Elida Bucpapaj—Interview with Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, Bota Sot,

May 29, 2005

Bucpapaj:  The Bush administration has decided on a new strategy designed to finally settle whether Kosovo will become fully independent of Serbia or achieve a “hybrid status.”  Richard C. Holbrooke has applauded the initiative. Does the AACL applaud this initiative, too?

Cloyes DioGuardi:  The Albanian American Civic League applauds the decision of the Bush administration to bring the unresolved status of Kosova back onto the front burner of U.S. foreign policy.  We believe that the West’s failure to act since war’s end in June 1999 to resolve the final status of Kosova, and in particular to recognize the independence of Kosova, has posed a threat to the security and political and economic viability of Southeast Europe.  The unresolved status of Kosova also poses a threat to America’s vital interests, because every time that Europe is at risk of war, America pays the price.  The AACL believes, as do our friends in the U.S. Congress, that the only way to prevent renewed violence in Southeast Europe and to resolve the political, economic, and social problems that plague the Balkans is to resolve Kosova’s final status now.  On this point, four members of the U.S. government have made statements that I think Albanians worldwide and members of the international community concerned with Southeast Europe need to take seriously.

The first statement was made by Senator Joe Biden in Chicago in September 2002.  He said that, “The United States must now create stability in relation to two simultaneous phenomena that impact the Euro-American relationship:  the passing of fifty years of the “iron curtain” and the reassertion of the Balkans after five hundred years.”  The two phenomena are critical to the future of Albanians everywhere.  As the victims of racism, expulsion, and genocide under hostile Slavic regimes since the late 19^th century, Albanians in Tito’s Yugoslavia (in Kosova, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the Presheve Valley) were second-class citizens.  When the “iron curtain” fell, Albanians emerged as the most pro-Western, pro-democratic force in the former East bloc.  Unfortunately the West has continued to embrace the least democratic force in the region, namely Serbia, and the Belgrade propaganda machine has reinforced this by falsely portraying Albanians in the Western capitals of the world as a “Muslim majority” in the heart of Europe that poses a threat to Western Christendom and as an irredentist force that seeks to change Europe’s borders.  Serbia knows that it will not be able to reoccupy Kosova, and so it is agitating for a “compromise” that will enable it to annex northern Kosova.  Partition has always been the goal of Belgrade.  This puts the future of Kosova at risk and opens the door to renewed conflict in Southeast Europe.

In 1913, the Balkans emerged from more than 500 years of Ottoman rule.  In the 1980s, it began to emerge from forty years of Communism.  Throughout, the region has been viewed by Western Europe as a backwater.  Today

Europe, along with the United States, is beginning to realize that Southeast

Europe must be integrated into the rest of Europe if Europe wants to remain peaceful and prosperous.  Albanians must work at a political level in Brussels and in Washington to educate the West that integration cannot take place until the Milosevic system is dismantled in Serbia, including its foundation of racism against Albanians and Bosnian Muslims.

Some elected officials in the West understand this, but their numbers are few.  This brings me to a second statement from someone who does understand—Congressman Tom Lantos, Ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.  On May 18, 2005, at a House International Relations Committee hearing on Kosova, he said that “Anyone with any understanding of the region knows that there is no way that Kosova can return to the status of a province of Serbia.  This is not an option.  The overwhelming majority of the population of Kosova are ethnic Albanians who have vivid memories of Serb violence and atrocities just a few years ago.  …Belgrade will now have to decide whether Serbia will join the European Union and participate in Europe’s prosperity and future or whether Serbia will struggle to retain Kosova.  If Belgrade chooses the latter course, it will end up without Kosova and with no possibility of joining Europe.  We must help Serbia understand the choices it faces.”

