welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle again on the brink after a less than successful election and allegations of organized crime including organ trafficking and heroin smuggling this self-proclaimed country is a threat to its neighbors. and. to discuss the allegations made against kosovo's leadership i'm joined by misha in london he is a political expert on the balkans also in london we have his excellently mozzie he is the albanian ambassador to the u.k. and to the republic of ireland and in new york we go to alan cooperman he's an associate professor at the l.b.j. school of public affairs at the university of texas and another member of our cross talk team yell on the hunger all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect there

are difference of opinions on this program and i'd like my viewers to see them if i go to you alan first the allegations that came out of the council of europe serious allegations against the leadership particular the prime minister of course of zero zero over a week ago or so these are very serious allegations given your knowledge of the balkans how much are you surprised by this and do you think they're true and what about the timing of it all well you know for folks who've been following this for a long time it's no surprise to have a report that says that there is organized crime in cost of and then in fact the leadership in cos and all right now which are descendants of the rebel group the cost of the liberation army that they are connected to this organized crime we've known that all along from from the time the rebellion started in the late one nine hundred ninety s. the latest allegations about trafficking in human. organs are not

new but still not proved but even if those turned out not to be true the reality is that the leaders in causes are descendants of organized crime and the question is how much are they still involved in that sort of organized crime trafficking of drugs track of trafficking of people and now maybe trafficking of human organs as for the timing you know from my perspective i wish that there had been open discussion of this in the late one nine hundred ninety s. and maybe the united states and the u.k. wouldn't have been so eager to support this criminal element coming to power in kosovo but right now that's water under the bridge and we have to figure out how to go forward ok if i go to you me show a lot of people were saying back then exactly what alan just said now it was a mistake to back these people the most violent element in kosovo is politics i mean there are intelligence reports out there that we knew exactly who we were dealing with but at the same time in one thousand nine hundred since the you know

this is we're bringing reference back to that i'd like to quote someone rather well known today fighting for the k.l.a. is fighting for human rights in american values joe lieberman said that in one thousand nine hundred nine i wonder if he would stick by those words today go ahead make sure. well he might do because some control are quite brazen about it and think that independent kosovo is in the interest of the united states but you're quite right many of those things were known at the time and many other things become worse but we have to go back right to the beginning namely to that intervention by nato effectively the bombing of the whole of. and then occupation of kosovo something very unusual is taken place there which has been ignored and it is something that probably indicts not just mr touchett and the k.l.a. it indicts the united states and it didn't die it's nato because for nato to move

in who they've asked not only for withdrawal of the yugoslav army at the time they've insisted on the with their all of the police and all the legal authorities in place in kosovo at the time so he would simply have a program over all this province at that stage with no police from anywhere with all them from new york with all them from london it won't take long before you're going to get increased criminal activity here there was a demand by the united states for the complete with that all of all the legal organs the judges were courts everything so in fact when nato entered kosovo it entered into lawless province and that is where we all start as regards mr touchett well obviously this he's being targeted here by the council of europe and they have fairly detailed reports i should say that goes into some intelligence. reports as

well but indicted along with this are of course all those that have supported mr touchett and that means the nato pass the united states but also the state of albinia because many of the things that are mentioned in the report have taken place. within the would be india there is talk of only. us operating directly from tirana and using albanian territory with the support of the time socialist government of ok so i want to take you out into ok you mentioned albanian we have the ambassador here the a billion bouncer to london and and to also on the irish public or how do you i will react to the allegations that marty made in his report because we have the prime minister of course of all threatening to sue him but i think you know it's fair to say that this investigator dick marty has a pretty good road record i mean two thousand and seven with the extreme rendition

he was proven very correct on though so i mean given his background a lot of people wanted to smirk is character but he's got a pretty good record mr ambassador what do you think about all these charges well i would like to start with the two previous speakers and i think that they put the scene a little bit wrongly or suiting their own particular interests i think that the whole thing didn't start with a k.l.a. in kosovo. the whole thing in kosovo started with the policy of the milosevic regime of serbia which actually had been trampling underfoot all the national. other human rights that every people in every nation should enjoy and as such they had stripped kosovo from the autonomy that it had before completely only laterally abrogated all the organs of course or ninety ninety nine by a decree in belgrade and what is worse and that has been proven by

