Reaffirming our wish to become fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic family of democracies.We, the democratically elected leaders of our people, hereby declare Kosovo to be an independent and sovereign state.
We declare Kosovo to be a democratic, secular and multiethnic republic, guided by the principles of non-discrimination and equal protection under the law.
We shall protect and promote the rights of all communities in Kosovo and create the conditions necessary for their effective participation in political and decision-making processes.
We accept fully the obligations for Kosovo contained in the Ahtisaari Plan, and welcome the framework it proposes to guide Kosovo in the years ahead. We shall implement in full those obligations including through priority adoption of the legislation included in its Annex XII, particularly those that protect and promote the rights of communities and their members.
We shall adopt as soon as possible a Constitution that enshrines our commitment to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all our citizens, particularly as defined by the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Constitution shall incorporate all relevant principles of the Ahtisaari Plan and be adopted through a democratic and deliberative process.
We welcome the international community's continued support of our democratic development through international presences established in Kosovo on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999).
We invite and welcome an international civilian presence to supervise our implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan, and a European Union-led rule of law mission.
We also invite and welcome the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to retain the leadership role of the international military presence in Kosovo and to implement responsibilities assigned to it under UN Security Council resolution 1244 (1999) and the Ahtisaari Plan, until such time as Kosovo institutions are capable of assuming these responsibilities.
We shall cooperate fully with these presences to ensure Kosovo's future peace, prosperity and stability.
"We are heartened by the fact that the Kosovo government has clearly proclaimed
its willingness and its desire to support Serbian rights in Kosovo. We also
believe it's in Serbia's interests to be aligned with Europe and the Serbian
people can know that they have a friend in America."
It's a scary thing, like a new born baby trying to eat, trying to walk, trying to venture out on his own. Is he ready? Will he fall? Will he FAIL? Can we support him and help him, if so how and how much? Very fragile new life.
ReplyDeleteDebbie Hamilton
Right Truth
That's a big thing!
ReplyDeleteMust be good to get away from the Serbs. Oh, the 1990s were nasty in that respect. Could have used some earlier American power...
I still say it's an International moral crime to allow Kosovo such an easy ride.
ReplyDeleteThe Serbs carried out atrocities there is no doubt about that but the fat that the Albanians were the original aggressors who have taken the very heartland of the Serbs seems missed on many.
NATO bombed the Serbs but that doesn't necessarily mean they are the 'bad guys' in this.
It's also dangerous for Europe, which Americans might not fully grasp. Kosovo is a haven for international jihadis and their border has just been recognised further into the heart of Europe.
Basically it is like Mexicans flowing into Texas, then claiming it as a separate nation. I do not see these magical words of the new President of Kosovo lasting for long.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2988
ReplyDeletePretty well sums it all up.
Perhaps. Or, after a decade of protection and marginalizing influences - a case could be made they really mean it. Certainly doesn't sound like any call to a caliphate.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Victor Davis Hanson is correct:
"Quite apart from the undeniable merits of independence, in political terms Kosovo 2008 is not quite Kosovo of 1998. Let us count the post-9/11 ways:
1. The rise of radical Islam, especially in Europe, has made Western publics edgy about Muslim-identified states, especially inside Europe.
2. Russia is no longer a basket case, but rearming, aggressive, overflowing with petro-dollars, and eager to use oil — and more — as a weapon.
3. Milosevic is long dead.
4. For six years there has been a steady anti-American drumbeat in Europe and caricatures of the use of “preemption” and “unilateralism”; Euros have so turned off Americans that there is no support for reintervention to solve a “European” problem that should of course, if it worsens, be adjudicated at the Hague and other European Utopian agencies.
5. This was a Clinton thing, and predated George W. Bush. The current tension reminds us of our forgotten American Balkan presence, that seems to have been necessary for the past decade — and without a treaty no less! And did we ever ask Congress to bomb over there, or did we go to the sacrosanct U.N.? Suddenly there are few liberal Harry Reid/Nancy Pelosi talking points to be heard on Kosovo.
6. After Afghanistan and Iraq, there is no likelihood that Americans want a third war, especially for Kosovo. Can you imagine the EU begging the Texan, twangy Halliburtonite, bible-thumping George Bush to please do something now!? I imagine right now President Bush is getting a different sort of phone call from his European friends, “Yo George?”
7. Yet given NATO’s dismal performance in Afghanistan, it has little fides in the Balkans, and the American attitude might be ‘you didn’t want to fight much for Afghanistan, so why should we for Kosovo?’
8. There is some EU support, especially in Eastern Europe and among Orthodox and Greek-speaking communities, for Serbia. Perhaps unfaddish and most un-European, but support nonetheless.
Where does all this leave us? It might be a fine and noble thing for the Kosovars to have their own state like the rest of the regions of the former Yugoslavia. But let us pray that neither Serbia nor Russia calls the Western bluff about guaranteeing Kosovar autonomy, because in the present climate it really would be, well, a big fat bluff."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTliZmY2NDgzMjYwMjk1YzRkZWFlYjYzNDNmM2VjM2U=
There is a chance that a baby democracy can be born. Maybe not a good one, but a chance none the less.
Oh great! Just what the world needs, another Muslim state, and in Europe no less! If the Kosovar Albanians wanted to be independent Albanians why didn't they just move to Albania? Why the need to take Serbia's heartland, as Beaman correctly identified it? Something dirty is afoot here, and I fear we won't get it until it blows up in our faces.
ReplyDelete