The third statement that I think that we need to consider was made by  Congressman Henry Hyde, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, in December 2002 in New York City and subsequently in Washington.  He said that “there will be no jobs without peace and stability, but there will be no peace and stability in the Balkans without an independent Kosova.”  With 70 percent of Kosova’s population under the age of 30 and more than 60 percent unemployment, the status quo is unsustainable.  Without independence, Kosova cannot get the large loans from international monetary institutions that it needs to build the kind of infrastructure that will attract foreign investment and jobs. 

And this brings me to a fourth statement from Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, which he made to the board of the Civic League in Washington in February 2005.  Our policy of leaving Kosova in limbo has meant, Rohrabacher said, “that we are stealing the lives of Kosovars.”  This for me is the real and tragic consequence of the West’s foreign policy in Southeast Europe, especially as the United States is touting the spread of democracy in places like the Ukraine and Iraq.

Bucpapaj:   Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns announced the Bush administration’s position on Kosova in his Congressional testimony on May 18, when you, Ms. Cloyes DioGuardi, on behalf of the AACL, announced yours. I

want to ask you if, between your speeches, you shared common points of

view about Kosova?

Cloyes DioGuardi:  Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and I did not speak to each other on May 18.  He and his colleagues left the hearing after he presented his testimony.  I agree with the following points that Undersecretary Burns made to the Committee on International Relations:  that, in his words, “the murderous policies of Milosevic and others created Europe’s most divisive conflicts and worst human rights abuses since the Second World War”; that the time has come to determine Kosova’s political future; that, Kosova’s “undefined future satisfies no one and leaves open the possibility of renewed ethnic violence”; that Kosova’s unresolved status “prevents it from developing a stable economy”; and that the “parallel, Belgrade-funded institutions, most notably in Mitrovice, must be dismantled or integrated into Kosovo’s structures.”

However, my viewpoint diverges from Undersecretary Burns when it comes to the outcome of final status and the steps that must be taken to achieve lasting peace in Southeast Europe.  Mr. Burns informed Congress that we do not know what Kosova’s final status will be.  I believe that the Bush administration, like the Clinton and Bush administrations before it, carries the false notion that halting the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia is the key to lasting peace and that Kosova can somehow be integrated into Europe as part of a confederation with Serbia and Montenegro.  I believe that allowing the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia to proceed by recognizing the independence of both Kosova and Montenegro (with a plan to end discrimination against Albanians and other minorities in Montenegro) is essential to achieving lasting peace.  Montenegro does not want to be tied to Serbia anymore than Kosova does. 

In addition, Undersecretary of State Burns insists along with the UN and Europe that “launching a process to determine Kosovo’s future status” depends on “Kosovo’s leaders continuing their progress on a set of UN-endorsed standards that are designed to ensure the presence of basic values of multiethnicity, democracy, and market orientation….”  While there is nothing wrong with achieving these standards (something that the overwhelming majority of Kosovars want), I believe, with Congressman Lantos, that up till now the standards have been used primarily as a delaying tactic to postpone final status resolution and to deny independence.  At the same time, I simply cannot understand why Serbia, the country that perpetrated genocidal wars for a decade in the Balkans, is not subject to the same standards, along with Montenegro and Macedonia.  And here is where I think that the primary problem lies.  Undersecretary of State Burns mentioned more than once on May 18 that the United States will insist that Belgrade arrest and transfer to The Hague Bosnian Serb war criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karazdic.  But this laudable goal will not achieve the democratization and de-Nazification of Serbia, which is essential to bringing peace and prosperity to the region.  The fact that the Contact Group, according to Undersecretary Burns, envisions status talks that “involve dialogue between Belgrade and Prishtina” reinforces for me that the

West continues to follow the failed foreign policy of the past two decades, a policy that rewards the perpetrator of genocidal warfare. 

Bucpapaj:  Bishop Mark Sopi, Fr. Lush Gjergji, and the Hon. Ardian Gjini also testified at the May 18 Congressional hearing in Kosova.  Their participation was organized by the Albanian American Civic League.  Do you think that your delegation achieved its goals in Washington?