a lot of international reports is the use then of the military and the paramilitary of the our being mr ambassador we how do you react to the report that is come out i mean and the indictment of the leadership of kosovo today i think on this program we could speak for months and months who did right who did wrong ok i think i would like to invoke saying a lot of wrongs were committed by a lot of people ok full stop but what about this report because the cost of leadership is extreme is an indictment here it's a damning indictment go ahead sir. actually if the center of the discussion today is about the report that's fine i could start with the reports but you didn't ask the question about the reports for the two first speakers and these two gentlemen are known to be a political analysts of the of the balkans or the have the right and he will have an opportunity to respond they certainly will if they will also the really weird and anyway but so we have to put it into perspective when the whole thing started

it was after the entire population of one million had been at gunpoint hours that evicted forcefully at trainloads like in the times of program out of the whole land . and than because of that terrible humanitarian situation with one million people the victims five hundred thousand of whom came to albania four hundred fifty thousand volts or sheltered in macedonia i'm sorry bastard that is it ok mr ambassador i'm sorry again you answer the question we're talking about this report ok. now we come to the report so let's build the let's put the bag around to a clear perspective as it was as it was the beginning of this broadcast the report is a serious one it has very serious allegations and i think that the way we have seen it and we have seen very closely it has. in its entirety been based not on facts there is no one single fact the report writes on things that were

basically written in two thousand and four there are no new evidence if there is new evidence that this gentleman called martin marty whatever he should produce the evidence and not say and not hide behind sheltering be the evidence sheltering the trying to protect the witnesses and so on but you know if there is i can just jump in here now i know how i go ahead problem is that. is that is that the case the k.l.a. and its descendants in the current government in cost of zero uses ruthless tactics against anybody who might testify against them and so the former prime minister of cos of. it was called up to the hague and was prosecuted for war crimes before and after the nato intervention so we shouldn't. take the ambassador at his word that the problem started only after the ethnic cleansing there was criminal activity there were war crimes by the k.l.a.

before serb troops rolled in and did the ethnic cleansing but the fact that there is no right to prosecute. in the hague his cronies started intimidating and threatening with death those who might testify so it's true that it's very hard to get the hard evidence on the record in this case but that's because the k.l.a. threatens to kill anyone who testifies against them mr ambassador this is let me jump in i mean these are all words from oh there's not one single proof that can prove disprove alan the say the fact is that i will try to do what has been indicted not only in a number of others this is still going on that means that albanian serve also been taken into the courts the headache for what has been alleged to have been doing and when because it will come with a final verdict then we can talk about the certainty is that i'm hearing from alan the ok before we go to the story before we go to break and i go to listen to me show jump in even we've only heard you once so far in the program going. there are

a number of misrepresentations you would have to place mr ambassador who simply used one and i notice that in these writings mr kuperman has done it to as well pretty much the. community has done that this is the issue twenty years ago with mr middle should reach port to. removing the autonomy of. of course and doing it unilaterally this is entirely untrue you know ninety nine point nine percent of what the media and the west and i can demick institution are reported is incorrect what has actually happened is of there has been a constitutional change in the status of kosovo and this required the support of all six republics the yugoslav constitution at the time could not simply be changed by simply one republic it required to look complete consensus all right of all i'm

sorry mr i'm going to have to show you here we're going to go to one for english gentlemen we're going to go to a break and work well with this message when we get back after a short break we'll continue our discussion on cost or stay part. of the. it's the secret incursion into the country. it's the invasion by means of. tradition language until you. bestie copied the beat. and culture. the thing is that the had the dozens are still

unaware of what's going on in the land still asking why do you. think i don't know anything about alaska. and our keep. bringing you the latest in science and technology from. the future. welcome back to crosstalk i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing if kosovo is a criminal state. but before let's see what russians think about this issue

a crime boss on top of all prime minister hesham patches democratic party of casa won the country's first post independence general elections many call this ball a significant milestone in the development of the malta ethnic democracy kosovo declared independence from serbia on the seventeenth of february two thousand and eight the russian public opinion research center gauge its citizens opinion on the issue of cost four to seven percent of the respondents say foreign countries should not intervene in their fears of another country and another twenty two percent believe they should nonetheless the west has already come direct related the people of casaba on the election peter ok me should i to go back to you given this report and i would agree with the ambassador let's make sure we get all of the facts out there however dick marty has a good road record in investigating things but. really hasn't nato got so much

