Showing posts with label serbia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label serbia. Show all posts

20 Aug 2013

Tito was not a Yugoslav?

Famous Yugoslav communist leader and one of the creators of the Non-Aligned movement, Josip Broz Tito, was not of Yugoslav origin, according to a document on the phonetic analysis of the language he spoke, recently published on the website of the CIA.

tito-stalin-molotov

The CIA document was recently declassified, and in it is noted that Tito spoke Serbo-Croatian, yet, with a foreign accent. In a comprehensive analysis of possible languages which could have been Tito’s mother language, Russian and Polish are the most possible ones.

Vowel ”I” is pronounced the same after soft and hard consonants in Serbo-Croatian. On the other hand, those who have Russian or Polish as their mother language, would pronounce that vowel as soft ”N”, and that’s the way Tito spoke, which was described as foreign accent in the CIA document.

Authors of the document say that it would be logical to assume that controversial Tito was Russian or Polish, but stressed that his identity can only be assumed, and that he certainly isn’t of “Yugoslav origin.” They also note that only Tito’s non-Yugoslav origin was the key to success in dealing with ethnic problems in multicultural Yugoslavia, and his impartiality and persistence. Therefore, that is the reason why Tito in his ruling was not a Serb, Croat or Slovenian, but a Yugoslav.

InSerbia News - B92

28 Jul 2011

EU warns against growing tensions in Kosovo

The European Union has issued a stern warning against a deadly flare-up of violence in Kosovo's Serb-run north, reports Reuters news agency. Ethnic Serbs set fire to a border crossing post in northern Kosovo on Wednesday, after Kosovo's government regained control of the post and a second one late on Monday night.

kosovo borderpost

Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief, said in a statement: "I strongly condemn the violence that has taken place in northern Kosovo. These latest developments are unacceptable". She said that it is the responsibility of the governments in Belgrade and Pristina to restore peace between the two nations.

Armed Kosovo police units crossed into the ethnic Serb-dominated north on Monday in an effort to station troops in a region that takes its orders from Serbia, news agencies said. A Kosovo police officer was shot in the head and died on Tuesday and four others were injured during an exchange of gunfire between police and local Serbs opposing Kosovo's efforts to take control of its border posts.

The same border post was burned down in 2008 by local Serbs after Kosovo declared independence

More on Al Jazeera

29 May 2011

Ratko Mladic capture: Was it all an elaborate set-up?

After years on the run with a $10 million tag on his forehead, the last thing anybody expected Ratko Mladic to do was to give himself away cheaply. Why did the man who professed to prefer the instant justice of a bullet to the humiliation of the Hague come so quietly? Why was he protected only by his elderly cousin, Branko, rather than a team of do-or-die bodyguards? And was it really the result of dogged detective work, as Serb officials claim, or did they know where he was all the time?

ratko_mladic

The remarkable answer, according to Western intelligence sources who have spoken to The Sunday Telegraph, is that far from being a bin Laden-style lightning raid, Mladic’s arrest was an entirely staged event - the result not of police work but of negotiations by diplomats, who spent a whole year hammering out a deal to get him to surrender.

The deal, which suggests Serb intelligence at least had lines of contact to Mladic’s protectors, was sealed by appealing to the Serb hardman’s one known soft spot - his family. Told that they would be looked after properly if he give himself up, the prospect of ensuring the safe future for his wife, Bosiljka, and son, Darko, proved key in changing his mind.

“The negotiations about his surrender lasted slightly more than a year, with mainly French, British and German officials involved,” said one Western diplomat, who asked not to be named. “The Serbs took responsibility to work things out with him, and guaranteed that his family would be taken care of, and that he would get a pension and eventually a decent burial.

More on Telegraph

27 May 2011

Serbia arrests Ratko Mladic to 'lift stain' of Bosnia atrocities

Mladic

Europe's most wanted war crimes suspect, General Ratko Mladic, was arrested in a north Serbian village 16 years after commanding the worst atrocity on the continent since the Nazi era.

The surprise arrest of the genocide suspect, wanted for the mass murder of almost 8,000 men in Srebrenica, turned a page in the history of the Balkans, offering Serbia closure on decades as a virtual international pariah and giving the country a chance to take its place as a pivotal regional democracy eventually anchored in the European Union.

The Guardian