Kosovo leaders declare ‘independence’

The independence declaration did not change Kosovo’s status in the slightest. It remains a colony of NATO, as it has

The United States, Germany, France, Italy and Britain, the leading powers of the NATO alliance, hailed the phony declaration. They immediately proceeded to recognize the government they themselves had empowered. Since 1999, the five have each occupied a sector of Kosovo with 16,000 NATO troops and thousands more police. The U.S. military has constructed a huge military base in the Connecticut-size province.

Serbia, Russia, China and many other countries condemned the imperialist-engineered and unilateral secession. So did the Serb, Roma, Turkish and other minority nationalities in Kosovo. The majority of Kosovo’s population is Albanian.

In the northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica, thousands of demonstrators staged militant protests against the secession. U.N. checkpoints in the city and elsewhere were burned in protest of the United Nations’ collaboration with the United States and other NATO powers.

Thousands marched in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. The Slovenian Embassy and U.S.-based companies such as McDonald’s were attacked. Slovenia currently holds the presidency of the European Union.

Kosovo’s secession is illegal under international law. The U.N.-brokered agreement ending the 1999 war required a “political agreement” on the future of Kosovo. But the so-called independence declaration was taken without—and contrary to—the assent of the Serbian government. This is another episode where Washington invokes international law when targeting certain countries but ignores it when it gets in the way of pursuing its objectives.

Cynical support statements for Kosovo’s right to “self-determination” by Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials starkly contrast with U.S. opposition to the same right for Palestinians and other oppressed peoples.

Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations made Kosovo’s real status clear in a widely covered Dec. 5, 2007, press conference in New York. “When Kosovo declares independence if it should do so, it will not become fully sovereign. It will remain under the trusteeship of the international community even as it builds new political institutions and attempts to extend those institutions throughout the territory of what would then be a sovereign Kosovo.”

“International community” here should be understood as the United States and NATO.

Simply put, Kosovo itself will remain a colonized and occupied territory. The United States and major European

Thus continues the process of chopping the former Yugoslavia into smaller and more controllable pieces, despite the fact that Serbian president Boris Tadic’s government is pro-United States and has joined NATO’s “Partnership for Peace Alliance.”

A joint statement by 17 Communist and Workers’ parties issued in Lisbon, Portugal, condemns the farcical independence declaration. Among the signers are the Communist parties of Cuba, South Africa, Greece, Portugal, Syria and the Russian Federation.

Speaking of the secessionist move, the statement reads: “It bring serious dangers for the peoples, triggering border changes, threatening to engulf the whole region in a new escalation of conflicts, wars and international interventions, and raising a dangerous international precedent. Our Parties voice against the secession of Kosovo from the Republic of Serbia. We demand that all governments refrain from recognizing the Kosovo independence as well as from dispatching troops in the area.”