BELGRADE - Serbian President Boris Tadic stated that he expected the opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the accordance with international law of Kosovo-Metohija’s unilateral declaration of independence would be positive for Serbia, as the case represented a violation of international law.

“The decision will probably be broadly defined and I mostly expect a positive outcome for Serbia, as the fact is that international law has been violated,” Tadic said.

Tadic told the journalists that, apart from the violation of international law, the ICJ would take into consideration the danger of an ethnically motivated secession in international relations and global security.

“If one such case is legitimized or convalidated, which in my opinion is clearly contrary to international law, we could have dramatic political crises across the world with inconceivable outcomes,” Tadic stressed.

He said that the case of Kosovo-Metohija, defense of Serbia’s territorial integrity and Serbian legitimate interests, has an extraordinary international significance, which is why all major forces are taking part in the hearing before the ICJ.

Vecernje Novosti
December 1, 2009

New details in Kosovo organ trade case

-[H]undreds of Kosovo Serb civilians were kidnapped by the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999, to be taken to neighboring Albania and murdered for their vital organs, which were later sold in the black market.
Now, the newspaper says, it has emerged that after the 1999 NATO attacks on Serbia, four Czech citizens also went missing in Kosovo. According to this, it is suspected that they too became the victims of the human organ trade in northern Albania.

BELGRADE:- Some EU member-states will very soon join the investigation into the fate of kidnapped Kosovo Serbs, a Belgrade daily writes.

The case, known also in the media as the Yellow House, after a house in northern Albania where the victims were allegedly held before being murdered, was picked up last year by the Serbian War Crimes Prosecution.

The prosecution believes that hundreds of Kosovo Serb civilians were kidnapped by the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999, to be taken to neighboring Albania and murdered for their vital organs, which were later sold in the black market.

Now, the newspaper says, it has emerged that after the 1999 NATO attacks on Serbia, four Czech citizens also went missing in Kosovo. According to this, it is suspected that they too became the victims of the human organ trade in northern Albania.

Serbian investigators will soon visit some of the countries in the region where the potential witnesses are, according to the report.

“Recently, the border police discovered several men transporting drugs,” the daily’s source close to the investigation said.

One of them had 30 kilograms of heroin in his possession, while the other carried five. The third, it turned out, was a human trafficker. Police immediately placed them all in custody.

“As time went by,” said the unnamed source, “they started talking, and said that the drugs were being trafficked from Kosovo to the EU market. During the interview, some names popped up that were mentioned before in the human organ trafficking case. To us, that meant that a connection had been established, and that we got ourselves new witnesses – two, it appears, immediate witnesses.”

But the source could not say where the witnesses were or when they might be interviewed regarding the case, and explained that the reason for the secrecy was also their safety.

“We found out that their bosses and accomplices in Kosovo left them high and dry and that they were on their own now,” the source said.

According to unofficial information, however, one of the witnesses has confirmed the location of a mass grave where about 20 bodies of the victims had been buried.

The investigation about these crimes has expanded beyond Serbia’s borders.

The Foreign Ministry is currently working to establish connections with European institutions that would help the domestic investigators interview potential witnesses by means of bilateral cooperation.

Meanwhile, War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic would not comment on the daily’s report, saying only, “It’s true that we have new findings. But, the investigation is ongoing. We expect to have a much clearer picture by the end of the year.”

Serbian News Network - SNN

news@antic.org

Itar-Tass
December 1, 2009

Canada blocks three documents for Russia-NATO Council meeting

BRUSSELS: has blocked the adoption of three documents for a ministerial meeting of the Russian-NATO Council scheduled for December 4, Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin told Itar-Tass on Tuesday after an emergency session of the Council at the level of envoys in Brussels.

“Canada’s actions evoke most different reactions in Brussels,” he said.

At the same time a reliable source in NATO expressed the hope that officials will manage to coordinate the documents and the current situation will not hamper the ministerial meeting on December 4.

According to the existing information, the two parties were drafting three documents, including that on the intention of Russia and NATO to conduct the first-ever joint survey of security threats and a protocol on amendments to the work of the Russia-NATO Council.

The ministerial meeting will be the first official meeting of such level after the conflict in the Caucasus.

Serbian News Network - SNN

news@antic.org

Russian envoy: Kosovo in Russia’s heart

BELGRADE: Russian ambassador to Serbia Aleksandr Konuzin said that Russia will continue to help defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia.

“Kosovo echoes in the hearts of all Russians with the same pain as it does in your hearts,” Konuzin said on Saturday at the election assembly of the United Serbia party.

He said that relations between Belgrade and Moscow are on the rise.

Konuzin said that the recent visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Belgrade was “important for the united past” of the two countries, because a number of agreements which speak of the development of a special friendship between Serbia and Russia were signed, and because his visit marked the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Belgrade during World War II.

He said that there will be cooperation between Belgrade and Moscow in the fields of infrastructure, energy, traffic, defense, economy and stopping natural catastrophes.

Serbian News Network - SNN

news@antic.org

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Radovan Karadzic has filed a motion challenging the legitimacy of the U.N. war crimes tribunal prosecuting him for allegedly masterminding Serb atrocities throughout the Bosnian war.

