Well written, these phrases, from the NYTimes: “the feelings of anger, sorrow and betrayal over the loss of Kosovo cut across all segments of Serbian society. The world is waiting to see whether the riots on Thursday were the final spasm of anger in Serbia or the first tremor in a new Balkan earthquake. The deep-seated disappointment of even the most staunchly pro-Western Serbs suggests that there will be no easy reconciliation in the wake of the declaration of independence by Kosovo’s overwhelming ethnic Albanian majority … ‘If you were here on Sunday’, Ms. Petkovic told a foreign reporter over the weekend, referring to the day of Kosovo’s independence declaration a week earlier, ‘I would be spitting on America, cursing Europeans, saying, “You are stealing our territory, just because you are bigger and you can do it”.’ The depth of her sadness and anger surprised even her, she said …
“Supporters of Kosovo’s independence argue that Mr. Milosevic’s brutal subjugation of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo forsook Serbia’s moral and legal claim to rule the territory. But experts here say policy makers in Washington and Brussels may have seriously underestimated the Serbian bond to Kosovo. They say they can only hope its severing will not lead Serbia into a new era of isolation that would be destabilizing for the entire region. ‘They were probably hinging too much on these polls that Serbia would wake up the next day and say, “Let’s get on with life”,’ said Ivan Vejvoda, executive director of the Balkan Trust for Democracy, a nonprofit grant-making organization in Serbia …
“The independence of Kosovo is by far the hardest blow in the series of secessions from the former Yugoslavia that began in 1991. After years of watching the country being whittled down — in 2006 Montenegro peacefully ended its union with Serbia — there was an expectation among reform -minded Serbs that, having rid themselves of Mr. Milosevic and embraced democracy, their case would be heard differently. ‘Now we’ve been doing things the right way, and it’s still not good enough, and Serb national interests are crushed’, said Ljiljana Smajlovic, editor in chief of the prominent Serbian newspaper Politika. Ms. Smajlovic said she expected the nationalists to become more powerful as a result, leading to years of recrimination ‘deeply harmful for the democratic process’ …
“The United States failed to gain the necessary support in the Security Council for a resolution in favor of the independence of Kosovo, and the lack of United Nations endorsement is consistently cited by the Serbian government and people on the street as proof that Kosovo’s declaration of independence was illegitimate. Ms. Petkovic said she could not help noting the response of the United States to the embassy attack. ‘The first reaction of American authorities was that they will put the protest in the United Nations Security Council’, she said with a wry smile”. The full NYTimes story is here.
it is an understandable reaction to being dismembered invaded etc
& i also see
no sooner was it posited here that the land follows the people so let the serbs kurds &al have their way at home etc etc
than comes this first noticed assertion of
transnational ethnic regional sovereignty
as distinct from the usual notion of state territorial sovereignty
http://www.kurdishglobe.net/displayArticle.jsp?id=84ADBFF560718BB73E4A492B2AC721BE
however demonstrably diminished & belittled by its own clashing graphics
but it has so meticulously arrived on scene
under cover of nonsense
& practically unobserved
‘Now we’ve been doing things the right way, and it’s still not good enough, and Serb national interests are crushed’, said Ljiljana Smajlovic, editor in chief of the prominent Serbian newspaper Politika. Ms. Smajlovic said she expected the nationalists to become more powerful as a result, leading to years of recrimination ‘deeply harmful for the democratic process’ …
If they want respectability and trust, may be the nationalists should give up the two wanted murderers they have given refuge to.
