E.U. Woo's Serbia

According to the Irish Times ....

The European Union urged Serbia today to make clear it saw its future with Europe and laid out incentives on visas, education and transport to try to boost the bloc's image in the Balkans.

[snip]
But the row with Belgrade over Kosovo has raised concerns that Serbia could shun the EU and turn towards Russia in future.

This reminds me of abusive husbands to hit their wifes and then buy them flowers afterwards. How many E.U. states would be happy for some foreign power (say China) to come along, slice a part of their country off, declare it independent and then demand they be happy about it? Serbia should remember abusive boyfriends don't change and stick with Russia.

More on Kosovo

Kosovo declared independence last week and the mainstream western media declared it "a triumph of freedom and democracy" - so you know instantly it's not that. Via informationclearinghouse comes this essay by Paul Graig Roberts as to possible reasons why the U.S., Britain, Germany etc where so quick to recognise the breakaway province while simultaneously so quick to demonise (again) the Serb's for daring protest the ripping apart of their own country

To neocon Khalilzad a province of Serbia is nothing. It is merely real estate to be given away by US recognition bestowed on a break-away movement led by what some consider to be a gang of Muslim drug runners.

Secretary of State Condi Rice also found the Serbian response to the US giving away part of their country to be “intolerable.”

There is also this essay by Jeremy Scahill which gives a little more background to Serbia's current woes

A month before the [1999 ]bombing began, the Clinton administration issued an ultimatum to President Slobodan Milosevic, which he had to either accept unconditionally or face bombing. Known as the Rambouillet accord, it was a document that no sovereign country would have accepted. It contained a provision that would have guaranteed US and NATO forces "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout" all of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. It also sought to immunize those occupation forces "from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in [Yugoslavia]," as well as grant the occupiers "the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment." Additionally, Milosevic was told he would have to "grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO." Similar to Bush's Iraq plan years later, Rambouillet mandated that the economy of Kosovo "shall function in accordance with free market principles."

[after the bombing stopped] It didn't take long for the US to begin construction of a massive US military base, Camp Bondsteel, which conveniently is located in an area of tremendous geopolitical interest to Washington. (Among its most bizarre facilities, Bondsteel now offers classes at the Laura Bush education center, as well as massages from Thai women and all the multinational junk food you could (n)ever wish for). In November 2005, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described Bondsteel as a "smaller version of Guantanamo." Oh, and Bondsteel was constructed by former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.