Kosovo talks fight for space with beauticians' seminar
Ivonne Marschall, dpa
November 27, 2007
Baden, Austria_(dpa) _ A few months down the track, Europe may witness the birth of another state, Kosovo. Diplomats hope the scales will tilt towards peace and prosperity in the Balkans and not towards unrest or another frozen conflict.
Representatives of Serbia and Kosovo gathered in a renaissance-era castle-turned hotel in Baden, a sleepy spa town in Austria, for a second day Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to thrash out a compromise over the breakaway Serbian province.
But somehow the gravity of the event was overshadowed by the fact that the Balkan leaders had to fight over buffet and meeting room space with software engineers and a beauticians' seminar taking place at the same time.
The UN mediators' - Russia, the United States and the European Union - wish for secret talks was thwarted, with scores of cameras crowding the space underneath the plastic deer heads and antlers decorating the walls of Schloss Weikersdorf.
"Who invited you?" EU-troika representative Wolfgang Ischinger quipped at the start of the talks, but all appeals could not prevent both delegations basking in the limelight of the international media for a flurry of statements.
Skender Hyseni, Kosovo's spokesman with the perfect haircut, assures the media that "nothing new" has happened and Serbia's dynamic duo, ministers Vuk Jeremic and Slobodan Samardzic, look well poised to become icons of the YouTube world.
But for Serbia in particular, the run-up to the talks did not bode well. The delegation could not get rooms in the conference hotel as all available rooms were taken by Austrian beauticians learning the latest about hot stone massage techniques.
On Monday, Serbia's ambassador had to face the wrath of hotel management. The hungry diplomat had grabbed some fruit off a buffet when he was accosted by angry hotel staff: "Are you with the seminar?"
Chewing on his grape, the ambassador could only mumble a confused "no" and was reprimanded for stealing from someone else's buffet.
As negotiations go on in the rustic halls of Baden, confused software executives wonder how they've suddenly become involved in world politics.
Delegates hurl well-prepared statements at each other as they meander through the journalists camping on the rugs.
The unfortunate delegates can't even have a drink after hours -Serbia's team have to make their way back through the snow to their own domiciles. Another victory for the beauticians.
However, despite appearances, the talks are serious. Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has vowed that his country would not give up "one inch" of its territory in the breakaway province.
His counterpart, Kosovo's likely next prime minister Hashim Thaci, making his way to the cameras after comfortably lounging in a faux-empire armchair in a press-filled corner, strikes back, saying that even 100 years of negotiations would lead to no compromise.
Independence is the only option, says the man who exchanged his rebel's combat uniform for a well-cut grey suit.
Serbs, Albanians totally opposed on Kosovo A boy waves a flag during a demonstration for the independence of Kosovo in front of the European institutions headquarters in Brussels, November 24, 2007. Russia on Monday stepped in to head off a threatened declaration of independence by Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province, saying it would insist on the extension of negotiations beyond a December deadline. REUTERS/Sebastien Pirlet | |
| |
11/22/2007 21:04:10
The west must resist Putin's claim on the old Soviet space (Financial Times)
PHILIP STEPHENS
There is a discernible pattern to Vladimir Putin's calculated confrontations with the west. It is described by three concentric circles radiating outwards from Moscow.
The first of these rings delineates a domestic arena from which the US and Europe have been locked out. The outermost circle covers more distant ground where the Kremlin admits the possibility of collaboration. The second circle marks out dangerous territory in the former Soviet space. Here, the ambitions of Mr Putin's Russia collide head-on with the interests and values of the west.
If there were residual doubts about Mr Putin's resolve to exclude outsiders from Russian politics they have been dispelled by arrangements for next month's parliamentary elections. We have seen the slide to authoritarianism - the Kremlin calls it "sovereign democracy" - accelerate.
New electoral rules will deny most opposition parties representation in the Duma. To challenge Mr Putin's United Russia, a party needs 50,000 members and 200,000 signatures. If it surmounts those hurdles it needs to win 7 per cent of the vote to secure any seats. That with the media under Mr Putin's control. As Neil Buckley, the FT's Moscow bureau chief has calculated, a party could poll 3.5m votes and win no seats.
The Russian president has not been content with gerrymandering. This week he accused his critics of colluding with the west. The opposition parties, he charged, wanted to weaken and divide the state in order to grab its energy riches. To oppose United Russia, in other words, was akin to an act of treason.