please consider cutting the last 4 lines of my previous post
as i now see the clash was an epiphenomenon of my safari browser only
but to continue also with our drift of thought from yesterday
it looks as tho washington may be having some preemptors remorse today in kosovo if not in eritrea
in the arena of international law
judging from observations like these
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/nikos_konstandaras/2008/02/kosovo_isnt_about_russia.html
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/vivian_salama/2008/02/kosovos_emotional_problems.html
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/ignacio_gil_vazquez/2008/02/europe_lacks_leadership_on_kos.html
& this most over the top sky is falling of all
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/ali_ettefagh/2008/02/tough_times_for_multilateralis.html
which culminates the entire seminar in the following assertion
the shallow end of the thinking pool is out to harm & destroy the rule of international law
to which i would reply
& fortunately the deep end is in to rescue & anchor it to cosmic law
more if wanted at
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/2008/02/recognizing_kosovo/all.html
& if i can braid asmara with belgrade & erbil & of course turtle bay & dc
since they all seem to be shaking today
reuters characterizes the bigs as angered
tho maybe this is just cliche by now
& reports an eritrean appeal to them for help evicting ethiopia
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnN27483381.html
turtle bay boilerplate
http://allafrica.com/stories/200802271013.html
eritrean press acknowledges at least 1 instance of noncooperation & indeed restriction of unmee by eritrean forces without giving details
& also reports unmee reporting there are no present restrictions
http://www.eritreadaily.net/News0108/article0208271.htm
& allows that eritrea is indeed not cooperating fully with the relocation to ethiopia
back to belgrade pristina vienna etc
the west aka international steering group refuses partition of kosovo
found at
http://www.stratfor.com/sitrep/kosovo_steering_group_says_no_partition
Kosovo: Steering Group Says No Partition
February 28, 2008 | 1418 GMT
Kosovo will not be partitioned into Albanian and Serb areas, the 15 countries of the International Steering Group on Kosovo said Feb. 28 after the group’s initial meeting in Vienna, Austria. The group was formed to oversee implementation of the U.N. plan for Kosovo developed by former special representative Martti Ahtisaari. The group’s members include Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Turkey, the United States, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, Slovenia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
&
back to the next contestant in the mother of all crises competition
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aQOVnZuH7k4U&refer=home
Kurd-Arab Kirkuk Clash Is `Ticking Time Bomb,’ UN Mediator Says
By Bill Varner
Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) — The struggle between Kurds and Arabs for control of the city of Kirkuk and its oil amounts to a “ticking time bomb” in northern Iraq, according to the new United Nations envoy trying to broker a settlement.
Mediator Staffan de Mistura said in an interview that he has about four months left to solve “the mother of all crises” in Iraq. “If that takes place, we will have contributed substantially to avoiding a new conflict at the worst possible time,” he said.
Turkey’s military incursion into Iraq last week to fight Kurdish rebels may remind Iraqi Kurds that their designs on more territory and oil have limits. Turkey is concerned that the Kurdish regional government would use Kirkuk and its oil to seek independence, displace minorities in the city and embolden breakaway Kurds on Turkish soil.
The dispute over the estimated 10 billion barrels of crude in the region pits the Kurds’ expansion drive against Arab demands to keep central authority over oil — and Kurds within Iraq. Kurdish leaders have embraced UN involvement as their best, perhaps last, opportunity to secure the legal right to sign oil-exploration contracts in the area.
“The issue of oil jurisdiction is very much alive, and companies deciding whether to sign contracts for exploration are focused on what is happening,” said Alex Munton of Wood Mackenzie Ltd., an Edinburgh, Scotland-based oil-company consultant. “It’s a very complex challenge because the Kurds have awarded contracts that overlap disputed boundaries.”
Contracts Awarded
The Kurdistan Regional Government in November awarded exploration and production contracts to Bermuda-based Gulf Keystone Ltd., Hungary’s Mol Nyrt., Austria’s OMV AG and India’s Reliance Energy Ltd.
De Mistura, in his quest for a political settlement backed by the UN, “has the stature to be very convincing,” said Qubad Talibani, the KRG’s representative in Washington. His government is determined to overcome Saddam Hussein’s campaign to quash Kurdish claims on Kirkuk, a city of about 700,000, through the forced removal of Kurds and settlement of Sunni Arabs throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Resistance is coming from many sides. In Baghdad, Sunni and Shiite parliamentarians have formed an alliance to safeguard the national government’s hold on the oil. Turkomans and Assyrians, who together make up about half of Kirkuk’s population, have claims on the city that date back centuries.