In the motion released Monday, Karadzic claims the Security Council overstepped its powers when it created the court in 1993.

The decision to create the temporary tribunal, “was an erroneous interpretation of the meaning and scope of the established powers of the Security Council in order to vastly exceed them,” Karadzic wrote.

Prosecutors did not immediately respond to the former Bosnian Serb leader’s motion, the latest in a string of legal challenges he has mounted to standing trial.

He wrote the nearly 3,000-word motion, which cites Greek philosopher Aristotle and French political thinker Montesquieu, with the help of a Serbian academic, while also protesting that he does not have enough time to prepare his defense.

Karadzic boycotted the start of his trial in October, saying he needed more time to get ready to defend himself against 11 charges including two counts of genocide. He was arrested in July 2008, 13 years after he was indicted.

His trial is scheduled to resume March 1.

Karadzic has refused to enter pleas, but insists he is innocent of charges that he ordered atrocities including the shelling and sniping campaign that killed thousands of civilians in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, and the July 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men in the U.N.-protected Srebrenica enclave.

If convicted, the 64-year-old faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Judges have already rejected an earlier claim by Karadzic that the tribunal had no authority to try him because American peace envoy Richard Holbrooke had promised him immunity from prosecution in exchange for Karadzic dropping out of public life. Holbrooke, now President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, denies ever making such a deal.

Karadzic wrote in his latest motion that, regardless of the tribunal’s response, he “believes it his moral duty in the light of history and before the general public, to challenge the legal validity and legitimacy of this court.”

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By Aaron Gray-Block and Fatos Bytyci

AMSTERDAM/PRISTINA - A U.N. court will hear Serbia’s challenge to the legality of Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence this week in hearings that will determine how smoothly Kosovo can win international recognition.

Serbia rejected Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2008 and asked the International Court of Justice in The Hague to give an advisory opinion on the declaration’s legality.

A ruling in Kosovo’s favour would lead more countries to recognise its independence, while an adverse opinion would push it into negotiating a new settlement with Serbia, said Andre de Hoogh, senior lecturer in international law at Groningen University.

Kosovo sought formal independence from Serbia nine years after a NATO bombing campaign drove out Serb forces to stop the killing of ethnic Albanians in a 1998-99 counter-insurgency campaign.

Most Western nations have recognised Kosovo’s independence, but neither Serbia, its former ruler, nor Russia has done so.

In its August 2008 request to the U.N. Security Council, Serbia said an advisory opinion from the ICJ would “go a long way towards calming tensions,” avoiding further negative developments in the region and “facilitating reconciliation.”

The Balkan state added that U.N. member states would benefit from the legal guidance, which would “enable them to make a more thorough judgement on the issue.”

RULING IS MONTHS AWAY

Kosovo’s independence has been recognised by 63 countries, 22 of which are European Union member states, but it will need many more before it can become a full U.N. member state.

“An advisory ruling in Kosovo’s favour — that would change the political dynamic,” and accelerate the pace of international recognition, De Hoogh said.

he said a ruling against Kosovo could complicate matters, not only for western countries that have recognised its independence, but also for Kosovo itself which might then have to negotiate a settlement with Serbia.

About 120,000 Serbs still live in Kosovo, more than 5 percent of the population, and a controversial solution previously suggested was to partition the country, allowing the Serb-populated north to become part of Serbia and granting independence to the mainly ethnic Albanian south.

“Partition is not a solution and it might create more disorder,” said Ilir Deda, executive director of the Kosovo think tank KIPRED.

Kosovo, cherished by Serbia as the cradle of its Orthodox Christianity, has been under U.N. administration since 1999 and about 12,600 NATO troops still oversee a fragile peace.

Nine days of hearings are scheduled before the 15-judge ICJ panel, starting on Tuesday, and 30 countries are due to make oral statements, including the United States, Russia, China and Serbia. Kosovo will also make a statement on the first day.

Kosovo and 36 member states have already filed written submissions, which are confidential but may be made public on Tuesday.

11/20/09: Opinio Juris reports that the ICTY has appointed Richard Harvey, a barrister with Garden Court Chambers in London, to serve as Dr. Karadzic’s stand-by counsel. Harvey has defended a number of individuals accused of terrorism-related offences in the UK and has served as the lead counsel in one ICTY case (Lahi Brahimaj), as co-counsel in one ICTY case (Haradin Bala), and as co-counsel in one ICTR case (Juvenal Kajelijeli).

The UN criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has told former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic he must stay with the London barrister who was appointed to him.

Tribunal judges have ruled Karadzic cannot appeal against the court’s decision to assign legal counsel, after he earlier boycotted proceedings.

Karadzic’s trial has been adjourned until March 2010 to give his new defence lawyer time to prepare for the case against him, including war crimes charges from the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Mr Karadzic had been representing himself but boycotted the first three days of his trial, arguing he needed more time to prepare his defence.

Under the new rules he will still be able to represent himself, but will have to work with the appointed lawyer.