The Serbian Lobby Attempts to Hijack U.S. Foreign Policy on Kosova
by Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi
With signals coming out of the Contact Group that the Prishtina-Belgrade negotiations will soon consider the issue of Kosova’s final status, there has been much jubilation in Albanian circles. Almost seven years since war’s end, elation about the prospect of ending Kosova’s political, social, and economic limbo as a UN protectorate is understandable. Nevertheless, it may also be premature.
As Kosova moves closer and closer to becoming an independent state, the Serbian lobby in Washington (including the Serbian Unity Congress and representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the United States, Belgrade, and Kosova),
have intensified their efforts to derail Kosova’s independence. Knowing that the Contact Group and other international bodies are prepared to impose a solution if final status talks break down this summer (and I believe they will),
the Serbian lobby is waging a war in the press in a last-ditch effort to sway official and public opinion in the United States in its favor.
Their goal is to secure the partition of Kosova—which has always been Belgrade’s endgame—by instilling fear in the United States, especially in the U.S. Congress in a post 9/11 world, that Kosova’s Albanian majority represents a Muslim, potentially terrorist, force in the heart of Europe. In reality, Kosovar Albanians, like Albanians everywhere, are largely secular Muslims,Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox Christians who have lived together in harmony for centuries. Albanians, who see themselves first as Albanians and second as people of faith, pride themselves on their religious tolerance. This has been given no better expression than in the fact that Albania (with help from ethnic Albanians in Kosova, Montenegro, and Macedonia) is the only nation that can claim that it rescued every Jew who managed to get inside its borders during the Holocaust.
Serbia’s media war is a dirty war—not only because it is spreading anti-Albanian racism and misusing religion to gain political advantage in the West—but, above all, because it is placing news reports and op-eds in major U.S. newspapers that are written purportedly by “neutral” political and religious analysts, who are actually connected to the Serbian lobby and their well-known law-lobbying firm in Washington, DC. In what follows, I will attempt to expose the leading actors in this effort (which is directed at winning over unwitting American readers) and establish their interrelationships. In my opinion, it behooves the political leaders and all the people of Kosova (the Albanian majority and the Serb, Roma, Turk, and Ashkalli minorities), the Contact Group, the United Nations, and the European Union to oppose Belgrade’s efforts to undermine the international effort to bring peace to Southeast Europe once and for all.
Lexoni me shum ketu:
http://www.empoweredbuilder.net/aacl...erbian_eng.htm
Joseph DioGuardi- Ndihma per Kosoven
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