time by U.S. authorities not to mention the login "Irhabi007" due to continuing investigations.)

Last summer, the ADL claimed in a report, Irhabi also began to steal credit card and other identifying information and then used this info to buy space on Web servers. But SITE's Katz said last week that it was his use of purloined credit-card information that ultimately led the authorities to figure out Irhabi's real identity. Credit card data recovered from Tsouli's residence provided the key evidence that led investigators to believe that Tsouli was almost certainly the real person behind Irhabi007.

When the information first surfaced that the suspect now believed to be Irhabi had material on his London computer which included pictures of the White House and US Capitol, U.S. officials sharply discounted the possibility of an active threat to either of the Washington landmarks or any other U.S. target. Some evidence began to seep out earlier this year, however, that the threat to North America might have some substance. In March, according to U.S. court documents, U.S. authorities sought and later arrested two young men from the State of Georgia, one of Pakistani extraction and the other from Bangladesh, on terrorism support charges. According to an FBI affidavit, in March 2005, the two men, Syed Ahmed and Ehsanul Sadeeque, traveled to Canada to meet several men who were the target of an ongoing US government investigation.

During a series of interviews with government investigators, the affidavit says, Ahmed acknowledged that while in Canada, he and Sadeeque met with at least three men under investigation by the FBI for international terrorism. In these meetings, the document says, the suspect acknowledged that he, Sadeeque "and the others discussed strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike to include oil refineries and military bases. They also plotted how to disable the Global Positioning System in an effort to disrupt military and commercial communications and traffic." They also discussed going to Pakistan for paramilitary training. Subsequently, according to the SITE Institute's Katz and a U.S. counter-terrorism official, investigators learned that the video of Washington landmarks found on Irhabi's computer in London had in fact originally been recorded by Sadeeque on a visit to the U.S. capital. Sadeeque's family has protested his innocence; Ahmed's lawyer reportedly has declined to comment.

The extended network took on a truly menacing character 10 days ago with the arrest by Canadian authorities of 17 men, including five juveniles, on terrorism-related charges. Though the published charges were vague, a lawyer for one of the suspects said at a preliminary court hearing near Toronto last week that the prosecutors had provided him with a summary of evidence which alleged that his client, a restaurant worker named Steven Chand, talked about a plot to storm the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, take politicians hostage, and demand the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan and the release of terrorism suspects from Canadian prisons. If the demands were not met, according to the summary, the plotters would then start killing hostages. Chand's lawyer, Gary Batasar, said prosecutors believed his client had a particular interest in beheading Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.

Subsequent accounts of what was in the government summary indicated that the talk of beheading may have been bravado. But there were more serious allegations in the document, according to several Canadian media accounts, which were confirmed by U.S. counter-terrorism officials with access to reports on the investigation. First of all, the prosecution document alleged--and public charges partially confirmed --that the suspects were believed to have participated in an alleged terror training camp staged at a remote rural location north of Toronto last December. (The suspects allegedly chose the Christmas season because they believed there was less chance of them being spotted).

After the training camp--and possibly because some of the people who attended it were not happy with the results--the initial group of jihad-minded individuals split in two. One faction, according to news reports and official sources, allegedly plotted multiple truck bomb attacks on targets in the Toronto area, including the local office of Canadian Intelligence and the Toronto Stock Exchange. The other faction allegedly planned to stage a shooting attack either on a Toronto street crowd or on a crowd in a food court in a shopping center. The FBI put out a written statement saying that there was evidence that the U.S. suspects, Ahmed and Sadeeque, during their visit to Canada last year, had been in touch with some of the Toronto suspects.

Canadians will probably never know whether the plot would have really got off the ground. In any case, the drop-out and misfit backgrounds of most of the suspects raised questions as to how effective they would have been as jihadi fighters. But last year's July 7 London tube and bus bombers were mostly from similar backgrounds, and they got their motivation, training, and possibly even their bomb making instructions either from the internet or from contacts in Pakistan, according to official British accounts. Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi may have been one of the first big-time jihadis to make his reputation over the Internet; now the spores spread through cyber-space are spawning dangerous, yet often undetectable, jihadi cells around the globe.

Despite US aid cutoff, Serbs no closer to cornering Mladic

BELGRADE, Serbia -- The general still has his admirers.

