Bush Arms Albanians to Do NATO’s Dirty Work in Kosovo
March 27th, 2008 by WILLIAM KERN
Has President Bush decided to send weapons to the newly-independent nation of Kosovo to keep NATO’s hands clean, as Albanians in the former Serbian province ‘cleanse’ Kosovo of Serbs? Tamara Zamyatina of Russia’s Novosti writes, ‘Arming the Kosovars is a kind of legalization of future action by the Albanian side to oust the Serb minority … In other words, to give the Kosovars a chance to complete what NATO started: To clear the non-Albanian population out of the province, but to have the job done by Albanians, so as not to cast a shadow on the NATO peacekeepers of KFOR - not to mention the United States.’
By Global Affairs Commentator Tamara Zamyatina
Translated By Igor Medvedev
March 25, 2008
Russia - Novosti - Original Article (Russian)
MOSCOW: Things the experts warned about even before Kosovo’s illegal declaration of independence are coming true - the territory seized from Serbia is gradually accruing all the attributes of a giant military base of NATO and the United States.
As far as the “basic accessories” required for the task, George W. Bush has ordered the flow of arms shipments to Kosovo to begin - something that Moscow is sure to focus on at an emergency session of the NATO-Russia Council - to be held in Brussels on March 28.
Incidentally, Bush issued this order two days after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Moscow to urge the Kremlin to strengthen cooperation, expand consultation and generally display more openness.
The haste with which the Pentagon is seeking to take the fledgling Kosovo under its wing says only one thing - that there is uncertainty in the West that peace will come to the Balkans after Kosovo’s cessation. But it was precisely this rhetoric - that there is an urgent need to end the Yugoslav crisis - that the West used to justify its support for the Kosovo separatists. As far as peace is concerned, there can be none when one side is being armed against the other. This is like taking a raging fire and pouring more fuel on top …
The Serbs have already gotten the message. In the town of Kosovska Mitrovica (in northern Kosovo), they began a doomed rush to defend their last refuge - the courthouse - where Serbian justice once ruled but which now is occupied by international lawyers planning to turn it over to their Albanian colleagues [Kosovo is largely Albanian]. Blood was spilled there during clashes with [NATO] peacekeepers - and Belgrade [capital of Serbia] continues to seethe with rallies in support of Kosovo’s Serbian minority.
The city [Kosovska Mitrovica], divided by the Ibar River into Albanian and Serbian halves, will long be a bone of contention between the two sided. Belgrade has already officially appealled to the U.N. demanding that Kosovo’s northern region adjacent to Kosovska Mitrovica, which contains a Serbian population of 100,000, be returned to Serbia. These people require basic physical protection, but this is unlikely to move advocates of Kosovo’s independence at the United Nations.
In the first half of the 1990s, Western countries closed their eyes to the expulsion of 300,000 Serbs from Croatia, so they’re unlikely to bother over a mere hundred thousand today. “If 300,000 birds suddenly leave a place, the world would be alarmed, but the tragedy of the Serbs, mankind hardly notices” - so they say in Belgrade.
America’s intention to begin arms shipments to Kosovo is not only due to a desire to hold on to Kosovska Mitrovica - this strategically important but recalcitrant Serbian city. There is a more important reason - to give the Kosovars carte-blanche to suppress the protest in Serb enclaves throughout the province [actually - it’s now a nation]. So says Yelena Guskova, director of the Balkans Crisis Center at the Russian Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.
Arming the Kosovars - is a kind of legalization of future action by the Albanian side to oust the Serb minority from the province. In other words, to give the Kosovars a chance to complete what NATO started: To clear the non-Albanian population out of the province, but to have the job done by Albanians, so as not to cast a shadow on the NATO peacekeepers of KFOR - not to mention the United States.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the United States.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 3:59 am and is filed under Eastern Europe, Military Affairs, Cartoons, Bush Administration, Foreign Policy, State Department, Pentagon, Democracy, Robert Gates, Political Cartoons, Military, Foreign Affairs, George W. Bush, Cartoon Commentary, Condoleezza Rice, Russia, Europe. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
