December 27, 2005

KiM Info Newsletter 27-12-05

Serbs protest Kosovo shootings

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Serbia-Montenegro, Dec 27 (AFP)

Some 1,000 Serbs took to the streets of Mitrovica on Tuesday, voicing their anger after two Serbs were shot and wounded in the ethnically divided town in Kosovo.

"The latest attacks show that ethnic cleansing is happening," shouted protesters at the demonstration in the centre of the mainly Serb-populated northern part of the town.

"If UNMIK (the UN mission in Kosovo) cannot guarantee our security, there is only solution left -- the return of Serbian military and police" to the province of Kosovo, they said.

The gathering was held in response to the shooting of two ethnic Serbs in Mitrovica early Monday. Both victims were taken to hospital, and one of them is recovering from an operation on gunshot wounds to his stomach.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations and NATO since June 1999, when the alliance's intervention ended a crackdown by Belgrade-controlled forces against separatist ethnic Albanian rebels.

More than 200,000 ethnic Serbs have since fled the province fearing reprisals from Albanians after the 1998-1999 conflict, according to Serbia's government.

Out of the estimated 80,000 Serbs who remain in Kosovo, some 30,000 live in enclaves in the central part of the province, as ethnic tensions remain high.

Albanians, who outnumber Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo by more than nine to one, are seeking independence from Serbia in the recently opened talks on the province's future status.

Leon Kojen on the Negotiating Platform of the Serbian Team 

(Interview to Politika daily, Belgrade, December 27, 2005)

After last week’s announcement by the UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari that the dialogue on decentralization will commence with the Albanians in Vienna at the end of January, member of the team for the political talks on the future status of Kosovo and Serbian President Boris Tadic’s Advisor, professor Leon Kojen stresses that decentralization is of key significance for both the Serbs in Kosovo and the Belgrade authorities, but also the fact that, along with the participation of international mediators, both the Serb and Albanian side will be at the negotiating table for the first time.

What will be the central topic of the talks in Vienna?

Our side has suggested, and Ahtisaari and his deputy Albert Rohan have accepted this, that the first topic be some new and significantly broader competencies for the local self-government in Kosovo. At the Vienna meeting in September we presented in detail what would have to be included in these competencies, and now we expect a concrete debate on this with the Kosovo Albanian representatives. If we reach an agreement on that, the next step would be the establishment of new municipalities with a Serb majority everywhere in the province where conditions for this exist (in northern Mitrovica, central Kosovo, Kosovo Pomoravlje and in Metohija). Both topics will be some sort of a test for Rugova and his negotiating team. We will see after Vienna whether their conjuring of human rights, democracy and European values is simple rhetoric, as it has been so far, or if there is readiness for the first time to resolve the burning issues of the Serb community such as security, freedom of movement and return, in a civilized manner.

Who will make up our team at the first meeting in Vienna?

Both President Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica devote special attention to represent the Serbs from Kosovo most adequately in the decentralization talks. They made up the majority of our delegation at the September meeting in Vienna: Goran Bogdanovic, Marko Jaksic, Randjel Nojkic and Milorad Todorovic. I believe all four of them will be in our delegation now as well, because they are also political representatives who live in different parts of the province, so they know all the problems the Serb community is facing in Kosovo for five years now.

What can you say about the platform presently prepared by our negotiating team?

That platform will include stands that are already known and widely accepted both in the state leadership and in the public. Its strong points are the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia and the SCG, then essential autonomy with international guarantees as our offer to the Kosovo Albanians, and finally, an all-encompassing decentralization (including guaranteed institutional links between the Serb municipalities and Belgrade and a protection for the Serbs from being outvoted in the provincial assembly) as a solution for the position of the Serb community in Kosovo. Decentralization is a term that is used by the international community, but I think that, along with adequate clarifications, a better term is “Serb entity.” This way, it is clearly pointed to the fact that at issue is not only local self-government, but also a solution that should provide a normal life for the Serbs in Kosovo and the return of the refugees to the province.

How is President Tadic’s plan harmonized with the ideas insisted on by the Serbian Government?

