28.2.2008, 10:17
| #1 | |
 Anėtarėsuar: 8.2006 | |
| Kosovo is not Quebec Val Percival, Citizen Special / Published: Thursday, February 28, 2008 Canada should stop hiding behind the fleur-de-lis and recognize Kosovo's independence from Serbia Canada should join its allies and recognize Kosovo's independence. Quebec is not Kosovo, and Canada is not Serbia. Hiding behind the fleur-de-lis misconstrues the path of Kosovo's independence and the precedent it sets. By all means, the international community should remain concerned for the conflict-generating potential of secession movements. According to data collected by the University of Maryland, 26 armed self-determination conflicts were festering at the end of 2006. Yet, these conflicts are not intractable: 15 conflicts have been contained and six settled since 2000. And critically, these settlements rarely result in independence. Autonomy and decentralization agreements and efforts to recognize minority rights effectively stem independence aspirations. But where such options have been tried and failed, or when distrust is so high that no amount of power sharing will bring about peace, there is no other alternative but independence. Kosovo is one such case. While always restive, Kosovo's Albanians, who comprise 90 per cent of the population, were content with the autonomy status provided for them in the 1974 Yugoslav constitution. In 1989, Milosevic revoked this autonomy, forced Albanian politicians from office, fired Albanian civil servants - including university professors - imposed the Serbian education curriculum and put in place a series of oppressive laws (such as annulling the sale of property from Serbs to Albanians). The Albanians responded with almost a decade of passive resistance to this oppression, undertaking an independence referendum and establishing a parallel system of government. After that passive resistance failed to bear fruit, the armed struggle by the KLA - the Kosovo Liberation Army - began in 1998. Throughout the late 1990s, the international community attempted negotiations, observation missions and high-level mediation. While the KLA were no angels, Belgrade was intransigent, making little or no effort to concede to the demands of the Albanian community. As violence against Albanians escalated, NATO bombed Serbia with the objective of stopping attacks against civilians. Serbian forces responded with ferocity: more than a million Albanians were driven from their homes, and thousands were killed, including prominent politicians and human rights activists. When the war ended in June 1999, the United Nations was charged with administering Kosovo, establishing substantial autonomy, and facilitating a political settlement to determine Kosovo's future status. The UN built self-governing and democratic institutions at the local and central level. It set benchmarks in the areas of governance, rule of law, and fiscal responsibility that the province had to achieve before status discussions could begin. Yet no one was under any illusions - Albanians wanted independence, and believed that such independence was a critical precondition for their security. Over the past two years, the United Nations finally addressed the status issue, first appointing special envoy Martti Ahtisaari to develop a plan, and then brokering extensive negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo on the final status settlement. When these negotiations failed, with Serbia refusing to negotiate any terms for Kosovo's independence and Albanians refusing to accept anything less, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence. To signal its intent to co-operate with the international community, Kosovo accepted constraints to its sovereignty as laid out in the Ahtisaari plan, and vowed to respect the territorial integrity of its neighbours, to allay fears that Albanian regions of Macedonia and Serbia would join the new state. None of this means that independence in Kosovo will be smooth. Kosovo's Serb and Roma minorities have faced extreme hardship, discrimination and violence. While recent years have seen violence abate, the ethnic riots that briefly swept Kosovo in 2004 are a stark reminder of the fragility of Kosovo's ethnic détente. The recent demonstrations by Serbs in the north - encouraged by Belgrade - signal their fear of living as a minority in an Albanian dominated country. But this can be managed, and independence remains the best option to avoid a return to widespread instability throughout the province. So why is Canada hesitating? Many have mistakenly argued Kosovo's declaration of independence violates the terms laid out in the Clarity Act. First, there is a clear will to secede - indeed the will is so clear that no right-minded person would waste money on organizing a second referendum. Second, efforts have been made to negotiate with Serbia. The international community brokered months of failed talks over the terms of Kosovo's secession. There is simply no parallel with Canada - if a strong majority of Quebec's population wanted to secede from Canada, negotiations would ensue. Indeed, to suggest Quebec is comparable to Kosovo is highly insulting. The federal government firing civil servants whose first language is French, banning the sale of land from English to French Quebecers, and imposing an English curriculum on Quebec? As for the risk that Kosovo's independence gives hope to secessionist groups, the evidence demonstrates that independence aspirations can be controlled. Policy makers should instead emphasize the precedent that Kosovo sends to majority communities in ethnically divided states: the refusal to protect the rights of linguistic, religious, and ethnic minorities can be costly. So Canada can hold its head high, recognize Kosovo's independence, and say with confidence that the preconditions laid out in the Clarity Act have been met. And we can cite our continued and ongoing dialogue with Quebec as a signal of the strength and sustainability of our federation. Val Percival was the project director for the International Crisis Group in Kosovo from 2001 until 2003. She now teaches conflict and public health at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. © The Ottawa Citizen 2008 http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...3-f73d6c5e9263 |
