It was supposed to be the biggest gathering of Balkan leaders in nearly two decades to show the world the Balkan states aren't, well, Balkanized. But the EU-Balkan summit in Slovenia didn't live up to the billing to highlight regional cooperation and ended with a whimper. The air was taken out of the meeting in Brdo pri Kranju when Serb President Boris Tadic refused to show up. He didn't like the fact Kosovo would be there not as a UN-run protectorate but rather as an independent state. The EU's new so-called president also skipped the meeting, sensing a fiasco was awaiting. Not all were disappointed. Kosovo was pleased to have their independence status at least winked at.
The humiliations never seem to stop for what remains of the Serbs in Kosovo. In the latest blow to the national solar plexus, NATO has handed over to Kosovo's mainly ethnic Albanian police force security at one of Serbia's most sacred sites: Kosovo Pole. The handover came a day after another grim anniversary for Kosovo's Serbs: the sixth anniversary of the ethnic Albanian community's ransacking of churches and killing of a dozen or so Serbs. As this travesty unfolded, Slovenia was scrabbling to stop a much ballyhooed confab of Balkan and EU leaders from imploding. All the while, Serbia thanked the majority of the world's community that have not recognized Kosovo as an independent state.
For those keeping score out there, Europe's new sort-of midget state Kosovo has made some progress in the realm of legitimacy over the past few days. Of course, with a state allegedly run by underworld figures there will be bumps along the way. One of those bumps is the Kosovo Security Force, which was created to supposedly do away with all traces of the once feared, or feted -- depending if you are a Serb or Albania -- Kosovo Liberation Army. But as recent events show, the KSF sometimes forgets the charade, revealing the KLA lurking beneath.
Protesters were out in big numbers on Friday in front of the British and Serb embassies in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. They were demanding London release Ejup Ganic. He's a former Bosnian president and Muslim leader who was detained after landing at Heathrow airport on Monday. For Bosnia's Muslims and much of the West, he's a hero and respected statesman. For the Serbs, he's a war criminal and they want London to hand him over to face justice. The tug-of-war over Ganic comes as Radovan Karadzic has made eye-raising remarks to the UN war crimes tribunal, including a claim that a picture purporting to show a Serb concentration camp in Bosnia is a fabrication. For the Western media, Karadzic is mad, and the Serbs wanting to try Ganic are trying to duck sole culpability for all the bloodletting as Yugoslavia disintegrated in the early 1990s.
February 17 marked two years to the day when Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. Since then, 65 countries, including the U.S. and most of its EU allies, have recognized Kosovo. Serbia, obviously, and a majority of the world's countries have not, including UN Security Council members, Russia and China, keeping Kosovo out of the UN. Regardless, Kosovo's Albanian majority partied Wednesday on the anniversary. But a closer look at the state of Kosovo begs the question what exactly were they celebrating?
Serbia has filed genocide charges against neighboring Croatia, in a move likely to plunge bilateral ties between the two former Yugoslav republics to new lows and upset the already shaky stability of the Balkans. Serbia said it was left with no choice but to file the papers at the International Court of Justice at The Hague after Croatia refused to drop a similar case against the Serbs.
They are some of the gorier allegations to come out of the Kosovo conflict. In the summer of 1999 as the war was entering its final days it's alleged Kosovo Albanians first kidnapped then transported some 300 people, namely Serbs, to Albania where their organs were "harvested" for sale abroad.
The chilling allegations briefly grabbed headlines in 2008 when former chief UN prosecutor Carla Del Ponte published lots of circumstantial evidence in her book, "The Hunt." Now, Serb investigators say they have witnesses to some of the gruesome deeds and further information on who some of the victims may have been.