blood on its hands right now and so much responsibility pass it over to the e.u. this is a. an orphan within the european union they can wash their hands of this this is their problem now and they have what could be a war criminal and if even worse as their ally in cost of i mean the cows are coming home they supported these people now they're going to have to cover up for him. make excuses more aid money is being poured in there i mean this is really turning into a kind of a somewhat of a nightmare for nato and the us you're so agree with you fully many people would say that this was predictable it was predictable ten years ago first of all of course the whole nato operation was comin all. according to international law but let us face it intervening carrying out effectively an act of aggression was

the supremes walk rhyme at nuremberg that is why the nazi war criminals were being hung you know here you could hang all nineteen nato leaders for that if we wanted to be consistent in this particular case and let us face that cost of war was in fact a forerunner for iraq and a forerunner for afghanistan before that now those lost to iraq and afghanistan are now being treated in the west as to a large extent failed adventures especially iraq but this is not been recognized in the case of kosovo kosovo in fact has been protected so that the west can show at least here we did some good will this is no all being on the ravelled and it is being on the rebel not by let's say china or by russia whoever oppose this but it is being unraveled directly from europe from the council of europe with forty seven members participating in it and i think this is going to put nato and

the intervening powers in a very difficult situation ok but clearly we need to get through in order brought that into cross ok alan if i can go to you alan real quick here here here i was going to alan you know i understand from your writing i think you question here is what do we do and i was going to say you know i know your writings on this that we can't undo what's been done ok the western recognition of kosovo you don't think we should undoing ok that. maybe a different topic for another program but how do we deal with the legacy here because if i could if i could quote dick margin thank you that's why if i could move forward i'd like to quote dick marty from the from there his report here he said he said this on the sixteenth of this month i don't think one can build the future of a country without working towards truth and working without memory you also went on to say there will be never be a peaceful coexistence between the different communities if we continue to pretend not to know and i think that's very how to how do we explain the circled i'm not

i'm doing it because coming to some kind of closure on this go ahead i think the first the first thing that we need to understand as a result of this report is we have to understand the fear of serbs in costs of. the united states the u.k. have been saying for years to the serbs just living costs of under albanian rule that's life just move on and forget the past but if you understand that not only were serbs ethnically cleanse not only were serbs killed not only were certain serb churches and historical sites destroyed but maybe in fact serbs had their organs physically removed they were killed their organs are physically removed and sold you can start to understand why the serbs of cost of zero don't want to live under ethnic albanian rule and that's why it's very very important for us to understand that and to put pressure on prishtina to ensure that they give autonomy to the

serbs the serbs north of the ybarra river in northern cause of o. and also to serve on clay as elsewhere in cos so that's first of all second of all i think that mr marty is is right that if we as i've said i don't think we can reverse history i don't think that we can after seventy two countries recognize the independence of kosovo i don't think we can get them to recognize the independence of kosovo but we can't have a cost of zero in the heart of europe we can have a cause so that's a criminal state. and we so what that means is that we have to instill the rule of law and you don't instill the rule of law by burying crimes you have to uncover the crimes and you have to deal with them and so what we have to say because of all is yes we want you to be a full participant in europe eventually a member of the e.u. but that will never happen until you deal honestly with the crimes of the past those i think are the two most important lessons from this report mr ambassador what do you think about what alan just said. well i think this topic requires quite

a lot of more time than we have at our disposal first as i said all the allegations have been taken seriously by us and we have looked closely at all the paragraphs we see a very clear political bias in what has been said in the reports by the author of the report and this report has not been cleared by the parliamentary assembly of the council if you are the boss is that he's telling the truth for the first time that's the bias and mr ambassador it is what is a genuine what is the agenda then you say he has an agenda the author of this report what is the agenda. i have i have to read the report very carefully and it looks like he tries the whole climate of the whole image of the albanian nation and people on both sides of the border. is one that is thrown mud onto there's a lot of insult on the culture on the traditions of the history and under the