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1.3.2008, 10:40
| #2 | |
| Anėtarėsuar: 8.2006 | |
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March 1, 2008 at 12:00 AM EST Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence on Feb. 17 has provoked a spate of articles and comments relating it to Canada in particular, to a hypothetical act of that kind by Quebec. The knee-jerk reaction of the Parti Québécois, the Bloc Québécois and their supporters is that any such declaration by any entity anywhere, followed by some countries' recognition, is a precedent for an enacting of unilateral secession by a vote of the National Assembly of Quebec. That is nonsense unsupported by international law. Daniel Turp, the PQ's international relations critic, said in a CBC-TV interview: "A people decides to become a country and other countries recognize that fact. And in this case what is special is that Serbia is against [the] independence of one of its component parts, and the United States, France [and] other countries ignore this objection. "So if one day Quebec decides to become a country and Canada objects . . . we'll remind other countries that an objection of a state should not have precedence over the will of the people." Instead of likening Quebec to Kosovo, Mr. Turp ought to have looked at how Montenegro, another part of the former Yugoslavia, became independent in 2006 with some real influence from Canadian experience. Canada has wisely chosen to wait and think before recognizing Kosovo, because there are good arguments on both sides. But whatever Ottawa decides, no such recognition would be a precedent that could be used for the independence of Quebec. Quebec separatists do themselves a grave disservice in drawing any analogy between Quebec and Kosovo. The ethnic conflicts in the Balkans go back a thousand years, and the way Yugoslavia broke up is like nothing that Canada has ever known. In the mid-1990s, Serbian forces massacred several thousand ethnic Albanian Muslim Kosovars. NATO with Canada's full support intervened to stop the ethnic cleansing, bombed Belgrade, sent troops, including Canadians, to Kosovo, expelled the Serbian army from that province and removed the Serbian authorities. Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president, was jailed and sent for trial as a war criminal in The Hague before the International Criminal Court. For the past nine years, Kosovo has been governed as a United Nations protectorate, while 90 per cent of the people enthusiastically supported their elected officials in their drive for independence. Independence was declared in accordance with a plan prepared under UN auspices by the former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari. In contrast, no Canadian death squads have massacred thousands of Quebeckers. Nor has NATO bombed Ottawa after a declaration of war on Canada. NATO troops have not occupied Quebec for nine years, nor has its government been under UN control for almost a decade. And ninety per cent of Quebeckers have not supported a government dedicated to achieving independence after years of violence and subjugation. YES MEANS YES AND NO MEANS NO In the absence of such improbable circumstances, the only way for a Canadian province to secede and achieve its independence is in accordance with Canadian constitutional law and international law. I was involved as an adviser to Jean Chrétien, when he was the minister of justice at the time of the first Quebec referendum in 1980, and when he was the prime minister at the time of the 1995 referendum. In both cases, the Quebec government asked deliberately ambiguous questions in order to get a "yes" majority for separation. After the fact, Canadians learned that the PQ government of Jacques Parizeau was prepared in 1995, if they won by even the narrowest majority on an unclear question, to declare independence unilaterally, if necessary, and then seek international recognition of the new country of Quebec. Both times, Quebeckers voted "no," on unclear questions. After the close result in 1995, Mr. Chrétien decided to settle, once and for all, whether either a unilateral declaration of independence or a possible "yes" to an ambiguous question would be legitimate, as well as the margin of victory that would be required to break up a country. His government posed these issues to the Supreme Court of Canada in what is known as the Secession Reference. In 1998, the Supreme Court held that international law recognizes that "a people" has a right to secede under the principle of self-determination, but only if that people has been governed as part of a colonial empire, has been subjugated, dominated or exploited, or denied any real exercise of political rights within the existing state's framework. Otherwise, the court said, that "people" may work for independence, but a government that represents the whole population in its territory, in a non-discriminatory way, has the right to maintain that territory as a whole. It said that Quebeckers are not a colonial or oppressed people, and have not been denied meaningful access to political activity. The court concluded that neither the legislature nor the government of Quebec has a right under international law to carry out secession from Canada unilaterally. The Supreme Court also held that a province can only separate in accordance with Canadian constitutional law and that negotiations on the terms of separation can begin only after a referendum with a clear question and a clear majority in favour of secession. In 2000, Parliament passed