US urges Serbia to help protect US Embassy

21 Feb 2008 18:59:52 GMT
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - The United States has urged the Serbian government to help protect the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, a State Department spokesman said on Thursday after protesters in Serbia's capital attacked the embassy to protest Kosovo's independence.

"We are in contact with the Serbian government to ensure that they devote the appropriate assets to fulfill their international obligations to help protect diplomatic facilities, in this case our embassy," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

"They (Serbia) have been up until this point very good in providing police assets to ensure that the embassy facility was protected. We want to strongly urge them and we are in contact with them to make sure that they devote the assets to deal with this situation," McCormack told reporters.

BBC

I guess the Serbians won't be building statues of Bush any time soon:

There were also protests in the ethnically divided northern city of Mitrovica, where an Orthodox funeral cross with George Bush's name was attached to a traffic light.

My Serbian, or Cyrillic, is not good. (Non-existent actually). This is George Bush?

US to evacuate staff from Serbia

The US embassy in Serbia has ordered the temporary evacuation of non-essential staff after protesters attacked the building in Belgrade.

About 1,000 protesters set fire to the embassy on Thursday in anger at Kosovo's declaration of independence, which the US and others recognised.

The UK, German, Croatian, Belgian and Turkish embassies were also attacked.

Both the Serbian president and PM have condemned the violence, which left one dead and more than 100 injured.

US embassy spokeswoman Rian Harris told AFP news agency: "Dependents are being temporarily ordered to depart Belgrade. We do not have confidence that Serbian authorities can provide security for our staff members."

Another spokesperson told Reuters news agency the ambassador, Cameron Munter, and core staff would remain.

The evacuation will be reassessed in seven to 10 days. Ms Harris said the embassy would reopen on Tuesday after repairs.

much more

This pisses me off. They torched the embassy in Belgrade and seriously, to be crude about it, the news media does not give a flying fuck!

I mean, we are all supposed to still be explosively angry about the 1979 sacking of the Tehran embassy, and yet at the same time, they are too bored to even summon a hint of nationalistic anger by 7 PM (because there is an old man sex story?). If that doesn't reveal their dubious hawk cherrypicking and general media attention deficit disorder, I don't know what does.

--
Hongpong.com

MIKE ECKEL | Moscow | Feb 22

AP — Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a sharp warning to the West on Friday about the consequences of recognizing Kosovo's independence, saying the decision would "come back to knock them on the head."

The televised comments, made during an informal meeting of leaders from former Soviet republics, were the strongest by the Kremlin leader since Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders issued their declaration of independence from Russian-allied Serbia.

Earlier in the day, Russia's envoy to NATO warned the alliance against overstepping its mandate in Kosovo and said Moscow might be forced to use "brute military force" to maintain respect on the world scene. Other Russian officials sought to tone down that view, saying the dispute should be resolved peacefully.

Putin used the meeting of presidents from the Commonwealth of Independent States — a loose, Russian-dominated organization of former Soviet states — to lambast Western nations that have recognized Kosovo's independence. Among those are the United States, Britain, Germany and France.

"The Kosovo precedent is a terrifying precedent. It in essence is breaking open the entire system of international relations that have prevailed not just for decades but for centuries. And it without a doubt will bring on itself an entire chain of unforeseen consequences," Putin said. more at link

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

Article published Feb 23, 2008
U.S. diplomats, relatives told to exit country

February 23, 2008

By David R. Sands - The State Department yesterday ordered all nonessential U.S. diplomatic personnel and relatives to leave Serbia and placed embassies around the Balkans on high security alert following the sacking Thursday of the American Embassy in Belgrade.

U.S. officials were still seething over the attack, carried out by protesters enraged by Washington's recognition earlier this week of the independence declaration by the breakaway Serb province of Kosovo, while top Serb leaders desperately tried to contain the fallout from the break-in.

"We don't believe that this is the face that Serbia wants to present to the world, and we quite frankly don't believe that this is the face of Serbia," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel, who called the attackers "hooligans and thugs."

But even as Serbian leaders tried to restrain passions over Kosovo, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Washington and key European capitals should have expected the fierce reaction to Kosovo's independence declaration. Mr. Putin, who has strongly backed Belgrade's claims to Kosovo, called the split a "terrible precedent" that will come back to haunt the West.

