'Greater Albania' is no model

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It is interesting to note that the United States could see Kosovo as a model for Iraq and Afghanistan ("U.S. sees model for nation building," Page 1, June 13). If "success" means the destruction of 300 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries; if "success" means ethnic cleansing of over 250,000 Serbs from their ancestral homes, all under the noses of the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR); if it means the final eradication of Serbia's culture, language and religion in Kosovo; if it means handing Kosovo's government over to war criminals such as former Kosovo Liberation Army political leader Hashim Thaci, then, indeed, Kosovo is a huge success and should be used as a "template," as suggested by U.S. Brig. Gen. John E. Davoren.

According to the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service), Mr. Thaci is one of three KLA kingpins who run the Albanian Mafia rackets in Kosovo. Mr. Thaci is also known for eliminating anyone who crosses his ambitions. During a trip to Kosovo, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright gave Mr. Thaci a kiss on the cheek right after he had just executed six of his top officers. Let's call a spade a spade. Mr. Thaci - nicknamed "the Snake" by his admiring comrades when he was the commander of the KLA, once listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department - should be called what he really is, a terrorist who has taken over the baton as prime minister from another terrorist, the KLA leader Agim Ceku, who, according to Jane's Defence Weekly, was linked to two of the grisliest episodes of brutality against Serbian civilians in the Yugoslav war.

In her book "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals," Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor at The Hague, reveals the gruesome details of the hundreds of Serb prisoners whose bodies were stripped of their organsduring the Kosovo war. According to her sources, senior figures in the KLA were aware of the scheme, in which hundreds of young Serbs were reportedly taken by truck from Kosovo to northern Albania, where their organs were removed.

Miss Del Ponte provides grim details of the reported organ harvesting and of how some prisoners were sewn up after having kidneys removed. Miss Del Ponte also wrote that the claims were made by several sources, one of whom "personally made an organ delivery" to an Albanian airport for transport abroad, and "confirmed information directly gathered by the tribunal." Miss del Ponte further writes, "The victims, deprived of a kidney, were then locked up again, inside the barracks, until the moment they were killed for other vital organs. In this way, the other prisoners were aware of the fate that awaited them, and according to the source, pleaded, terrified, to be killed immediately." Mr. Thaci is accused of benefiting from the trade when he was Kosovo's prime minister.

Not surprisingly, Miss Del Ponte has been forbidden by the Swiss government to promote her book,saying the book does not befit her new role as an ambassador.

What is impossible tobelieve is that our administrations, past and present, have jumped into bed with the KLA terrorists in support of an "independent" Albanian Kosovo. Not a pretty picture.

Kosovo is to the Serbs what the Wailing Wall is to the Jews, what the Vatican is to the Roman Catholics and what Mecca is to the Muslims. As though 500 years were not enough, when Serbs suffered under the Ottoman yoke, the West has doomed them once again to liveunder the heel of theiroppressors. Instead of a "Greater Serbia," we now have a "Greater Albania," complete with a newly created jihadist country in the heart of Europe.

Finally, the question that should seriously be asked is this: If the Serbs ethnically cleansed Kosovo Albanians, as has been claimed, then why are the Kosovo Albanians over 90 percent of the population and the Serbs, who were once the majority in their Jerusalem, fewer than 10 percent? Kosovo Albanians became the majority by crossing illegally from Albania into Christian Kosovo. Kosovo Albanians already have a country, and that country is Albania.

STELLA L. JATRAS

Camp Hill, Pa.