In the musty headquarters of the Center for the Investigation of War Crimes Against Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, his portrait is prominently displayed on the wall behind Ljubisa Ristic's desk.

"My personal opinion is that he is a true soldier and a hero of the Serbian people," Ristic said. It is not clear how many other Serbs feel that way about Gen. Ratko Mladic, the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb army and chief executor of its "ethnic cleansing" campaign.

"I'd say 75 percent of the Serbs see him as a war hero," said Aleksandar Tijanic, who heads the state-run television network in Serbia. "But if you ask them if he should he go to The Hague to save the Serbs from more suffering, 75 percent would say yes."

Mladic, who has been charged with genocide by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, has been on the run since the collapse of Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's regime in October 2000.

Last month, the European Union broke off talks with Belgrade aimed at preparing Serbia for EU membership after President Vojislav Kostunica's government missed another deadline for delivering Mladic. The U.S. followed suit this month, canceling a $7 million aid package to the Serbian government.

UN lawyer: He's in reach

Carla Del Ponte, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, has claimed repeatedly that Mladic is in Serbia and within the reach of Belgrade authorities. She says the government lacks the political will to arrest him.

That appeared to be the case in February when there were feverish media reports that the general had been cornered at a hiding place near the Bosnian border.

"But instead of arresting him, they started negotiating with him," said Bratislav Grubacic, a political analyst who publishes a widely respected newsletter.

The negotiations came to nothing. "And now they really don't know where he is," Grubacic said. "For this government, I think they prefer not to know." Vladan Batic, the former Yugoslav justice minister who ordered the extradition of Milosevic to The Hague in June 2001, agrees with Del Ponte that the present government lacks the political will to deliver Mladic.

"Kostunica was hoping that Mladic would surrender himself," Batic said. "He knows Mladic is our ticket to Europe, but he's afraid that if he gives up Mladic, he'll lose a lot of votes and won't be seen as a so-called patriot."

Batic, who heads a small opposition party and who retains good police and security contacts, believes Mladic is holed up at the Topcider military base, a large complex outside Belgrade that has an elaborate network of tunnels.

State TV boss Tijanic, who is close to Kostunica, disputes the Topcider theory and also the suggestion that Kostunica is afraid of arresting Mladic. "Today, Kostunica's government is willing to send him to The Hague, but they don't know where he is hiding," Tijanic said.

Citing the recent arrests of about a dozen people thought to be part of Mladic's support system, Tijanic claimed that Mladic has cut all of his contacts with the military and security forces and is hiding on his own. The international community's focus on Mladic has diverted attention from Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, also charged with genocide and still on the run. There are three explanations.

The first is The Hague's experience in prosecuting genocide cases, which argues that it is much easier to obtain a conviction against military officers, who answer to a chain of command, than it is against their political bosses. A second explanation is that Karadzic, who is believed to be in Bosnia, has done a better job hiding himself.

The last, based on a persistent rumor echoed by nearly every diplomat and expert in the Balkans, is that at the time of Dayton peace agreement, Karadzic cut a deal that he would completely withdraw from politics if authorities would not try too hard to find him. Little has been heard from him since.

A year ago, public opinion in Serbia was shaken by a video recording that came to light during the Milosevic trial. It shows members of an Interior Ministry death squad known as the Scorpions executing six handcuffed Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica, where more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in 1995, allegedly on orders from Mladic.

Public opinion shaken

The video, shot by one of the participants, was shown on Serbian TV, and the government, for the first time, acknowledged that Serbs were guilty of atrocities. The killers, identifiable on the video, are being tried in Serbian courts.

Ristic, from the center for war crimes against Serbs, said the trials were appropriate but insisted that the Scorpion tape has not shaken his faith in Mladic's innocence.

"I was not there [Srebrenica], so I can't tell you whether he ordered anything or not. But after our clear-cut victory, it was not in Serbia's interest to do something like that," he said.

Milan Protic, a historian who served as Yugoslavia's first ambassador to the U.S. in the post-Milosevic era, said that only "stupid minds" in Serbia continue to view Mladic as a hero, but that it also is wrong for the EU and the U.S. to hold all of Serbia hostage to his arrest.

"He is an obsolete symbol, this dirty little Serbian commander from Bosnia," he said, "but the West is using him to complicate all kinds of things for Serbia."