pretext of revealing of the past and revealing the truth i think you cannot in southern asia because this unacceptable at all and what you have been saying is utterly wrong you can talk about a criminal state at the center of your but you are absolutely wrong and the entire message is that the second point let me finish the second point is. he wants to sort of play of a parallel line between what happened in kosovo at the hands of a lot of its machinery of war machinery and what the k.l.a. did which you cannot do and it's absolutely wrong and thirdly in this report there is not any new clear evidence to substantiate what he writes he says he has some if he has some left to reveal everything he has every fact to the ulick's office and possible then when we talk about the fourth point where the course of all is a viable state or not and whether nato has been depicted the way of it i have heard from both you would gentleman is very unacceptable needles hands are not blood stained at all nato did what it was required to do to protect an entire people from

manipulation and actually nato put an end to the balkan wars and we have all the fact they were for doing that otherwise we would have seen probably more atrocities going on in nato in in europe and i don't agree with the terms of what i have heard before this is not the the i would say the civilized language that we would use in television however i have also the right to say that my authorities have in two thousand and four cooperated fully with carla del ponte first team of fifteen prosecutors coming from the heart from the hague and they concluded that there is absolutely no evidence. whatsoever so there is was no need to open a case dick martin himself visit dublin in two thousand and nine and it was given all the assistance he required and yesterday the protected prosecutor's general's office into armor made a clear statement saying it's absolutely untrue what has been said in the report ok however the of the authorities in my country will be fully available to cooperate

again with those institutions that are specialized to engage in investigations that require more expertise than the council of europe's is doing with me she will rides me sure yeah you satisfied with that are you satisfied with that that the authorities in kosovo would be full so forthcoming. you know they have the eleven years smell to to run a state and to show that they're capable of running a state and training law and order and the single be failed in this last say that i have also read carefully dick modest report and it is not directed at all binion's either at the core so will be indians or albanians who know binya it is directed against the leadership against the. supporters. i also have to to make another point here it is also very important dick marty has relatively narrow limits here he has concentrated on organ trafficking there are

a great many others i think live in let me jump in if i can exact exactly what you are saying is true that was his mandate but in his report he starts talking about the human trafficking allegedly only after article one hundred thirty six if you look carefully and from what article one and two one hundred thirty six it talks about the criminal albanian mafia about the. criminal state of course about the kelly trying to throw mud on the kalayaan what they did and that in their will in the end we have to are their independence. he he has me see was the mandate according clearly liberate them if you read the report with this perspective to see original me an image of the men of engineering the only house to let me jump in here and when we were running out of time i want to give allan the last word go ahead. well i mean as i say i think what we need to do is we need to figure out how to move forward and not only do we need to figure out how to get cost of zero to have the rule of law we have to figure out how to get cost of zero into the e.u.

we have to figure out how to get cost of all recognized by more than by by most of the international community and it still isn't and if i could just raise that point we also have another state with ambiguous recognition and that's the the two states in georgia south of. you and i would like also to go there if you. know but i don't know i see i mean i agree with you it seems randy deal with rule of law everywhere and also and all the countries of the world agreeing on the sovereignty of states because if we have to say to you that sovereignty we really have a potential kaz's bell ok ok well and i can always count on you and on a positive note and on a positive note many thanks to my guest today in new york and in london and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember crosstalk .

and talks start of action the u.s. senate debate on a new treaty with russia clearing the way for expected to take place as soon as this wednesday. reports that the u.s. is planning to expand its afghan campaign ground raids in neighboring pakistan strained relations between washington and islamabad. from the ceiling a multi-billion dollar deals to exploring the bollywood film industry the report on the second day of president visit to india. after.

a big jump in the business news is in twenty minutes. you're watching with us today let's go straight to our top story now the final vote on the nuclear arms reduction treaty between moscow and washington is expected in the u.s. senate on wednesday it brings to an end the months of debate on capitol hill with a deal faced strong opposition from republicans he's got a chicken has more from washington. the chairman of the foreign relations committee john kerry said they would vote as early as in the afternoon on wednesday he also said he is sure the democrats have the sixty seven votes of approval needed to get the trade ratified. this would not have happened without bipartisanship and i'm very grateful to a number of senators i'll talk about the movie a lot more tomorrow.