If Mr Putin might have once been embarrassed by western protests at the return to arbitrary rule, he seems now to exult in it. The international observers of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe have been forced to abandon plans to monitor the December 2 poll. Criticism now invites a lengthy recital of the manifest flaws of democracy in the west in general and the US in particular. Remember those "hanging chads" in Florida? The Kremlin does.
There is a recurring theme here, one that has become the mantra of Russian officials and diplomats. The west took advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union to weaken and humiliate Russia. It aided and abetted the oligarchs of the 1990s in looting the country's resources. The west's agenda was not to promote democracy, but to cripple Russia as a great power. Mr Putin has restored the nation's self-respect and power - with some unspoken help, of course, from soaring oil and gas prices.
This increasingly strident, sometimes ugly, nationalism does not preclude all co-operation with the west. If Russia is accorded due respect and status - Mr Putin craves, above all, recognition as the leader of a superpower - it will strike bargains with the US when interests coincide. Thus there has been close, if sometimes intermittent, collaboration in the fight against violent Islamism. Moscow has been generally helpful in US efforts to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians. It has been less obstructive than it might over Iraq.
The Kremlin's attitude to Iran's nuclear ambitions has often been more helpful in private than it has sounded in public. Mr Putin's reluctance to endorse further sanctions has reflected as much a more sanguine assessment of the progress of Iran's nuclear programme as any difference of principle. On a recent, much publicised, visit to Tehran, the Russian president agreed to carry an offer from George W. Bush to the Iranian leadership. The US president promised to start talks covering all aspects of the relationship if Iran suspended nuclear enrichment. Nothing came of it, but the episode was a measure of co-operation between Moscow and Washington.
Iran lies in the third of Mr Putin's rings. Move into the second, the territorial and political space once occupied by the Soviet Union, and the atmosphere sours. Here Russia is reasserting itself - and it is here that the west must show its own resolve.
Mr Putin's strategy is clear enough: to push the west out of Russia's near-abroad. The tactics are equally transparent: intimidation of the governments of the Baltic states; pipeline politics to undermine the Poles; warnings that the west must stay out of Ukraine; refusal to endorse independence for Kosovo; suspension of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty; efforts to destabilise the government in Georgia.
Russia cannot reclaim the Soviet empire. It can, in Mr Putin's mind, re-establish informal hegemony. Thus a friendlier government in Tblisi would greatly strengthen Moscow's recovering grip on the Caucasus and central Asia. It would also protect its monopoly of gas supply to Europe. A proposed gas pipeline under the Baltic should likewise help tame Poland and the Baltic states.
The decision to suspend participation in the CFE, meanwhile, is calculated to underline the cost to Europe of US plans to site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Support for Serbian agitation in Bosnia and Kosovo speaks at once to Russia's traditional role as guardian of the Serbs and to its capacity to undermine European security.
The west is not entirely innocent in some of these disputes. The US, for example, could have been more diplomatic when it first unveiled its missile defence plans. There have been other moments when western leaders would have done better by indulging rather than inflaming Russian sensitivities. But Mr Putin sees conflict as a way to command respect. To be at odds with the US, this rather paranoid logic says, is to be its equal. All this need not, as I have heard it said by some in Washington, amount to the onset of a new cold war. The present Moscow regime does not want, as did its communist predecessors, to overturn liberal democracy everywhere. We do know that Mr Putin intends to be around well beyond the expiry of his second presidential term.
A coherent western response is long overdue. Little if anything can be done to persuade Mr Putin to restore democracy. That does not mean the west should remain silent. It does suggest that sustained engagement with Russian business and civil society may be more productive than efforts to shame the Kremlin.
In the third ring, there is nothing to be gained from excluding Mr Putin. Where Russia and the west have shared interests, collaboration makes sense. But it should not define the relationship within the second circle. Here the US - and, more especially, Europe, must show they can be as tough and, when need be, as rough as Mr Putin. Respect is one thing; appeasement quite another.Madam, - The conclusion of your Editorial of November 20th was exemplary: "the time for indecision is past since there is no realistic alternative to Kosovan independence". Every single political leader of the 90 per cent majority Albanian population wants independence immediately.
The real danger now is delay by the international community in recognising independence. Such stalling is quite likely to be the next EU compromise in response to Serbian government tactics to keep postponing Kosovo's final status.
It is very disturbing to hear calls by international officials to the Kosovars "not to rush into a declaration of independence". They could hardly be accused of "rushing". They have been waiting for eight years under a UN protectorate. Before that, they endured 10 years of passive resistance under a Serbian regime of brutal repression which culminated in the killing of approximately 10,000 people, mainly civilians.
