PCOF: February 17, Kosovo’s Parliament Proclaimed Independence

The population of Pristina celebrated what it believes to be independence, waving Albanian and U.S. flags. The Serbian populations of Kosovo refuse to be separated from Serbia, whose leaders immediately condemned the secession of this province, which they consider an integral part of Serbia. Tension is rising, threatening to unleash a new Balkan war.

The proclamation of the independence of Kosovo, which Bush calls one of his wishes for years, is the culmination of the process of disintegration of former Yugoslavia.

This process has been encouraged from beginning to end by the Western imperialist powers, in the first place by U.S. imperialism, which wanted to get rid of traces of the Eastern bloc and to weaken, even to eliminate Russia’s influence.

In seventeen years of wars, “ethnic cleansing,” “humanitarian interference,” intense bombardments (78 days of bombing Serbia) and “surgical strikes” causing dozens of “collateral victims,” the imperialist powers have redrawn the borders. They have continued to inflame nationalisms, which were already acute, in order to push the troops of their local allies into forming totally dependent mini-states. All democratic solutions respecting the rights of nations, nationalities and national minorities have been systematically torpedoed by bombs and nationalist manipulations.

U.S. imperialism has formed new bases, militarizing the strategic region of the Balkans. Tens of thousands of NATO soldiers as well as some 2,000 French soldiers have been deployed there.

Most of the governments of the EU and that of the U.S. immediately recognized the independence of Kosovo, where the unemployment rate has reached record highs and where the population lives partly from the money from the Kosovo diaspora. The subsoil whets the appetite of the mining monopolies and the supporters of EU neo-liberalism, such as Kouchner, are salivating at the integration of Kosovo, even Serbia, into the EU of social dumping, free and fair competition, privatizations and the yoke of the “convergence criteria.”

In these conditions, the independence of Kosovo is not good news for the peoples of the Balkans, for it is a new bridgehead of imperialism, in the first place of U.S. imperialism, which is pursuing its policy of destabilization to maintain its hegemony.

In rushing to recognize this independence, Sarkozy is further engaging our country in the politics of destabilization and wars of U.S. imperialism.

Paris, February 20, 2008
Communist Party of the Workers of France