War crimes charge for Kosovo PM

[MaineDem]

The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, has been charged with war crimes by the UN tribunal in The Hague, Kosovo government sources say.

The officials - who were not named - said he would resign and fly to The Hague on Wednesday.

Mr Haradinaj, a former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was investigated over his role in the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict.

He led ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo's western region.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4328613.stm

[pnutchuck]

1. Looks like trouble's brewing in the wake....

snip

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - The United Nations has raised its threat level and NATO is sending
extra troops to Kosovo in case of ethnic unrest following the war crimes indictment of Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj,
officials say.

"Five hundred British troops flew into Pristina on Monday night," said Captain Sarah Erikson, a spokeswoman for the
NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR, on Tuesday. "There have been indications the security situation is not as good
as we want it to be."
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5586410

[Vladimir]

2. This will solve nothing

I doubt many Serbs in Kosovo will feel comforted by his arrest, and it will matter even less to the many non-Albanian refugees still to return since being expelled in the aftermath of the 1999 conflict. And I can't imagine the Albanian community will feel ecstatic about their PM going off to the Hague - after more than five years of being run as a protectorate one would imagine they are getting as fed up as anyone else that a solution is not in sight. Why Del Ponte did not bring these charges much much earlier (it has been known for years that the leadership of the KLA is not exactly Mother Theresa, after all) is a question that beg answering. I suspect it was politically unfeasible to do so in 99/00, but now is hardly a less delicate moment. Questions, questions...

[Wright Patman]

3. The reason for the delay

is that this was sold to the public as Clinton and Clark's "good war" against "genocide."

It was bogus from beginning to end. You can count the number of "good wars" throughout history on the fingers of one hand.

The KLA worked with Al-CIAda and was financed by Iran and Saudi Arabia. NATO under Clark used the KLA to destroy what was left of Yugoslavia so that it would not resist the Borg of the European Union.

There were no "good guys" in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. From Croatia's Tudjman to Serbia's Milosevic to Bosnia's Izetbegovic to this guy, they were all crooks and liars, sort of like the guy we have in the White House now.

[Vladimir]

5. The more I think about it

the more it seems the delay was manufactured to sabotage the talks due to be held later this year. If it had been just about making the KLA look good, he would never have been charged. I think NATO is uneasy about a political solution for Kosovo that would involve a pullout of foreign troops, and are trying to delay it as much as possible.

[struggle4progress]

4. kick