Kosovo cannot develop as things stand. It has been unable to gain access to international financial institutions, fully integrate into the regional economy or attract the outside political support it needs to address its widespread unemployment and poverty. Council of Europe observers called the turnout for the recent election in Kosovo "alarmingly low", adding that it revealed "a profound dissatisfaction among the population".
Prompt recognition of declared independence, in accordance with the UN-sponsored Ahtisaari guarantees for the Serbian minority, is the only way that may yet avoid further widespread violence in the region. - Yours, etc,
from the November 21, 2007 edition
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - Ethnic Albanians have a name for Kosovo under international supervision: UNMIKISTAN. A play on the acronym for the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), the name has recently taken on a tone of intolerable impatience.
After eight years of waiting for the international community to grant independence, Kosovo's Albanians are on the verge of declaring it themselves. The US must act swiftly to build international support for their declaration, or the move could destabilize the entire region.
The UN is far from Kosovo's first occupier. Throughout history, the province has been ruled by outside powers. First it was the Romans, then the Byzantines, and later the Serbs. In 1389, when the declining Serbian empire made its symbolic last stand against the rising Ottoman Turks, its army was defeated in Kosovo.
Six centuries later, in 1989, a rising Serb nationalist named Slobodan Milosevic journeyed to Kosovo to pay homage to his fallen ancestors. His visit marked the beginning of another occupation – one that transformed Kosovo into a virtual apartheid state. Although Albanians make up more than 90 percent of Kosovo's population, Mr. Milosevic purged them from positions of power and barred them from schools, hospitals, and other public institutions. But it was not until Milosevic began a campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1999 that the international community intervened militarily to protect the Albanians, ushering in the UN administration that continues to this day.
Unlike its predecessors, the UN has been a reluctant occupier, and has made a considerable effort to resolve Kosovo's status – a difficult task.
Kosovo's Serbs say the province is the cradle of their civilization and ought to remain part of Serbia, while Albanians will accept nothing less than full independence. Even skilled mediator Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland appointed as a UN special envoy in 2005, could not get the sides to reach a compromise.
Earlier this year, after months of failed negotiations, Mr. Ahtisaari proposed a plan of "supervised independence," which would grant Kosovo sovereignty with significant international protection for ethnic minorities. Albanians accepted the plan. Serbs did not.
Serbia claims that, unlike the other states of the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo is a province and thus not entitled to sovereignty. Russia, a longtime Serb ally, has vowed to veto any Security Council resolution that would grant Kosovo independence, arguing that it would set a dangerous precedent for separatist movements elsewhere.
But unlike Chechnya, Abkhazia, and other provinces demanding autonomy, Kosovo has a unique situation: In the wake of the 1999 NATO intervention, the UN was given the exceptional right to determine the province's status. Alarmists argue that this loophole provides a blueprint for other separatist movements to follow.
However, the conditions that led to the UN's unique authority to settle Kosovo's status are hardly easy to reproduce. Some 1 million Kosovars were driven from their homes by Serbian ethnic cleansing, and more than 11,000 massacred. It is perverse to imagine that any movement would be willing to provoke such horrific suffering to achieve independence.
Under UN supervision, Kosovo's Albanians have demonstrated their commitment to respecting the rights of Serbs living among them. There have been some exceptions, notably in the attacks of 2004, but these outbursts have been the work of isolated groups, and would be even less common if Albanians believed their independence depended on protecting minorities (as would be the case with the Ahtisaari plan).
But after eight years, Albanians' patience is wearing thin. They say that if the international community does not recognize Kosovo's independence by Dec. 10, they will declare it themselves.
The stakes could not be higher. In the Balkans, where minorities in one country are the majority in another, violence has a natural chain effect. A spark in one province could set off a blaze consuming the entire region.
So far, the US has been outspoken in its support for Kosovo's independence. The Bush administration has even said that if Russia blocks a Security Council resolution, the US will unilaterally recognize Kosovo's sovereignty.
Yet if the war in Iraq has taught Americans one lesson, it is that unilateral action is a poor substitute for multilateral coalitions. So long as Serbia and Russia continue to reject the sensible plan of "supervised independence," the US must ratchet up its diplomatic effort to build full European backing for Kosovo's unilateral declaration.
Whether Kosovo's Albanians will declare an end to occupation is no longer in question. But whether that declaration will mark the beginning of another conflict remains to be seen.
With so much at stake, the US must take swift action to ensure that the declaration receives the international recognition it so desperately needs.
