PPAVDA.Ru: Balkans diary

The Hague Court brings new charges against Milosevic, Zoran Djindjic urges Milo Djukanovic not to play the nationalist card in Montenegro and the future of Kosovo is drawn up by…a German. Additional genocide charges against ex-President Slobodan Milosevic’s regime are to be brought by the Hague Tribunal, according to chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte. She claims that the court has information which will implicate him in genocide crimes in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, citing former Milosevic aides, statements by witnesses and documents as evidence. Further charges against Slobodan Milosevic in person are also being prepared, namely links with the murders of Ivan Stambolic (former President of Serbia) and journalist Slavko Curuvija and also four members of Vuk Draskovic’s entourage on the Ibarska Highway in 1999. Given that this Tribunal is controlled by strings pulled in Washington, the capital of a nation which signs agreements today and breaks them tomorrow, it will be easy to assume that any documents or evidence produced by the Hague will always have a cloud of “farce” hanging over them. In other words, political manoeuvres. As the newly elected President of Montenegro, the original political rainbow, Milo Djukanovic, met Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, whom Djukanovic had classified earlier this week as the “future”, the result was predictable. The American-backed Djukanovic, it will be remembered, has changed his political colour so many times in recent years that he has lost credibility, as was shown in last Sunday’s election, when he came far from receiving a clear independence vote. Djindjic urged Djukanovic to opt for a policy of reconciliation with the integrationist vote. 600,000 Montenegrins live and work in Serbia and have nothing to gain from independence. Added to the 1,000,000 voters in Montenegro, 50% of whom voted for integration with Serbia, the result of Djukanovic’s independence referendum is certain to be in favour of a continuation of Yugoslavia and against a separation of Montenegro, which would never be more than a dependent, puppet state (of the USA), relying more on contraband than anything else to keep its fledgling economy going. “I asked him to try to stabilise the situation, to try to reconcile the opposing groups in Montenegro. Only an agreement between the two biggest political blocks…would make that possible. The focus must be switched to not what polarises Montenegrins, but what brings them together”, said Zoran Djindjic. The third story from the Balkans is that a German, Hans Haekerrup, decides on the future of Kosovo, an integral and fundamental part of the state of Serbia, where the battle of Kosovo Polye founded the Serb Nation in Medieval times. Hans Haekerrup, the Head of the United Nations administration force, UNMIK, has declared that UN resolution 1244 will give Kosovo relative autonomy from Serbia, while continuing within Yugoslavia. Of the 120-seat Parliament, only 20 will be reserved for non-Albanian minorities. While the United Nations Organisation interferes in the internal affairs of the Sovereign State of Yugoslavia, making directives which NATO will aggressively enforce, it would be pointed out that other nations, such as Israel, frequently choose to flout UN resolutions, in flagrant disrespect for international law. If the UN does nothing in retaliation, what right does this organisation have to carve areas of influence into the Balkans for the lackeys of the USA, the Albanians? Or is there something more sinister behind this, the US Congress, for example?

TIMOTHY BANCROFT-HINCHEY, PRAVDA.RU