A Cautionary Message
The Turkish military operation, while not directly related to the Kirkuk issue, sends a cautionary message to the Kurds, according to Ian Lesser, an analyst for the Washington-based German Marshall Fund.
“There may be those in Turkey who would be pleased to see what they are doing in Iraq as putting pressure on the Kurds not to solidify their control over Kirkuk,” Lesser said. “But it cuts both ways. Turkey needs a relationship with the Kurds to help control the rebels.”
The U.S. persuaded the UN last year to take on the Arab- Kurdish dispute as American officials focused on quelling intra- Arab violence in Baghdad with military reinforcements.
“It is important to get progress on reconciliation, which means agreement among the major players on key issues, one of which is Kirkuk,” Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the UN and a former envoy to Iraq, said in an interview.
Drawing a Border
De Mistura wants to use results of the 2005 provincial elections to draw a border between contested Kurdish and Arab lands. The 61-year-old Swede said any formula also must protect the rights of the Assyrians and Turkomans in Kirkuk, and factor in the impact of Hussein’s forced Arabization.
After forging an agreement in December to delay a referendum on the status of Kirkuk until June, de Mistura sees mid-year as his deadline to get all the parties to reach agreement.
While Turkish officials support UN mediation, they are concerned that the Kurds have rigged the outcome of any referendum.
“What the Kurdish elements in the area have done in the last two years or three years is to change the demographic composition of Kirkuk,” Nabi Sensoy, Turkey’s ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview. “There have been more than 600,000 people who have come and settled in the area.” All told, about 1 million people live in Kirkuk and its surrounding area.
The problem with de Mistura’s plan for Kirkuk is that he doesn’t know Iraq well enough to end such a complicated dispute, according to Feisal al-Istrabadi, a former Iraqi ambassador to the UN.
`He Is Crazy’
“He is crazy if the thinks he will create an internationally recognized border that will calm the situation,” he said. “It is not clear that the results of the 2005 elections should tell you anything about what the boundary ought to be, and you have to ask how free and fair those elections were.”
Iraq’s UN envoy, Hamid Al Bayati, said the timing of a Kurdish-Arab accord is critical because the U.S. presidential election in November might send a Democrat to the White House with a mandate to withdraw American troops in 2009. That would raise the risk of war over the northern oil fields, he said.
De Mistura “is credible and the government supports him, but when he comes with a plan it may be a different story,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: February 27, 2008 17:04 EST
so
does anyone doubt we all really need to try something new at this time
with particular regard to our boundary art
yet it seems to me
it is only a question of how to allow
& so legislate if necessary
birds of a feather flocking together
& to thereby finesse some real integrity into the sovereignty of territory
& if that actually does require a new law to be written
then lets find a way of spelling it out somehow & doing it
sooner rather than later
if the universal declaration of human rights is ever going to really mean anything
Worth a second read: “De Mistura wants to use results of the 2005 provincial elections to draw a border between contested Kurdish and Arab lands. The 61-year-old Swede said any formula also must protect the rights of the Assyrians and Turkomans in Kirkuk, and factor in the impact of Hussein’s forced Arabization … The problem with de Mistura’s plan for Kirkuk is that he doesn’t know Iraq well enough to end such a complicated dispute, according to Feisal al-Istrabadi, a former Iraqi ambassador to the UN. ‘He is crazy if the thinks he will create an internationally recognized border that will calm the situation’, he said. ‘It is not clear that the results of the 2005 elections should tell you anything about what the boundary ought to be, and you have to ask how free and fair those elections were’.”