There are only two weeks left from the opening of the fifth edition of International Students Film and Theatre Festival SKENA UP, which will be held from 20th to 27th November in Prishtina.
...more posted on: 08/11/07
Faruk Begolli on of the most famous film and theatre director from Kosovo has died after a long battle with cancer.He was born in the town of Peja in 1944. He graduated at the Academy of Drama in Belgrade and was a key movie actor in the former six-republic Yugoslavia. In the late 80's, Begolli returned from Belgrade to Kosovo where he worked as a professor with the Pristina University, Faculty of Acting and run the Dodona theatretheatre. ...more
Kosovo on Yahoo! News Photos
People hold a national flag during a rally supporting the independence of Kosovo, at Mother Theresa square, Tirana, November 15, 2007. The rally is organised two days before Kosovo parliamentary and local elections which are scheduled for November 17. REUTERS/Arben Celi (ALBANIA)
Blogged with Flock
Kosovar rapper runs for ParliamentKosovar rapper runs for Parliament - International Herald Tribune
By Dan Bilefsky
Published: November 15, 2007
PRISTINA, Kosovo: It is perhaps a sign of the changes under way in this breakaway province of Serbia that Memli Krasniqi, Kosovo's most famous rap star, is trading in his baggy jeans for a pinstripe suit, and his anti-establishment lyrics for a political career.Krasniqi, 27, who is running in Kosovo parliamentary elections, which are being held Saturday, used to rap about the horrors of ethnic cleansing, communal violence and his irritation with the international community. But today, the visceral frustration of his songs is being directed at his own government, which he accuses of failing Kosovo in the eight years since the territory came under United Nations protection and the last NATO bomb fell over Pristina."We've waited so long for freedom, but somehow I don't feel free," Krasniqi raps in a recent song. "Something's not right; I see the same since eight years. The offices are full of crooks that sell lies to us. And in the back of the people fill their pockets full."The soft-spoken Krasniqi, who managed to take a break from the recording studio to study at the London School of Economics, says he is just as concerned about Kosovo's 60 percent unemployment rate and its rampant corruption as he is about Kosovo's aspiration for independence - the one issue upon which all the ethnic Albanian parties here agree."My biggest frustration is with the incompetence of our government," he said on a recent day at a hip café in Pristina, as tables of young fans pointed at him and stared. "It's a joke. More than 40 percent of Kosovars are living in poverty. There are constant power cuts. The ministry of trade is run by a historian. And the government recently spent €1.7 million to refurbish a boulevard in Pristina with marble sidewalks."Today in EuropeTempers flare as Germany hobbled by huge rail strikeFrench council approves DNA testing for immigrantsSarkozy wants everyone to have nuclear power - French nuclear powerYet even as he recited his litany, Krasniqi acknowledged that the situation was "10 times" better than when he was a teenager. It was then that he discovered the subversive lyrics of rappers - N.W.A., Ice Cube and Ice-T, and saw parallels between the angry disenfranchisement of young African Americans living in inner-city America and the desperate isolation of young Albanians living under Slobodan Milosevic."Back then, we were occupied, we had no radio station, no TV station, and the opportunity to express yourself was limited," he said. "Rap provided an answer."He is running for Parliament with the Democratic Party of Kosovo, a group led by a former Kosovo Liberation Army warrior-turned-politician, in the third set of elections since Kosovo came under international control. It is a critical moment for Kosovo, which is desperate to stand on its own, yet still legally a part of Serbia and under the control of the United Nations.The province's 1.8 million-member ethnic Albanian population is clamoring for independence, and Pristina has vowed to declare it after a Dec. 10 deadline - a threat that is vehemently opposed by Belgrade. Negotiations being brokered by Washington, Moscow and the European Union seem to be reaching a dead end.Meantime, under pressure from Belgrade, Kosovo's minority Serbian population, who make up about 10 percent of the population, are largely boycotting the vote, on the grounds that it would legitimize Pristina's drive for independence.Some ethnic Albanians also are protesting. A movement called Self-Determination, run by Albin Kurti, an activist currently under house arrest, is urging Kosovars to boycott the vote since it is not a referendum on independence.Even with all of this upheaval, analysts here say there is little to distinguish the political parties in this election, save the cult of personality of their leaders, who include one now in detention and another who died last year. Billboards for the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo are plastered all over Pristina glorifying its president, Ramush Haradinaj, a former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla leader who stepped down as prime minister last year and is now in the Hague, accused of war crimes.Meantime, the largest political party in Kosovo, the Democratic League of Kosovo, has blanketed Pristina with posters of Ibrahim Rugova, its charismatic former leader, known here as the "Gandhi of Kosovo," who championed nonviolent resistance before his death in 2006.Krasniqi says people are drawn to his party because of its "street cred" as a group of former guerrilla fighters "who were ready to give their lives for Kosovo." Krasniqi's star status has helped galvanize young people, including nearly 100,000 fans who showed up at 15 concerts the party sponsored across the country.1 | 2 Next Page
Blogged with Flock
Kosovo Wants Independence
Wall Street Journal -
By AGIM CEKU The Kosovo status process is reaching its natural conclusion. The present negotiations come to their appointed end on Dec. 10.
