NATO In Kosovo: No Plans Settled

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Violence flared up in Northern Kosovo with NATO soldiers using tear gas against local Serbs who tried to stop their barricades being dismantled. But as political analyst Nikola Tanasic told RT, NATO has not shown that it has a clear vision of wh

­It’s not the first time NATO troops have used force against local Serbs. But originally the peacekeepers moved in to calm the area. According to Tanasic, at the moment NATO forces have been acting somewhat erratically.

“When they initially moved in, they were part of the solution, because the Serbian government authorized their taking control over the administrative crossings in the north, but that kind of intervention lasted only a month and a half. And now this time has expired, and NATO has not shown it has a clear vision of what it wants to do. Most times, like yesterday, they are just policing for the Kosovo government, and that is the kind of behavior that is unacceptable for the Serbs,” he said.

He added there is no doubt that NATO has a legitimate presence in Kosovo. It is not a problem of whether they should be there as they are the only legitimate force which should act in such situations. The problem, as he sees it, is that they are exceeding the limits of their authority.

The Serbian interior minister said that further attacks on local Serbs in Kosovo will be seen as attacks on Belgrade and that “Serbia cannot and will not watch on peacefully”. But according to Tanasic, no one in Belgrade has any intention to making any threats.

“The whole point of what was said was just to draw everyone’s attention on how tense the situation is and how inflammable it is at this point. The whole problem there is that they do not want to sit all night at the barricades,” he explained. “People are really scared. There are threats all the time, there are incidents on the Albanian side, there are people getting shot and there is a great number of people, especially from the Albanian side, who are constantly threatened with the so-called Croatian scenario. There is also the fact that up to two thirds of the Serbian population in Kosovo has already been ethnically cleansed. Belgrade is not making any threats at this point,” he emphasized.

Tanasic also stated that technically and ideally speaking, the problem will be solved if everyone just entered the EU and started living peacefully in a union with no borders.

“The problem is how to get there. The Serbian side is constantly saying ‘All right, we are completely aware that we have to find a solution for the problem at some point in the future, but we do not want to rush it and we will never agree to any kind of solution which is unacceptable for both sides’. That is not something we are facing at the moment. We have Serbia pressurized to find a solution now, although both Serbia and Kosovo are very far from the EU at this point. So it is mostly a sort of a political pressure and not an actual option at this point,” he concluded.

RT

RT, previously known as Russia Today, is a global multilingual news network that is funded by the Russian government and has been labelled as a propaganda outlet by the US State Department.

One thought on “NATO In Kosovo: No Plans Settled

  • November 25, 2011 at 1:29 pm
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    Separating Kosovo from Serbia was just a NATO device; this was necessary in order to secure an excuse and site for the largest overseas US Air Force Base since Viet Nam. This base was/is a vital component in the imperialist wars in the Mid-East.

    The ethnic and cultural differences between native Serbs and later arriving refugee Albanians were just a convenient overt excuse to screen covert reasons and involvement; I.e. NATO invented fraudulent reasons; The ethnic cleansing charges against Serbia were as per Sadaam’s alledged WMDs, inaccurate .

    The technique was similar to what was later used for “regime change” in Libya only there the excuse was “protecting civilians”

    Who protected whom?

    Of course there can be no going back to Kosovo as a Province in Serbia but at least some justice would be served by transferring those northern areas that are still populated by Native Serbs to Serbia.

    Reply

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