yes i think you have pinpointed the germ of the nut
& the pea of the mattress too
& a world saving mattress it is
because all de mistura really needs to do now is precisely to build a mattress
or territorial shock absorber
into his new border line
& let everyone know
look this is not really power politics as usual at all but actually medicine
& we are going to do this ever so gently & carefully precisely because we realize what a powder keg it really is
but holding our breath
we will endeavor to begin with a phase one
in which all unquestionable cleavages are fully acknowledged
leaving temporarily unresolved & highly buffered all genuinely questionable intermediate or transition zones
& then by means of ongoing plebiscites & or censuses & or negotiations among all interested homebodies
to gradually or quickly but locally narrow all territorial questions
& in that way finally delineate an official 2008 boundary if possible
subject to further modification & or buffering as necessary in 2009 etc
& wherever a simple bilateral boundary line cant be drawn owing to various multilateralities & or other imponderabilities
to also then carefully begin contemplating federal or blended states & or municipalities
the only reason this approach seems at all difficult or unrealistic is because everyone stands so in awe of historical territorial integrity
they think losing territory diminishes or dishonors sovereignty
& gaining territory aggrandizes or honors sovereignty
but we already know in the turtle bay country club that each member & its territorial unit is equally sovereign & has the same size chair
regardless of its size & or growth or shrinkage trajectory
for in reality gains & losses of territory arent such a big deal in comparison to gains & losses of happiness or gains & losses of what works
& it is noteworthy that this approach was flatly rejected yesterday in vienna for kosovo by the club of 15 in their wisdom
but again that is power politics rather than medicine
clearly what is needed now is global first aid if not triage
rather than more & more deliberate traumatization
for more fresh word on de mistura mattresses
please see comments following
http://un-truth.com/israel/egyptian-gas-flows-to-israel#comment-1856
but cleaving to the main line of the present thread
another interesting cleavage has arisen this morning per
http://www.stratfor.com/sitrep/kosovo_serbia_reclaims_section_rail_line
Kosovo: Serbia Reclaims Section Of Rail Line
March 3, 2008 | 1225 GMT
Serbia has reclaimed control of a 30-mile span of railroad in northern Kosovo, in defiance of Kosovo’s new government, The Associated Press reported March 3, citing comments from a senior Serbian official. Earlier, several dozen Serbian railroad workers blocked a freight train’s passage on the line, demanding to be transferred to Serbia’s state-owned rail line and saying they would not work for Kosovo’s railroad company.
the following current analysis is from
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/world/middleeast/03diplo.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
& following it is a comment from me
ak md
Gaza Pitfalls in Every Path
By HELENE COOPER
Published: March 3, 2008
WASHINGTON — Ever since the militant Islamist organization Hamas took over Gaza eight months ago, President Bush’s peace plan for the Middle East has been to prop up the more moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the hopes that Palestinians would rally behind him as man who could bring them statehood and make Hamas irrelevant.
But Israel’s military and economic pressure on Gaza, the menacing rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and the ensuing chaos that reached new heights this weekend have highlighted a fundamental tangle in that plan: As long as Hamas controls Gaza, it can subvert negotiations between Israelis and moderate Palestinians whenever it sees fit.
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to the region on Monday, a trip planned for weeks, she is confronting very few options in achieving President Bush’s stated goal of peace between Israel and a new Palestinian state that includes both the West Bank, where Mr. Abbas’s government sits, and Gaza.
“She’s walking into a buzz saw,” said Aaron David Miller, author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.” “You cannot make peace with half of the Palestinian polity and go to war with the other half.”
On Sunday, as violence spilled over from Gaza into the West Bank, a spokesman for Mr. Abbas said talks with Israel had been suspended.
In many ways, the latest crisis, in which Israeli aircraft and troops have attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza after long-range rockets from Gaza hit the large Israeli city of Ashkelon, looks like the Lebanon war of July 2006, when Israel bombed Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
The Israelis are also facing criticism similar to that made during the Lebanon war — that their response has been disproportionate and killed many civilians, including children. And just as Israel faced tough decisions on Lebanon, the United States finds itself with dwindling choices, none considered attractive.
Ms. Rice could encourage Israel to increase the strikes against Hamas in the hopes of destroying its leadership in Gaza. But Israel tried that with Hezbollah in Lebanon and failed, leaving Hezbollah leaders to assert when the war was over that they had stood up to Israel.