 Albany Times Union |
 Xinhua |
Blogged with Flock
An Albanian woman walks near the photographs of Kosovo Albanians who went missing during the last war between Serb security forces and Albanian guerrillas in 1998-1999, which are displayed on the railings outside Kosovo's parliament building in Pristina, Kosovo, November 9, 2007. More than 2,000 people, most of them ethnic Albanians, who vanished during the war still remain missing. REUTERS/Hazir Reka
Fair use
Blogged with Flock
Land mine explodes in Kosovo; 4 children injured
The Associated Press
Friday, November 9, 2007
PRISTINA, Serbia: A land mine leftover from Kosovo's war exploded in the southern part of the province, injuring four children, police said Friday.
The ethnic Albanian children were guarding their family's sheep herd Thursday when the blast occurred between two villages near the town of Urosevac, 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of the capital, Pristina.
Police suspect the mine was left behind from Kosovo's 1998-1999 war between Serb forces and ethnic Albanian separatists, adding two of the children were taken to the hospital with serious injuries. Their ages were not immediately available.
More than eight years after the end of the war in Kosovo, parts of the countryside are still littered with unexploded ordnance and mines despite efforts to remove them.
Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers since June 1999, following the alliance's air war that halted the crackdown of Serb troops on independence-minded ethnic Albanians.
Kosovo on Yahoo! News Photos
A Kosovo Albanian worker whistles as he works on a giant banner advertising the main Kosovo Albanian political party (LDK) in Kosovo's capital Pristina Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007. Local and parliamentary elections are scheduled for November 17, even though Kosovos legal status remains undefined, and negotiations between the governments of Serbia and Kosovo to solve this issue are continuing. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)
Blogged with Flock
1/06/2007 09:22:36
Serbia should get rid of Albanians, Dodik says (Dpa)
Sarajevo/Banja Luka_(dpa) _ Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik said Monday in an interview to Bosnian Serb TV in Banja Luka that it would be better for Serbia to get rid of Albanians, media reported Tuesday.
"I am saying this for the first time, but I believe it would not be good for Serbia if Albanians stay there, to be incorporated into the political life of that country, which would then generate a long-term destabilization," Dodik said.
He however said it would be impossible for Serbia to lose part of its territories without receiving anything in compensation.
"The international community is frustrated with the fact that Serbia did not give up Kosovo," Dodik said.
He rejected any connection between the negotiations on the status of Kosovo and the latest political crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Serbian and Albanian representatives did not reach an agreement over the future status of Kosovo during the latest round on negotiations held Monday in Vienna.
The Serbian delegation suggested a solution similar to the solution for Hong Kong, but the Albanian delegation did not agree with the proposal that retained the possibility of unilaterally declaring the independence of the province on December 10, despite international warnings to refrain from such moves.
The issue of Kosovo has often been put in the context of political disputes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with speculations that the Bosnian Serbs may then demand a split with the rest of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Serbia glimpses 'European dawn' (Ft)
Tony Barber in Brussels and Neil MacDonald in Belgrade
The European Union will reward Serbia for improved co-operation in the hunt for alleged war criminals by initialling an agreement on Wednesday that puts Serbia on the road to EU membership.
The EU's gesture is intended to strengthen pro-European forces in Belgrade, notably Boris Tadic, the president, and his allies, and to woo Serbia away from the kind of nationalist intolerance that unleashed the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
"This marks a real turning point for Serbia," Olli Rehn, the EU's enlargement commissioner, said on Tuesday. "After a long nationalist night in the 1990s, a democratic dawn broke in 2000. Now a new European dawn is in the making in Serbia."
Mr Rehn was referring to the removal from power in October 2000 of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who died last year in his prison cell in the UN war crimes tribunal's detention centre at The Hague.