Cloyes DioGuardi:  We definitely achieved our goals.  This was a very important full House International Relations Committee hearing on “the current and future status of Kosova,” which followed the reintroduction in January by Congressmen Lantos and Hyde, the leaders of foreign policy in the U.S. House of Representatives, of H.Res. 28, now H.Res. 24 in the new 109^th Congress, calling on the United States to recognize the independence of Kosova now.  The Civic League was deeply concerned about the misrepresentation by the Serbian Orthodox Church and Belgrade’s lobby in Washington of Albanians as fundamentalist Muslims who posed a threat to the Christian West--when in reality Albanians, who have been Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Muslims coexisting peacefully for centuries, represent an ideal of interreligious harmony that few nations have obtained.  We felt that it was important, and Congressman Hyde agreed as the Committee’s chairman, to have the leading Roman Catholic clerics in Kosova address the Congress about this issue, and also to have a member of the Kosova government, in this case, Ardian Gjini, discuss Kosova’s status.  I believe that our team did an excellent job. 

I knew in advance of the hearing that Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns would represent the Bush administration on the first panel.  I also knew that our Albanian team of witnesses would follow as the second panel, and that representatives from the Serbian government and church would be on the third panel.  What I did not know until The Washington Post published a major article in the first section of the paper the day before the hearing is that Nicholas Burns would announce a new Bush administration strategy for the Balkans.  This was an immediate signal to me that the work of the Civic League, constantly keeping the issue of Kosova’s independence on the front burner in Congress in the postwar period, had succeeded.  Previously, the State Department had tried to convince the House International Relations Committee not to hold hearings on H.Res. 467 and H.Res. 28.  In October 2004, both State and Belgrade were convinced that H.Res. 28 would go no further after a decision to vote on it in the Committee was postponed.  When H.Res. 28 was reintroduced as H.Res. 24 in January, Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic called for a special session in parliament to discuss a strategy for dealing with “the Albanian lobby” in the United States.  When Congressman Hyde fulfilled the promise that he made to the House International Relations Committee in October to hold another hearing on the status of Kosova and announced the May 18 hearing, the State

Department clearly decided to try to jump in front of the issue by choosing to send a top-level official to the hearing and to signal its intentions to resolve the unfinished business of Kosova’s status. 

Nevertheless, I come out of the hearing with a major concern.  And that is that I hope Albanians in Kosova do not get lulled to sleep because America has decided to take a major role in launching final status negotiations.  America has taken the step to ask the Contact Group and the UN to come to the table, but the chief negotiator, not yet announced, will be a European.  And as I said before, Belgrade will also be part of the dialogue.  The outcome is by no means assured, and therefore the Kosova government, in particular, should work vigorously in the Western media and with the Civic League in Washington to define Kosovar Albanian history, reality, and vision for the future, instead of doing precious little on this front while Belgrade works overtime to promote its opinions and exercise its influence.  Since the end of the war, the Serbian government has done an effective job of creating a false parity between the perpetrators and victims of genocide in the Balkans, and their success in this is due in part to the lack of a strategic plan on the part of Albanian officials in Kosova and other parts of the Balkans to counter Belgrade’s false propaganda in the West.

Bucpapaj:  The International Community, especially the European Union is putting pressure on Kosova President Ibrahim Rugova to meet with Boris Tadic. Ibrahim Rugova has rejected a tête-à-tête meeting with the Serbian president and accepted only an international one.  Do you have any comment about this? 

Cloyes DioGuardi:  I agree with President Rugova’s stance on this.  I do not see how such a meeting could be fruitful, when Serbia holds the power of a sovereign state and when Boris Tadic has publicly rejected the will of the people of Kosova for independence.  I think that President Rugova and other Kosovar officials should meet with Serbian elected officials after Serbia acknowledges that Kosova will be independent.  Then they can sit down to hammer out positive bilateral arrangements for political and economic cooperation.