At the October 1 meeting between the German and Serbian leaders Angela Merkel and Boris Tadic Merkel stressed that “Serbia had a clear European prospect”, but in order to open it up a number of “necessary” things should be taken account of, primarily with regard to Kosovo. Opposing the helpless objections of Boris Tadic about the “three preconditions” for the European Civil Mission EULEX1 be introduced based on the ruling of the UN Security Council, the refusal of the Ahtisaari plan’s implementation and the EULEX neutrality, Angela Merkel expresses Germany’s intention in the following way: first, the EULEX mission should be able to operate on the entire Kosovo’s territory, second, Serbia should extradite Ratko Mladic and Goran Hajic.
The United States echoed Germany: Cameron Manter, US Ambassador in Serbia warned Tadic not to come up with initiatives of his own. In an answer to the statement about potential separation of Kosovo the Serbian president made recently, Manter reiterated Washington’s view of the situation whereby Serbia and Kosovo should develop independently of each other within the framework of the European Union. The US statement was followed by representatives of UNMIK, expressing its stance that is “unified with the position of the Contact Group” stating that no separation of Kosovo can be allowed. Thus, the US and EU are determined to stand for the territorial integrity of the “NATO jihad state”, cutting back on even tentative attempts by Belgrade politicians to speak against the occupational authorities.
October 2, in Kosovo’s northern provinces of Mitrovica and Graćanica Serbs held their rallies to express protests against the installation of the EULEX mission in Kosovo. The meeting called this mission “occupational” aiming at “thefts of territories” and called on the Serbian authorities on no means to agree to its establishment in their land. Marco Yaksic, deputy chairman of Kosovo and Metohia’s Skupshtina (K&M) accused Oliver Ivanovic, the state secretary for K&M of conducting negotiations with Albanian authorities on organization of a contest for 60 Albanian judges planning to sit in K&M courts. Serbia’s Police Minister Ivica Dacic (Serbia’s Socialist Party) was accused of allowing state institutions in the province to be destroyed instead of reinforcing them, which is evidenced by the arrears in payment of their salary to Serbian police officers accumulated for several months. MPs representing the Serbian Radical party and the Democratic Party of Serbia called on authorities to stop disseminating hazy calls on the division of Kosovo rather than fight for their own territory and observance of international law. In Graćanica representatives of Pristina’s Serbian community called on the Serbs living in Kosovo’s central parts to show civil disobedience to protest the instalment of the EULEX mission and the illegal declaration of Kosovo’s independence.
Disregarding that, the US and EU are moving over to the next phase of their “Kosovo project”, replacing the UN mission (that obediently succumbs its positions without the UN Security Council’s approval) by the EULEX mission. Nevertheless, their unilateral moves are not without consequences. The trust in the US and EU in the United Nations is rapidly falling down. Based on the study of the results of voting in UN major departments the Foreign Relations Committee of the European Parliament2 concluded that the intention of the United States and the European Union to use the United Nations as a tool to achieve what they are interested in, and their aborted policies in critical regions leads to a snowballing loss of these countries’ influence inside this largest global organization, where the balance of forces is currently shifting towards Russia, China, India and the Islamic world. The report the Committee has published notes that “the West is in a state of chaos, and differences of opinion of the EU and the US in the numerous discussions of human rights at the United Nations during the period of G.Bush’s administration have enervated both sides…No other global crisis outside of Kosovo proved more evidently reduced European influence…”
It is noteworthy that that the Chairman of the EU Foreign Relations Committee is currently the ignominious former Finnish president and UN Special representative in Kosovo Marti Ahtisaari. However, despite all his efforts well paid-for by Albanians and pressure from the US and the European Union (within whose framework reaching a consolidated position is not so close), only 46 countries out of the 192 UN member states acknowledged Kosovo’s independence. The authors of the report stress that “many EU acts including Kosovo leave the impression of pursuing the policies of double standards”, “in their handling issues of Kosovo and Iraq European countries acted without a UN mandate” and currently “Belgrade’s demand that the International Court of Justice come out with a verdict on the legality of declaring Kosovo’s independence. The EU should not lose its face acting at the level of boorish pulling through its proposals and ideas the way some countries do.” The report also states that a decade ago 72% of the UN member-states supported the European stance on human rights, and only 48% last year, whereas the support of US human rights policies weakened to 30% last year from 77% ten years ago, and polices pursued by Russia and China, which stand for the state sovereignty and non-interference into the policies pursued by independent states, went up to 74% from 50% in the past.
The authors of the report note the especially significant fall of the EU influence on the Islamic world, speaking about the effective break-up of the western union with Muslim countries that was shaped in the period when the West used its force to protect Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians. Nowadays the US and EU can count on “just three of their allies” in the United Islamic Conference (UIC) – “Turkey, B&H and Afghanistan”3 (which means that in line with the spirit of Alia Izitbegovic’s 1970 “Islamic Declaration”, Bosnia and Herzegovina are viewed as a unitary Muslim state, regardless of the fact that only 42% of its population are Muslims, whereas the majority of population are Christians – Orthodox Serbs and Croat Catholics)
The admissions of the EU Foreign Relations Committee are well indicative.