Mr Rehn approved the decision to initial the accord after Carla del Ponte, the war crimes prosecutor, told him there was political will in Serbia to arrest fugitive suspects and that she was being granted better access to necessary documents.
However, the EU is holding back from putting a final signature on the agreement until it is satisfied Serbia is fully co-operating with the tribunal - a condition that implies the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander.
Western intelligence services suspect that Mr Mladic, who is accused of having organised the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, is in hiding in Serbia.
Serbian officials say they are already co-operating as much as possible with the tribunal, and that they have lost track of Mr Mladic. According to Mr Tadic, the fugitive general has not been seen since 2002 - even though he was paid his military pension up to November 2005.
Pro-EU officials in Belgrade say the EU could send a stronger signal of support by signing, rather than merely initialling, the so-called stabilisation and association agreement. This step would improve the political conditions for arresting Mr Mladic and the other three remaining fugitive suspects, they say.
EU officials acknowledge Wednesday's accord will do little in itself to ease tensions between Belgrade and western countries over the province of Kosovo, which wants to declare independence from Serbia next month.
Even so, the agreement represents Serbia's biggest advance yet on the path to EU entry, and it will be welcomed by EU states that deem it vital to maintain the momentum for the bloc's enlargement in the Balkans.
In progress reports published on Tuesday, the European Commission made clear that, with the exception of Croatia, membership almost certainly lies many years away for western Balkan countries and Turkey.
The report on Turkey stated: "There was limited progress on political reforms in 2007 . . . Freedom of expression and freedom of religion are the most urgent issues, on which we want to see the government take action without delay."
11/06/2007 20:49:47
Hate speech trial of Serb ultra-nationalist to open (Afp)
by Stephanie van den Berg
THE HAGUE, Nov 7, 2007 (AFP) - Serb ultra-nationalist political leader Vojislav Seselj goes on trial at the UN war crimes court here Wednesday on accusations that his "hate speech" fanned the flames of the 1990s Balkan wars.
Sesel, who continues to head Serbia's biggest political party, the Serbian Radical Party, from his cell in The Hague on Tuesday again insisted that he was not guilty of the charges leveled against him.
"I am being tried for atrocious war crimes that I allegedly committed through hate speech as I preached my nationalist ideology that I am proud of," he said in a pre-trial hearing.
"I have no other involvement in these crimes expect for what I said or wrote."
Prosecutors say the 53-year-old formed a joint criminal enterprise with late Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic to "ethnically cleanse" large parts of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia's northern Vojvodina region.
He faces three charges of crimes against humanity and six counts of war crimes including persecution, deportation, murder and torture.
In the only case before the UN war crimes court since the Milosevic trial to focus on Serbia's involvement in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia in the early 1990s, prosecutors say Seselj was "the chief propagandist for Greater Serbia."
Along with Milosevic and others, their alleged goal was to remove by force a majority of the Muslim and Croat population from swathes of the former Yugoslavia, and eventually create a greater Serbian state.
During the 1991-95 wars in Croatia and Bosnia Seselj's party sent its own paramilitaries to the frontlines. At least five former members of the so-called White Eagles are currently on trial in a Serbian war crimes court over crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia.
So far only the case against former Yugoslav president Milosevic looked closely at Belgrade's role in the Croatian and Bosnian wars from 1991 to 1995. When Milosevic died suddenly in his UN cell in March last year the proceedings against him were terminated without the judges issuing a final ruling.
Like Milosevic, Seselj is acting as his own lawyer and openly displays his contempt for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Seselj has been in custody in The Hague since February 2003. He went on hunger strike last year to insist on his right to defend himself, forcing an earlier trial to be nullified.
Many observers say he will be quick to apply the same tactics this time around.
According to the indictment Seselj recruited, financed and supplied Serb paramilitary units and volunteer fighters who went on to commit atrocities.
Seselj's fiercely nationalist rhetoric, which included him announcing in the early 1990s that "we are going to create Serboslavia out of Yugoslavia," provoked Serbs to tolerate and commit crimes against non-Serbs, it said.
A fierce critic of the West, Seselj has announced he will use the trial to show the existence of an international anti-Serb conspiracy involving the European Union, Germany, NATO, the United States and the Vatican.
"It was from the West that all evil originated," he stressed Tuesday.
Seselj's trial will start with a four-hour opening statement by the prosecutor. On Thursday Seselj himself will address the court for the same amount of time.
The trial will then be adjourned until December 4 when the prosecution will call its first witness. The trial is expected to last about a year.
Blogged with Flock
|
|
|
.jpg)