"They have not thought through the results of what they are doing," Mr. Putin told reporters in Moscow. "At the end of the day, [Kosovo] is a two-ended stick and the second end will come back and hit them in the face."

In Kosovo itself, angry ethnic Serbs again attacked United Nations police guarding a key bridge dividing Serb and Albanian communities in the flash point northern city of Mitrovica.

For a fifth straight day, Kosovo Serbs protested the independence move, as police tried to keep them off the bridge.

U.S. Ambassador to Serbia Cameron Munter recommended the "ordered departure" of a large number of the nearly 100 Americans who work at the embassy because "we are not sufficiently confident that they are safe here," he said in an interview with the Associated Press.

The attack also raised questions about U.S. Embassy security, where the State Department has targeted huge sums in the wake of terrorist attacks on American embassies in Africa and the September 11, 2001, plot. Despite the expense, the Serbian mob — a small fraction of a much larger public protest over Kosovo — managed to breach the outer compound and do significant damage.

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Serb minister blames US for anti-embassy riots

23 Feb 2008 13:03:06 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Ivana Sekularac

BELGRADE, Feb 23 (Reuters) - The United States was to blame for this week's attacks on foreign embassies in Belgrade, Serbia's minister for Kosovo said on Saturday, citing Washington's support for Kosovo's secession from Serbia.

Mobs stormed the U.S. embassy on Thursday and set it on fire and other diplomatic missions were stoned after a mostly peaceful mass protests against the former Serbian province's declaration of independence.

The attacks, which Serb officials blamed on "isolated vandals", were beamed across the world and condemned by the United Nations.

"The U.S. is the major culprit for all troubles since Feb 17," Slobodan Samardzic told the state news agency Tanjug, referring to the date when Serbia's Albanian-majority southern province declared independence.

"The root of violence is the violation of international law. The Serbian government will continue to call on the U.S. to take responsibility for violating international law and taking away a piece of territory from Serbia," he said.

more

23 February 2008, 09:52 GMT

Serbs enact plan to sabotage Kosovo
By Nick Thorpe
BBC News, Pristina

One week since the declaration of independence, Serb authorities in north-western Kosovo are pushing hard to eradicate all institutions with any connection to the new state.

And they are telling a cautious and already weakened UN mission, in its last months in office, that it should allow this - or face dire consequences.

There is genuine Serb grief over the loss of Kosovo, but there is also a carefully calibrated plan to win important parts of it back, and to sabotage Kosovo as an independent state.

The tools available include violence against property - grenades thrown at UN, EU, and Kosovan justice ministry buildings, and the carefully planned and executed burning down of two border and customs posts on 19 February.

Privately, Serb leaders in the north say this is just the beginning.

MUCH MORE

EU pulls out of divided Kosovo city
By :
Date : 24 February 2008 0316 hrs (SST)
URL : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/330720/1/.html

PRISTINA: The European Union has withdrawn staff from a divided Kosovo city following violent protests by the Serb minority, an EU envoy said on Saturday as Russia warned Kosovo's independence could increase terrorism.

The EU staff in the northern city of Mitrovica have been preparing a 2,000-strong EU police-judicial mission in Kosovo after its declaration of independence, which has been rejected by the Serbian government and Kosovo Serbs.

"We have temporarily brought back our personnel, but we will maintain our office in the north," EU envoy Peter Feith told reporters in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren.

He did not give details on the numbers involved but added: "We hope that conditions will soon allow us to resume our activities" in northern Kosovo.

Mitrovica, where there are 80,000 Albanians in the south of the city and 20,000 Serbs in the north, has become a symbol of Kosovo's ethnic tensions.

The Serbian government and the Serb minority that remains in Kosovo oppose the EU mission. Just before the independence proclamation, an explosion went off near the building housing the EU preparatory team in Mitrovica. Kosovo Serbs in the north have been protesting ever since Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia on Sunday.

Russia has also strongly opposed Kosovo's independence and blamed the West's support to the breakaway province for violent unrest in Belgrade this week targeting the US and European embassies.

