SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP)--The U.N. envoy mediating the Kosovo talks said Monday he was still hopeful a solution for the status of the breakaway province could be found by the year's end despite the lack of progress so far.
Four rounds of talks in Vienna between the ethnic Albanian and Serb sides on the future of the breakaway province have failed to yield results. A fifth is expected to start May 22 and to tackle the issue of protection of Serb religious sites in the province.
"It is not surprising...that immediately we can't see that everyone agrees," Martti Ahtisaari told reporters in Sofia after meeting Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin.
But the target of having a solution by the end of the year "is the only time frame we have for the moment and we are trying to follow it," he said.
Ahtisaari conceded there had been no change in the positions of the two sides since the beginning of the talks in Vienna in November, but stressed the meetings were just "practical discussions."
"What is important is that we will see is it possible to create conditions in Kosovo where the minority - not only the Serb minority, but the other minorities as well - can live comfortably before we move to status discussions," he said.
Ahtisaari once again urged the Kosovo Serb minority to end its boycott of the province's institutions. "It's important...that everyone participates," he said.
Kalfin, the Bulgarian foreign minister, said the fact that the Kosovo Albanians and the Serbs had engaged in talks was "a huge progress."
He repeated Bulgaria's position that any outcome of the status talks would be positive as long as it guarantees border stability in the region and suits both Belgrade and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians.
Kosovo has been administered by the U.N. since a 1999 North Atlantic Treaty Organization air war halted a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. The ethnic Albanian majority now wants independence, while the Serbs living in Kosovo demand that it remain part of Serbia.
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interesting how according to the title of this article, the un envoy is "optimistic," yet the article delineates how little progress is made, and no one agrees = little reason for optimism. either the un envoy knows something that is not being said, or is spewing bureaucratic chunder. you be the judge....
Kosovo is Serbian land! Fuck the Shiptaris, slaughter them!!!!! Time for the bombs to drop on the Albo swine
The bus was indeed pelted. But Ivan (or Tanjug) leaves out the crucial fact that it was done by primary school children.
Keep dreaming losers. There has been no breakthroughs or compromises. It will be an imposed solution which will make it OK for Ceku to launch genocide against Serbs.
They might as well just start digging graves for al the Kosovo Serbs that are going to die soon.
I just thought that facts - all of them - are important. If you want to consider chidlren throwing stones a terrorist act, whatever I say here won't change you're mind.
I would help on grave digging but you guys are really professional on that (think Batajnica).
If these children grow up with the same views and join the army they will be shooting at Serbs. That's if their parents don't kill all the Kosovo Serbs later this year.
Kosovo consternation
By James "Ace" Lyons Jr.
May 9, 2006
Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women and children forced into prostitution).
Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral part of the war on terror.
Fighting organized criminal activities is difficult even in countries with a functioning legal system, honest police and the rule of law. Think how much harder that would be when dealing with an independent country where the authorities are an integral part of the criminal enterprise.
Amazingly, that's what the international community seems to want to help establish in the Serbian province of Kosovo. When Kosovo was placed under United Nations administration and NATO military control at the end of the 1999 war, some hoped the province soon would meet at least minimum qualifications for some kind of independence, as demanded by Muslim Albanians who greatly outnumber the remaining Christian Serbs.
That hasn't happened. Instead the drug, sex slave, weapons, money-laundering, and other illicit trades that helped fuel the conflicts of the 1990s have continued to grow. Just this month Marek Antoni Nowicki, Poland's leading human-rights lawyer and the U.N.'s international ombudsman for Kosovo until last year, denounced the "real criminal state in power" in Kosovo, working right under the nose of the U.N. and NATO. "Crime groups have been able to operate with impunity," said Mr. Nowicki. "These networks can rely on the weakness of the public institutions to sanction their operations." Mr. Nowicki's charges came on the heels of a March 2006 report by the U.N.'s internal watchdog agency, the Office of Internal Oversight, which found the head of U.N. Mission -- who holds virtually dictatorial powers -- derelict for ignoring fraud and other abuses at the airport in Kosovo's capital, Pristina.
None of this should come as any surprise. Even in 1999, when the Clinton administration decided to take military action in support of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), there were numerous and credible intelligence and news reports of the KLA's criminal and terrorist inclinations. Predictably, KLA veterans found even more opportunity to ply their illicit trades when, ostensibly demobilized, they were recruited by the UN into Kosovo's police, civil administration, and quasi-military "Kosovo Protection Corps." The foxes were asked to guard the chicken coop -- another U.N. fiasco.
As described in reports issued by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, criminal activity in Kosovo continues to be closely tied to operations of the Albanian mafia across Europe, from home bases in Kosovo and adjacent areas of Albania and Macedonia. For example (from 2003): "According to the International Organization for Migration and EUROPOL, the principal supplier countries [i.e., for trafficked women] today are Moldova (up to 80 percent: many Moldovan villages do not have any more women), Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine. The networks used various routes, including the route that passes through Kosovo, Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (see the village of Veledze, the regional centre of prostitution) and Montenegro, then through Italy. The Albanian mafia has set up a real cartel on prostitution. It handles more than 65 percent of the trafficking in women in the Balkans." From 2004: "In Kosovo, as many as 80 percent of internally trafficked victims are children."
The response of international bureaucrats to this disgrace is predictable: ignore it and hope nobody notices. Or even better, pretend all is going well, declare the mission a success -- and hand power over to the criminals as the new sovereign "government."
If that happens, even the minimal interference in the Kosovo-based gangs' operations will be removed. A criminal state not seen since the defunct Taliban regime in Afghanistan will be set up with easy proximity to the rest of Europe.
Such an outcome would make a mockery of some of the United States' most important global security priorities. While the international community desires some sort of "closure" to the ongoing mess in Kosovo (and this is understandable), it is hard to think of a supposed solution worse than independence. Seven years after the 1999 war, this is one Clinton legacy that demands urgent reconsideration.
James "Ace" Lyons Jr. is a retired admiral in the U.S. Navy. He is a former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (the largest single military command in the world), senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations and as deputy chief of Naval operations and was principal adviser on all Joint Chiefs of Staff matters.
we backed the wrong side in kosovo. how many christian churches have the muslim albanians destroyed there to date?
Of course the Envoy is optimistic, we all are, as the outcome is clearer than ever. What should one conclude when reading the lines "the will of the majority of people in Kosovo should be respected". I look forward to living and celebrating a REAL New Year 2007 in a de-jure and formally recognized independent Kosovo. To you the guys who only swear at each other while commenting: Get a life. To you that think that Kosovo is a holly land of anyone in specific: Come back to Earth, you are not a heavenly nation citizen. About those that claim Albanians stoned and shot at Serbs recently: why am I not surprised that something like this happens when important people visit Kosovo (this time NATO head with 26 other diplomats)?!? And we all know that Serbian secret services are extremely active around, and have admitted that. best wishes,
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