Meanwhile, the Serbian government disregarding one more refusal of the EU to ratify the interim trade agreement is beginning to unilaterally “erect a bridge of European integration”, that is to implement a number of covenants of this agreement unilaterally. That threatens to finally destroy the half-dead Serbian economy, whereas the Euro-Democratic power never stops spreading false statements concerning “EU funds” that would allegedly help to raise the nation’s agriculture and infrastructure. First, EU development programmes are not gratuitous, and each of the 24 development programmes for the Western Balkans the EU has devised, including those of development of education, public health system, regional development, development of small- and medium-sized businesses, protection of human rights, transport networks and environment protection, if they are undertaken, would cost from 20,000 to 1 million Euros. (in 200 to 2007 Serbia was given about $4 billion in subsidies and grants, and it continues to receive about 180 million Euros worth of grants within the framework of various EU programmes).
Second, for example Bulgaria’s experience shows that the EU programmes for the development of industries and agriculture can hardly improve the situation. At best they do not deteriorate it. For example, out of the 44 most impoverished Bulgaria’s districts regarded as such in 1989, 43 still stayed at that level by 2003, whereas some degree of growth was seen only in the sectors with the least skilled workforce. At the same time, Bulgaria’s joining the EU brought accelerated the significant growth of bureaucracy and corruption. As the Bulgarian example indicates, the EU does not spend money on development; it rather ensures the functioning of artificially increased numbers of officials and “the elite” of Bulgarians. In the last two months Bulgaria received 800 million Euros for the purpose of fighting corruption and organised crime. The results are nil, and the EU no longer acknowledges rulings of Bulgarian courts, prohibiting Bulgarian citizens free entry into the Shengen zone, suspending the process of the introduction of the Euro in that country
Corruption and organised crime are systemic elements of the state that was created as the result of October 2000 “colours revolution.” So it would be naive to assume that some of the funds the EU earmarked for that country’s development (to quote D.Djelic, about an annual $2 billion) would not be pocketed by the “Euro-Democratic“authorities.
Third, Serbia still shows no acceleration of the process of its getting closer to the EU. It still either offered promises or has to consider ever new conditions.
Speaking of promises, we’ll refer to the statement made on October 3, by Noel Lenoar, a French expert on issues of European integration and former minister for European integration in the period of the “EU’s great expansion” in the spring of 2004. He referred to Serbia as the key country in the region, adding that “Serbia will ratify the agreement on stabilization and the EU entry very soon”, and “Serbia stands every chance of becoming a EU member by 2014-2015.”,
As for conditions set for Serbia, on October 6 a warning came from Peter Faith, the EU Senior representative in Kosovo to the effect that “Serbia has to understand it would make no progress on the way to the European integration till it continues creating problems to prevent the EULEX mission from being established in Serbia.”
Going on their own against the background of the continuing western pressure on their country, some Serbs make attempts to defend their national dignity. The October 4 international symposium in Banya-Luka organised by the Netherlands-based NGO “Historic Project Srebrenica” headed by U.S. lawyer Stefan Karganovic, was an example of such attempts, trying to draw attention to Srebrenica whose problems still wait to be solved. Even though the symposium participants did not negate “the committing of a grave military crime by the armed forces of the Republic of Serbia in July, 1995”, they were confident that “that was not a genocide.” Based on the available proof, the symposium participants drew the conclusion that the death toll of Muslims was greatly exaggerated , whereas there were no proofs of the fact that the crime was committed on orders from the civil administration or RS military commanders, as well as the evidence of the assumption that 8,000 Bosnians died there.
S. Karganivić noted that as the number of alleged Bosnian victims appear to be growing from one year to another; the number of Serbian victims is proportionately decreasing. According to Belgrade’s forensic pathologist, after he investigated 2,211 bodies only 584 people were murdered (shot, as the expert believes, in the course of hostilities), the cause of death of about 1,000 people could not be determined, and 421 people died during artillery shelling. The Serbian expert explains the method of calculations that increases the number of Muslim victims: “When body fragments and even bones were found, each of them was registered as representing one dead person.” As for the main element, the counting of the number of victims, according to expert Henri Levi, it is determined in the global force centres, primarily in Washington.”4.
The materials collected by the Hague tribunal over more than a decade that were to be proof of “the genocide in Srebrenica that Serbs were responsible for” indicate nothing but the fact that there is virtually no such proof. What appears to be the evidence is a video of the death [punishment of six Muslims in the Treskavica mountains, more than a hundred kilometres from Srebrenica (but there are no proofs of the authenticity of this footage), the mass graves of Muslim militants taking part in the hostilities in eastern Bosnia (that lasted for three years); there is no explanation of the fact of the absence of several thousands of bodies of the victims of “the massacre” (about 2,000 bodies were exhumed over the five years of intensive search). The verdict to the former commander of the Drin Corps of the army of the Republic of Serbia in Bosnia general-lieutenant R.Krstic, (sentenced to 46 years behind bars but later reduced the term to 36 years) despite the confirmation of the fact that he had not issued any criminal orders, was based on the so-called “participation in a criminal act”, the capture of Srebrenica. As regards another defendant accused of “the greatest crime since World War II”, deputy commander of the First Infantry Brigade of the Republic of Serbia on security M.Nikolic, in exchange for his consent to give testimony against other figures in the case, in the spring of 2003 the General Prosecutor’s office called off its main accusations against him. The deal M.Nikolic had with the tribunal was a principal precedent, and two weeks after his testimony another defendant followed his footsteps, D.Obrenovic, colonel in the army of Bosnian Serbs, who in the course of investigation also rendered the tribunal “invaluable services” providing detailed information about the activities of Serbian army officers in the course of the Bosnian war. Owing to this, the prosecutor’s office cleared him of accusations of “genocide.” In other words, in the absence of the Hague tribunal resorts to the practice of accusing one group of defendants with the help of another, who agreed to cooperate, providing necessary testimony.
