Serbia will defend her sovereignty
Prime Ministerial Adviser Aleksandar Simic says that there is still no solution to the Kosovo crisis anywhere in sight, but that Serbia intends to defend its province of Kosovo-Metohija by all the means it had at its disposal.
“When someone fails to respect the Security Council, the only body that ought to react in times when there is a threat of aggression and war, particularly when someone does not observe Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter and the resolution that was adopted in line with it, then there is nothing else a country can do,” Aleksandar Simic said late on Tuesday, in a live broadcast on Radio-Television Serbia (RTS).
Asked what was missing in Serbia’s daily claims that it would fight for Kosovo using all legal and political means, he replied that war was also a legal means, when no other options to defend state sovereignty and territorial integrity remained.“Serbia has had negative experiences from the armed clashes during the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, and this is why we are more prudent and cautious now but, of course, state interests are defended by war as well — every state has the right to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity by all means necessary,” Simic stressed.
The Numbers Game — Only Around 1 Million Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo Province
A lawyer by profession, Simic also pointed to the numerous manipulations with the numbers in the Balkans in general, and in Kosovo-Metohija province in particular. He said that the constant claim in the Albanian and Western press that there are “close to two million ethnic Albanians” in Serbian province is false, and that the latest provisional elections, where allegedly only around 43 percent of Albanian voters have taken part in the elections, have confirmed the earlier census data according to which there is no more than 1,1 – 1,2 million of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Therefore, the percentage of those who voted is much higher in reality, since these provisional elections in the province were considered crucial in giving the vote for independence, but the heavily blown up numbers that have, on paper, doubled the ethnic Albanian population supposedly residing in Serbian province of Kosovo, have left an impression that less than half of them voted.
If there is only around one million of ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province, that also means that there is at least 25 percent of Serbs remaining in Kosovo — significantly more than commonly parroted 10 or even only 5 percent of Serbs remaining in Kosovo-Metohija.
If, on the other hand, the number of ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province has indeed doubled to up to two million within the past few years, than such a poor response in the key elections, whereby less than half of ethnic Albanian voters took part, can only mean that the majority of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo couldn’t care less about independence, and would have no objection to Serbian offer of autonomy within Serbian state. A referendum in Kosovo-Metohija which would show the true mood of majority of Kosovo Albanians might be a good idea after all.
U.S. Couldn’t Give Part of Serbia to Albanians Back in 1999, but that’s What they Promised and Want to Deliver Now
Simic said that the attempts at negotiating a mutually acceptable solution between Serbian officials and Kosovo Albanian separatists have failed due to Albanian separatists refusal to even consider Serbian proposals and, generally, refusal to hear out any proposal except granting them independence. According to Simic, there is currently no agreement between Russia, which seeks continuation of negotiations and United States, which insists on granting independence to the Kosovo Albanians in southern Serbian province, thereby imposing dismemberment of another UN member-state, sovereign Serbia.
Simic explained that the attempted negotiations were unrealistic in the sense that they boiled down to delivering the independence on a silver platter, as the United States promised to Kosovo Albanian separatists back in 1999.
“The independence was not realized back then because the illegal bombardment of Serbia had to be covered up by returning the issue back into the UN legal system, i.e. the UN Security Council and its Resolution 1244,” Simic said, adding that the West is now deciding whether to take it out of the legal framework once again and wrap the illegal and unlawful unilateral declaration of independence into the so-called “recognition of reality” or a fait accompli.
http://byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2007/12/serbia_considers_war.html