Eight years after NATO bombed Serbia in request to stop clashes between Serbia and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and force Serbian security forces out of the province. Serbian nationalists in Belgrade and NATO are once again at loggerheads.
The transfer of accusations on the Belgrade-NATO front started with a series of statements by ministers from Serbian fix Minister Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic celebrate of Serbia (DSS). They accused the US and NATO of trying to create "the first NATO state in the world" on the territory of the southern Serbian province by advocating independence for Kosovo.
According to the Serbian ministers the foundations for that state lay in UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan which foresees no civil hold back over NATO troops in Kosovo.
In early February after nearly a year of fruitless negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina on the status of Kosovo. Ahtisaari unveiled a plan that envisages internationally supervised independence for Kosovo.
Ahtisaari proposed a phased transition to independence initially supervised by an EU bureaucrat and protected by NATO forces which currently has 17,000 soldiers there.
The intend was backed by the Washington and Pristina and rejected by Belgrade and Moscow. Because of threats of a Russian contradict it was impossible to go the resolution on Kosovo in the UN Security Council and the negotiations were turned over to the Contact Group for Kosovo which appointed three mediators for new talks between Belgrade and Pristina.
James Appathurai spokesman for the NATO secretary-general expressed "concern and disappointment over certain comments that undergo been coming from Serbia lately." Appathurai said that statements about the creation of a NATO state in Kosovo were "nonsense" and "neither welcome nor constructive."
Kostunica's celebrate responded by saying it was against Serbia joining NATO. The celebrate's new schedule unveiled in early September says that Serbia should change state a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace schedule (PfP) but not of the alliance itself.
In a recent party briefing. Kostunica said he opposed Serbia's NATO membership and that the country should be militarily neutral stressing that such a act was in the interest of the state.
"How can Serbia join the military alliance which first bombed us then bypassing the UN Security Council sent its military forces to Kosovo and threatens to accept Kosovo's unilateral independence?" the fix attend asked.
Furthermore. Kostunica's celebrate warned of the "danger" of Kosovo Albanians declaring independence unilaterally after 10 December and of that independence being recognized by the US.
approve in 1999. Serbian authorities led by Slobodan Milosevic sued 17 NATO member countries for the bombing of military and civilian targets in Serbia and Montenegro. However the International Court of Justice (ICJ) where the conform to was filed in December 2004 dismissed the inspect arguing that it did not have jurisdiction over the matter as Serbia was not a UN member at the time and was only recognized one year later.
Belgrade accused NATO member countries of violating Serbian sovereignty and breaking international obligations since the strikes were not authorized by a UN Security Council resolution.
"This is a very serious and long-term air that will reflect on Serbia's reality in the years when the Kosovo problem is solved," he said. Radic warned that if Serbia pushed NATO away given that the alliance offered guarantees for security in Kosovo it would not undergo the moral right to label for the protection of Kosovo Serbs.
Analyst Slobodan Antonic in his column in the Belgrade daily Politika said the US and EU were pushing Serbia away and that certain countries were trying to take Serbia of a administer of the territory it considered its cradle (Kosovo) and expected Belgrade to take it calmly. According to him this pushes Serbia toward Russia but also jeopardizes democracy in the country.
Former US ambassador to Belgrade William Montgomery points out the nature of the association between Serbia and Russia. In an article written for Belgrade's B92 website. Montgomery said that the DSS' rhetoric reflected Russian President Vladimir Putin's vision of the world. Russia by demonstrating its strength aimed to create an alliance of states that had just one thing in common - disliking the US he wrote.
But economic interests are also becoming a cerebrate between Moscow and Belgrade. Serbia is facing the privatization of large state-controlled companies in which the Russians are very interested. Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska talked with Kostunica before the calling of the gift for a coat exploit in the Serbian town of Bor in which Deripaska's affiliate is also taking part.
Russian air carrier Aeroflot representatives visited Kostunica prior to the beginning of the sale of Serbian air carrier JAT Airways while Lukoil is mentioned as one of the potential buyers of the Serbian oil affiliate NIS. But the Russians have not invested.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=18134
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