the Clarity Act, which laid down those requirements as preconditions for any such negotiations. MONTENEGRO DID IT RIGHT In fact, much to the dismay of Quebec separatists, the Clarity Act and the Secession Reference have had international ramifications of major significance. There is now one important international precedent, which I mentioned earlier, to determine the legitimacy of a secession from Serbia. It is directly relevant to Canada as a result of the Secession Reference and the Clarity Act. But it is not Kosovo. In 2006, the Republic of Montenegro, in accordance with the constitution of Serbia-Montenegro, decided to hold a referendum on independence from Serbia. Before the referendum could be held, the European Union cited both the Clarity Act and the Supreme Court's Secession Reference decision, in setting as minimum requirements a clear question and a majority of at least 55 per cent, as conditions for the international community's recognition of a new state after the referendum. Only after both these conditions were met, was the new state recognized. While the recognition of Kosovo by Canada today would not have any future implications for the status of Quebec, there are good arguments that it may still be premature for Canada to do so, until some difficult issues for the future stability of the international community are resolved. Many countries around the world with very different histories and political regimes from Canada's are made up of countless diverse ethnic, religious and linguistic groups, who, like the Serbs and the Kosovar ethnic Albanians, have quarrelled on and off for centuries. There are, as a result, many small and not so small separatist movements, associated sometimes with terrorism and sporadic violence, in many countries in Africa and Asia, and particularly in many of the new ones formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. So it is not surprising and indeed understandable that Russia, China and other countries, concerned about their own internal affairs and stability, and about the stability of their neighbours and their regions, have objected to the recognition of Kosovo, fearing that it might open the floodgates to many more secessions with all the instability that can accompany them. PARTITIONING Furthermore, the possibility of a partition a word that is anathema to Quebec separatists of a new state of Kosovo itself is very real. One secession can very easily lead to another. There are Kosovar districts with ethnic Serb majorities in the north of Kosovo, which, with the encouragement of the Serbian government, have formed a movement to reunite with Serbia. They reasonably ask why the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo should be able to separate from Serbia, if they cannot separate in turn from Kosovo. On the other hand, there is a powerful argument that the special circumstances of Kosovo over the past decade fundamentally distinguish its case from those of other potential secessions promoted by other ethnic minorities. As a result, much of the European Union, many Muslim countries, the United States and others have decided to recognize the independence of Kosovo as legitimate. The stark memories of the atrocities committed in the 1990s in Kosovo are such that any reconciliation with Serbia in the near future is highly unlikely. In these particular circumstances, especially the history of ethnic cleansing, and combined with the fact that we were active participants in the NATO mission, Canada would be justified in according recognition to Kosovo. On balance, we should do so. - Eddie Goldenberg was chief of staff in 2003 and senior policy adviser from 1993 to 2003 to former prime minister Jean Chrétien http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...alComment/home |
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3.3.2008, 21:10
| #3 | |
| | Citim:
Reasonable would, in fact, be the secession of the historically and currently Albanian territories of Presheva Valley, Medvegja and Bujanoc (Presevo, Medveda and Bujanovac) - otherwise known as Eastern Dardany or Eastern Kosova. These lands were unjustly left within Serbia by the International Community after the '99 war. Again because of ignorance and lack of good will. Asking for the Northern part of Dardany is like saying that recent emigrants in the Netherlands should ask for the secession of Amsterdam, just because they went there and have been living there for the last 10 years. | |
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4.3.2008, 10:41
| #4 |
| Bisha  Anėtarėsuar: 8.2006 Vendndodhja: Nė breshta, mes bredhave, | In February 2000, 11.364 Albanian inhabitants of North Dardany, were forced by paramilitary Serbs and Serbian army under the auspices of Russians to leave their homes. During those days there were eleven Albanians killed by Serbian forces. So, North Dardany is not Serbian land, but was "Serbianized" by force the last decade. KFOR was turning a blind eye mainly because of its own bureaucratic procedures. Most of the Serbs currently there are mercenaries and employees of the Serbian secret service. They directly work for the Serbian government and are not proper inhabitants or civilians. Their goal was to get ahold of the mines of Trepēa by securing all the wider perimeter around that area. And that's what the fuss is all about. |
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| Pėrdorimi i ēėshtjes | |
| Paraqitja | |
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Tituj tė ngjashėm |
| Ēėshtja |
| International recognition of North Albania nga VNf nė danėn "Newsfeed" North Albania to privatize Telekom nga VNf nė danėn "Infrastructure" North Albania to privatize power distributor nga VNf nė danėn "Infrastructure" North Albania to print new passports nga VNf nė danėn "Infrastructure" Germany to send more troops to North Albania nga VNf nė danėn "Newsfeed" |
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