Even if Israel did go all out to defeat Hamas in Gaza, the problem of what comes after would remain. For instance, would Israeli forces stay in Gaza, or would they be replaced by an international force from the already stretched NATO or the United Nations?
Ms. Rice’s other alternative — encouraging Israel to negotiate a cease-fire with Hamas — has pitfalls, Middle East experts say, because that would further legitimize Hamas, which the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization. Martin Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel, said such a cease-fire would further undermine Mr. Abbas and make it look like Hamas is the entity with which Israel and the West should be negotiating.
“Excluding them doesn’t work, and including them doesn’t work, either,” Mr. Indyk said. “So what do you do? This is a situation that does not lend itself to a sensible policy.”
With the rocket attacks on Israel, Hamas has demonstrated power to threaten peace talks simply by inciting a strong Israeli response and making it impossible for Mr. Abbas to sit by and do nothing. On Sunday, the day after Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Gaza, resulting in the biggest one-day death toll in more than a year, Mr. Abbas announced that he was suspending the peace negotiations in protest.
Mr. Abbas’s options, too, are limited, Palestinian experts say, given that the peace negotiation with Israel is his main selling point for his claim that he is the only one who can bring the Palestinians a deal with Israel.
A senior Bush administration figure acknowledged on Sunday that Ms. Rice “is playing a really bad hand.” So far, the Bush administration is adhering to a position very similar to the one it used during the Lebanon war.
As with Hezbollah, Ms. Rice is standing behind Israel’s right to defend itself. Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said late Saturday that the United States wanted to see “an end to violence and all acts of terrorism directed against innocent civilians.” But, he noted, “there is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self defense.”
As with the Lebanon war, Ms. Rice is, at the same time, trying to prop up a besieged “moderate” leader — this time, Mr. Abbas instead of the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora. But — just as with Hezbollah — she cannot stop the rocket attacks onto Israel from Gaza because the United States does not talk to Hamas.
“This is beyond her capacity, and beyond even the capacity of a secretary of state like Kissinger or Baker,” said Mr. Miller, who served as a Middle East negotiator for the last three presidents. “This is rooted in a fundamental problem that we haven’t acknowledged: Israel cannot make peace with a divided Palestine.”
Even within Israel, many experts are echoing that view. A few weeks ago, Hamas claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the Negev desert town of Dimona, the first such attack in more than a year. Shlomo Brom, a retired general at the Institute for National Security Studies, said the bombing was meant “to send a clear message” to Mr. Abbas, Israel and the United States that there will be no normalization of life without Hamas.
Mr. Brom advocates dialogue with Hamas. But the United States and Israel have refused to deal with Hamas leaders unless the organization forswears violence and acknowledges Israel’s right to exist.
So Ms. Rice will try to press surrogates, including Egypt, to lean on Hamas, administration officials say. And she will sharply criticize rocket attacks on civilian Israeli targets, and publicly charge Hamas with hiding behind civilians in Gaza. She will meet with Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, in the West Bank, and with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni.
Ali Abunimah, a research fellow at the Palestine Center, a Washington-based advocacy group, derided the American strategy of ignoring Hamas: “You can’t talk to them. You can’t deal with them. You just cover your ears, close your eyes and pretend they don’t exist.”
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
so let me contribute again from cream hill the apparently overlooked attractive new choice & sensible policy of making peace with a divided palestine
since thats the only palestine there is just now
& of beginning this by seating gaza at least at turtle bay
as country number 193
under a cease fire predicated also on a de mistura mattress
aka sure jerusalem trammel mart as described above
designed to integrate the balance of palestine either with gaza or a greater jerusalem or israel
or else to erect it into a separate west bank palestine entity
all depending on exactly what everybody wants locally
such a deal might even be linked to a grander compromise that might make kosovo turtle 194 & somaliland 195
if not also maakhir 196 in that case
as well as possibly erect other worthy candidates simultaneously into a still grander turtledom
just to sweeten the deal for all concerned parties if necessary
but all of the new members i have nominated would necessarily come with custom fitted de mistura mattresses