A top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said that Kosovo's move would strengthen terrorist forces.

"With Kosovo now the gun has been cocked and no one knows when and where the shot will ring out," said Anatoly Safonov, Putin's envoy for international cooperation against terrorism and organised crime, in an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax.

Safonov drew parallels with the Munich agreement of 1938, which permitted the German annexation of a part of what was then Czechoslovakia.

"The danger is of unleashing a powerful machine of destruction, the consequences of which are unpredictable. It's a pity they have forgotten the lessons of the past, including the lesson of Munich in 1938," he said.

He said Islamist "jihadists of terror" in Kosovo could now be expected to come out into the open.

"Many countries consider that separatism and terrorism are links in the same chain. It's clear that terrorist tendencies are strengthening and the flouting of international law cannot fail to have this effect," Safonov said.

"With recognition of Kosovo these forces have been given a signal that they can come out from underground."

Putin on Friday said Kosovo had set a "terrible precedent, which will de facto blow apart the whole system of international relations".

Russia's new representative to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said the same day that Moscow had the right to "use force" if NATO or the EU challenged the UN over Kosovo.

About 1,000 Russians demonstrated against NATO and Kosovo's independence at a Moscow rally organised by the Communist Party on Saturday. The Greek communist party organised a similar event in Athens at which several hundred people burned the EU and US flags.

Serbian officials and media have welcomed Russia's support in opposing Kosovo's independence.

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Kosovo Serbs call for return of Russian troops

PRISTINA, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Serbs in Kosovo called on Wednesday for the return of Russian peacekeepers to the country after the Albanian majority's declaration of independence from Serbia this month.

The call was made by the Serb National Council, a grouping of Kosovo Serb leaders in the Serb stronghold of north Mitrovica.

"The Serb National Council calls on Russia to return its KFOR contingent, to stabilise the situation in areas where Serbs are in the majority," Council leader Milan Ivanovic said.

Russia withdrew its troops from the NATO-led Kosovo Force, KFOR, in mid-2003, four years after deploying with 45,000 others after an 11-week NATO air war to save Kosovo Albanians from ethnic cleansing by Serb forces fighting guerrillas.

The force is now down to 16,000 soldiers.

Kosovo's 120,000 remaining Serbs, almost half of which live in a thin slice of land in the north adjacent to Serbia, have rejected the Feb. 17 secession, which was backed by the West but condemned by Serbia and Russia.

In a statement on Sunday, the Russian foreign ministry demanded a compromise solution on Kosovo -- something the West has assessed as impossible after almost two years of inconclusive negotiations.

The ministry recalled that Russia had previously had a peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo -- possibly pointing to plans to propose a return of Russian troops to the territory, in ethnic Serb areas that resist Albanian rule.

In a new sign of the deepening ethnic divide, dozens of Serb officers in the Kosovo police service failed to report for duty on Wednesday in the eastern Gnjilane region.

"The majority of Kosovo Serb police officers in the Gnjilane region have not shown up for work this morning," said regional police spokesman Ismet Hashani. He did not give a reason

EU says 'No' to Kosovo partition
BBC News

EU special envoy Pieter Feith has said Kosovo will not be split in two because of the divide between ethnic groups.

"There will be no partition of the country, that is not foreseen," he told a news conference in Vienna.

Meanwhile, in Bulgaria, delegations from Kosovo and Serbia met face to face for the first time since Kosovo declared independence.

Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic told Balkan foreign ministers that as long as Serbia existed, Kosovo never would.

We will not admit any parallel security institution to manifest itself on the territory of Kosovo
Pieter Feith
EU special envoy to Kosovo

He said Kosovo would not belong to the world community of sovereign nations and Belgrade would appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague over the legitimacy of Kosovo's declaration.

Mr Jeremic appealed to the international community to defer decisions on recognising Kosovo before a ruling was made.

The head of Kosovo's chamber of commerce, Besim Beqaj, attended the gathering under a United Nations banner, the only way Mr Jeremic said he was prepared to accept Kosovo's presence.

Mr Beqaj said that when he spoke, the Serbian delegation did not stay in the room, a statement that could not be confirmed.

MORE at BBC