Along with two-three useful specifications, the Serbian Government has accepted that plan when it received it. It further examines the ideas on decentralization, already relied on by the state leadership policy, and it also brings some new solutions that will be incorporated into the negotiating platform on which we are presently working. On the other side, the resolution on Kosovo that was adopted in the Serbian Parliament mainly speaks about the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country and its stands on this issue will certainly be one of the main points of the negotiating platform. These are, thus, two complementary documents whose main ideas are not in any discordance. The negotiating platform will, in any case, be the state leadership’s most compact document on Kosovo so far. It will offer more precise answers to a series of concrete questions regarding the province, so it will also remove some of the doubts emerging in the public, for example regarding the precise meaning of the formula “more than autonomy less than independence”.

One can often hear, especially among the international public, the remark that Belgrade hasn’t explained what that formula means. How would you respond to that?

If that formula is so unclear, nobody abroad would be repeating it. It clearly shows that Belgrade is ready for a political compromise, and this is its main advantage. Under the condition that the sovereignty and integrity of Serbia and the SCG are not violated, the state leadership is ready to respect the legitimate interests of the Kosovo Albanians and enable them to be the masters of their fate in the economic, social and, to a great extent, the political life. But, they must recognize the same right to Serbs in the province, just as they have to accept what the Serbs in B&H had already accepted, that, in view of the international law and the need for regional stability, the change of state borders is an undesirable matter in Europe today.

Terrorists said to be getting aid in Balkans

HOUSTON CHRONICLE (USA)
Dec. 27, 2005, 2:35AM

Crime gangs that control the smuggling routes are making their infiltration easier

By GREGORY KATZ
Houston Chronicle Foreign Service

BELGRADE, SERBIA - A hidden alliance between terror networks and organized crime gangs that control heavily used smuggling routes in the Balkans is making it easier for terrorists to infiltrate Western Europe, according to law enforcement officials and intelligence experts.

In addition, prosecutors in Serbia believe that in some cases the money earned by people traffickers is used to support terrorist activities in Europe, which has been hit by several major terrorist attacks in the last two years, with many others prevented by police raids.

A key problem is lax border controls throughout the region. Many borders, such as the one between Romania and Serbia, are wide open to gangs that smuggle people, heroin and goods.

Europe's battle to contain the spread of international terrorism has been hobbled by such porous borders, which each year allow tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants to enter. So many people are sneaking into Europe that authorities admit they do not know exactly who resides in their countries, complicating the effort to prevent more terrorist attacks.

"This is a paradise for al-Qaida," said Marko Nicovic, former police chief in the Serbian capital Belgrade and a director of the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association. "For Europe, it can be a disaster at any time because the authorities don't know who is there and they don't know who is who. The attacks in Madrid and London showed that."

Traveling freely

Once illegal migrants reach Serbia overland from Eastern Europe, police say they can easily cross into Bosnia and then Slovenia, thus entering the European Union. At that point, they can take advantage of weak or nonexistent border controls to travel freely to France, Spain, Germany and other countries on the continent.

Police officials believe that most of the migrants are law-abiding people looking for work, but they caution that the migration gives terrorist gangs a way to move sleeper cells into the West while also fueling tensions between Western Europe's Muslims, the fastest growing minority on the continent, and the rest of society.

These tensions surface in a number of ways: the deadly attacks on transit systems in Madrid and London, intense rioting in France, death threats against secular politicians in the Netherlands, and legal battles over the right to wear Muslim scarves and headgear to public schools.

While smuggling gangs are using Serbia as a transit point, some Muslim militants seems to have established a base in neighboring Bosnia.

Officials warn that several hundred militants who came to Bosnia to fight on behalf of Muslims there during the war in the 1990s have remained in the country to attack the West.

In October, police in Bosnia uncovered an apparent plot to blow up the British Embassy and found a large cache of weapons and explosives along with propaganda vowing to retaliate for the U.S.-and-British-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Swede and a Dane were also arrested in that raid, and there were follow-up arrests in Sweden that suggested the Bosnian extremists had operational ties to Western Europe, investigators said.

