Newsgroup: it.cultura.militare
Titolo: la vera ragione della spinta alla secessione del Kosovo voluta dagli  USA (E non solo)

Gates, in Kosovo, Highlights U.S. Balancing Act on Russia
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/world/europe/08gates.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
PRISTINA, Kosovo — The United States will maintain its troop presence
in Kosovo until at least late next year, Defense Secretary Robert M.
Gates said on Tuesday, underlining American support for the country,
which declared independence in February in defiance of Serbia and
Russia.
Mr. Gates’s visit was the first by a United States cabinet member
since Kosovo’s independence declaration and the first here of an
American defense secretary since 2001. At a time when Russia has been
seeking to assert its political and economic clout in the Balkans and
the Caucasus, Mr. Gates’s presence served to reinforce American
intentions in the region.
His arrival began a week of meetings with European defense ministers,
during which the United States is expected to reassure allies in the
former Communist bloc about their prospects for joining NATO and the
West, even as Russia seeks to show former Soviet republics and
satellites that doing so comes at a price.
Mr. Gates said that the United States wanted to balance the need to
show Russia that its war with Georgia in August had altered Russian-
American relations, with an effort to keep avenues open for
cooperation on significant issues like Iranian nuclear proliferation.
“We have to figure out the right path in terms of the reality that we
have to do business with Russia on important issues,” he said, “but at
the same time convey the message that it can’t be business as usual
after what happened in Georgia.”
After meeting with Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and President Fatmir
Sejdiu, Mr. Gates pledged to maintain the level of American troops in
Kosovo, where the United States has about 1,600 soldiers, part of a
16,000-member NATO peacekeeping force. He also said the United States
would continue to provide Kosovo with military equipment and
training.
The pledge of support was enthusiastically received in Kosovo, a pro-
American country where a main street is named after Bill Clinton, and
above a hotel is a copy of the Statue of Liberty.
Still, the conflict between Russia and Georgia casts a shadow. After
the brief war, Russia recognized Georgia’s two breakaway enclaves,
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as independent. The Kremlin said Western
support for Kosovo had given it the moral and legal right to do so.
Some analysts contend that the events in Georgia have undermined
Western diplomacy in Kosovo by giving credence to those who argued
that Kosovo’s independence would spur other secessionist movements in
Europe and beyond. A recent report by the International Crisis Group,
a research organization, said the European Union and the United States
were “struggling to come to terms with Russia’s attempts to portray
its support for breakaway regions in Georgia as a mirror image of what
they did in Kosovo.”
At the same time, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership is showing
increasing concern about Serbia’s attempt to expand its influence over
the administration of the Serbian-dominated northern part of the
country, which threatens to effectively partition the country.
Already, dozens of Serbian police officers have abandoned Kosovo’s
multiethnic police force and pledged allegiance to Serbia, while
Serbia and Kosovo’s Serb authorities have made clear that European
Union police officers deployed in Kosovo will be unwelcome in the
north.
Mr. Gates was emphatic that the United States opposed partitioning
Kosovo. “I do not believe partition is a solution now or at any time
in the future,” he said. “The United States supports the territorial
integrity of Kosovo.”
Kosovo’s fragile independence could suffer a psychological blow on
Wednesday, in a vote scheduled at the United Nations on a Serbian
challenge to the legality of Kosovo’s independence. Serbia is seeking
permission from the United Nations to request an opinion from the
International Court of Justice in The Hague, which would be nonbinding
but symbolic. So far, only 47 of the 192 members of the United Nations
have recognized Kosovo’s independence, and Serbia is confident that it
will obtain the simple majority it needs to seek the court’s legal
opinion.
Vuk Jeremic, the Serbian foreign minister, expressed his hope in a
recent interview that if the case were sent to the International Court
of Justice, other countries would be discouraged from recognizing
Kosovo, and nations that had recognized Kosovo would reconsider.
Kosovo’s stability has also been undermined by the question of which
international organization has authority to supervise the territory.
Kosovo’s new Constitution calls for the European Union to assume an
oversight role now exercised by the United Nations. But Serbia and
Russia insist that this would be illegal because it has not been
approved by the United Nations Security Council, and they have moved
to block it. The result, analysts said, is a messy patchwork of
overlapping institutions that threatens to create a security vacuum.

 in Kosovo until at least late next year
AHAHAHAHAH, che buffone pazzesco! Come se senza guerra in Georgia se
ne sarebbero mai andati...