The presidents of Albania, Alfred Moisiu, and of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, defend the separation of Kosovo and Serbia. President Rugova, more explicitly, has launched a call for an independence that will have to be achieved with or without Russia’s approval. General Leonid Ivashov assesses it as a humiliation as he considers that Russia should have not allowed this war to start in the first place and that this mistake should not happen again.
Although it does not appear anymore in the front pages of newspapers, the situation in the Balkans continues to be unclear after the wars in Bosnia first and then in Kosovo. This region, still formally bound to Serbia and Montenegro, has witnessed an ethnic cleansing after the war. Almost all the Serbian-speaking population was expelled from there after peace was “re-established”. Still occupied by NATO forces, the zone became, along with Albania, in a center of constant traffic to Europe. In the meantime, the status of the region is not defined yet in the international level.
Albanian President Alfred Moisiu, an Atlantist, referred to the topic in an interview with Ria Novosti. Moisiu is not very clear regarding the future he wants for Kosovo: the region must separate from Serbia but did not speak of a formal independence and he affirmed that he does not dream of a Great Albania. Anyway, he affirmed that he hopes his country will soon join NATO and he praised the war that the Atlantic alliance launched against Serbia in 1999. In this sense, he did not hesitate to refer to the genocide committed then, in spite of the fact that the hearings of the International Criminal Court showed there was no such genocide. For his part, the Albanese-speaking president of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, defended the independence of his country in Die Presse. Rugova used arguments similar to those used by James Dobbins and Wesley Clark, saying that independence is the only solution to develop his country and that it is not necessary to have the support of the United Nations for that. He then called on the European Union and the United States to unilaterally declare their independence. Once more, Russia would be marginalized.
Far from sharing this viewpoint, the German special envoy to the Balkans, Hans Koschinick, said to Der Spiegel that the situation in Kosovo will take too long to evolve. When analyzing the situation of the states born from the former Yugoslavia and their opportunities to join the European Union, he said that they can work with all of them except with Croatia that is too nationalist and aggressive to its neighbors.
The humiliated Russian population saw the war of Kosovo as a new blow to the influence of their country in Europe. Even today, this war continues to be a symbol. In Vremya Novostyey, former Russian General Leonid Ivashov expressed his anger with regards to the way in which he was treated when he testified in from of the court of The Hague during the trial of Milosevic. Ivashov affirmed that his statements were falsified in the records of the hearings and that the attorney was offensive in relation with the socialist past of Russia and the Slavic identity.
Recalling that the war was caused by Albanese-speaking nationalist and mafia gangs with the support of Madeleine Albright, Ivashov said that Russia made a mistake when it allowed the war conflict to begin and added that it should not happen again.
Instead of referring to the celebrations of May 9, which occupied large spaces in the world press this week, the Daily Star published a series of articles about the economic viability of a future Palestinian state.
For the Minister of Planning of the Palestinian Authority, Ghassan Khatib, the issue of the resources of a hypothetical future Palestinian state is linked to two big problems: the destination of the Palestinian refugees and of the settlers. As the possibility that the settlers may remain where they are exists - within the borders of the future state -, a decision will have to be made regarding which lands are given to the refugees that were expelled from them. In effect, without this redistribution, there would be a similar situation to that of South Africa after the apartheid, when the black people had access to political power while the economic power remained in the hands of the white people. In that sense, this article presents the limits of the solution of the two states.
Nigel Roberts and Stefano Mocci, envoys of the World Bank to Gaza and the West Bank, make a completely different analysis of the topic of the resources. Without referring at all to the issue of the redistribution of resources between Palestinians and settlers in the territories, they both affirm that the economy there has to be developed through a series of liberal reforms that Mahmud Abbas has to make. This approach is in accordance with the same conclusions of a conference of the Milken Institute that grouped democratic personalities and important businesspeople. The former chief editor of the AIPAC publication, M.J. Rosenberg, comments about the conference and recommends a “privatization” of the peace process saying that by creating private Israeli-Palestinian economic initiatives, the economy of the region will improve and the peace process will be guaranteed by common interests. However, in order to achieve it, of course, it is necessary that, again, the Palestinian part makes reforms. This convergence is not by chance: the World Bank is currently presided over by Paul Wolfowitz, a former executive of the AIPAC.
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