Disturbing pairing

Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist at the Swedish National Defense College who testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, said the presence of Islamic militants inside Bosnia makes it an attractive gateway into Europe for terrorists.

"They came in ten years ago, that was the first warning signal, it was the embryo of what became al-Qaida in Europe," he said. "The Iranians are supporting activity there, and the Balkans have become the crossroads where we see the merger of Islamic extremist groups who reach out to organized crime groups."

Ranstorp said well-established organized crime networks in the region provide the terrorist gangs with routes for people smuggling and with phony identification documents.

"People being smuggled in add to the security threat," he said. "Most are economic migrants but hand-in-hand with that are people in organized crime who allow terrorism to be possible. They move in the same circles and need the same things. If you want to tackle terrorists, you have to tackle the supporting environment, the organized crime rings and the human trafficking rings."

The migrants enter Europe in many ways. Some travel on land through Serbia and the other countries of the former Yugoslavia.

Others take trawlers or dilapidated fishing boats across the Mediterranean bound for southern Spain or Italy. Still others simply fly into the continent's many hub airports.

'New generation of jihadis'

A large number of immigrants formally apply for political asylum in their new countries, giving them the right to a legal review that can take years.

Others destroy their identity documents, making it difficult for authorities to determine their nationality.

Many come from predominantly Muslim countries like Morocco, Pakistan and Afghanistan where jihadis committed to waging holy war against the West are active. This sentiment has grown in ferocity since the United States and Britain invaded Iraq two years ago, according to analysts and enforcement agents.

"There is clear, unmistakable evidence that the level of terrorist activity that has killed and injured people has soared to unprecedented levels since we invaded Iraq," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and State Department counter-terrorism specialist now working in the private sector.

"Iraq is creating a new generation of jihadis looking for places to live in Europe," Johnson said, "and they have this festering resentment that is usually at the core of terrorism. They will take up residence with existing communities or form new ones in Europe.

"It doesn't augur for a great future."

Serbian investigators maintain they have uncovered a prime example of the cozy relationship between terrorism and people smugglers. It involves a Bangladeshi suspect believed by prosecutors to be making more than $150,000 per week bringing people into Western Europe through clandestine routes.

Training camps in Bosnia

Mioljub Vitorovic, the Serbian special prosecutor for organized crime cases, said he believes, but cannot prove, that some of this money was being paid to support the families of suicide bombers who have carried out attacks in Europe. He also believes a number of jihadis from Bangladesh have gathered at training camps inside Bosnia.

The prosecutor complained that the suspect, whom he declined to name, appears to have some high-level protection because he has been able to flee whenever police are closing in.

Prosecutors in several countries are gathering evidence about the gang, he said.

"This is a huge case involving Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and the whole region is looking for the leader of the operation, who is this Bangladeshi," Vitorovic said. "He was involved during the Bosnian war and he's using his connections to bring people across the borders. We have information about the money he is making. This is from listening to his mobile phone conversations."

He said he had warned intelligence officials in Western Europe about the threat posed by this people-smuggling operation but was ignored.

That changed, he said, after the July 7 suicide attacks on London's transit system, carried out by British Muslims linked to overseas groups, revealed how dangerous the situation had become.

"Now they are paying much more attention to the situation here," he said.

'Using all channels'

Serbian Border Police concede they are outmanned and outgunned in the losing battle against well-organized smugglers.

"It's very easy for them to cross the Danube," said Col. Dusan Zlokas, chief of the Serbian Border Police. "We need more boats, we need radar, we need thermal imaging, we need binoculars with night vision, we need everything.

We don't have the technical capacity to provide border security."

He cited the arrest in Serbia in March of a Moroccan accused of taking part in the deadly 2004 attacks on the Madrid train system that killed nearly 200 people as proof that international terrorists are using Serbia as a transit point.

"The biggest number of recruited terrorists is coming from this illegal immigrants community," he said. "It is a very vulnerable society and easy to recruit in. For sure, this jeopardizes Western Europe and the U.S.

"This is the crossroads of the trade in illegal immigrants, weapons and drugs and no one can say terrorists cannot pass. They are using all channels."