On the eve of the final round of talks on the Kosovo status, blasts went off from under the UN vehicles in Kosovo’s capital Pristina, injuring none but sending a clear signal to the peacekeepers that they are the next target should the upcoming talks in Vienna result in a stillborn independence for the Muslim Albanians in Kosovo.

 

On Tuesday, an email arrived at the UN in Kosovo by the Kosovo Liberation Army, an Albanian terrorist organization that controls virtually everything  in the province - from the heroin trade and terrorism to “peace” movements such as Albin Kurti’s - saying that it stands behind the bombing in order to “avenge the death of two protesters” during Kurti’s anti-UN protests a week ago.

Official Washington kept its silence in the aftermath of the bombing and with the silence it tacitly directed the mainstream media to endlessly push a real non-event story about NATOs search of Karadzic’s children’s home as though that veteran hide-and-seek player will be stupid enough to sip coffee and casually wait for NATO to arrest him at no reward.

Keeping silent about Kosovo Albanian atrocities is something Washington has come to be really good at and preferring to have their rivals in Moscow express the outrage at the rapidly deteriorating situation in Kosovo because the more Moscow is concerned about Kosovo, Washington reasons, the more Kosovo Albanians will depend on Washington for political mercy.

Washington’s silence on Kosovo Albanian terrorism is then deliberate and other reasons also factor in such as the US troops presence on the ground versus no Russian ones. Absence of Russian troops then allows Moscow to be more vocal.

“Moscow is concerned over this terrorist act. We see it as proof of the continued policy by radical forces to escalate tensions in Kosovo and to disrupt the political process of determining its status,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said.

That Washington shares this sentiment has also been echoed by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“Everybody understands that it’s going to be a rocky road as Kosovo obtains a different status,” Rice said on Friday. “Because we don’t need, in this last piece of the unification of Europe around democratic principles, to have Kosovo blow up.”

The very next day, however, a senior negotiator in the Kosovo Albanian team, Ylber Hasa, threatened exactly what Rice wants to avoid, a new Balkan war if Kosovo does not gain independence.

“Kosovars believe they already have made extensive compromises,” Hasa said. “That does not leave much room for maneuver. If you want to see a new Balkan war, that is the perfect scenario,” Hasa threatened.

Of course, the Kosovo Albanian bombs exploded the next day from under the UN cars.

Last week, Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the 16,000-strong peacekeeping force in Kosovo, the KFOR, is prepared and that the “KFOR will not tolerate any form of violence.”

As Albanian violence in Kosovo is likely to escalate in coming days, yesterday’s decision by Tony Blair to declare victory in Iraq and pull out British troops in the middle of mayhem is an encouraging sign to Kosovo Albanians whose independence hopes seem to be dwindling more and more as each day goes by.

NATO, of course, could conceivably do the same in Kosovo as well so the forward question is whether the Serbian army has reformed itself enough so it does not have to rely on gangsters like Arkan to run their special operations that may be called to action soon.