Portland, Oregon August 29, 2007
Portland, Oregon USA
Lake Tahoe August 28, 2007
Michael Polt, the outgoing US ambassador to Serbia talks about Kosovo and US relations with Serbia August 27, 2007
The outgoing US ambassador to Serbia, Michael Polt, gave a long interview to B92.
The key issue seems that it is not a matter of if Kosovo gets independence, only when.
When asked if the US would allow independence negotiations past December 10th Polt responded:
“We didn’t say we would never agree, we said we were against another round of negotiations. We feel that the Ahtisaari process was long enough and gave plenty of opportunity for both sides to bring their positions to the table, to discuss them.”
December 10th is the date the Contact Group is set to give a report to the UN about Kosovo’s independence.
The Contact Group consists of the US, Russia, Italy,Britain, France, and Germany. This includes every member of the UN Security Council except for China.
They meet informally to discuss The Balkans out of the public realm of other organizations such as the UN.
Russia’s continued threat to veto any UN resolution regarding Kosovo’s independence have moved the negotiations out of the UN and onto the Contact Group.
I also found this Q&A with Ambassador Polt from the State Department.
Hugo Chavez: President for A Lot Longer? August 16, 2007
In Venezuela Hugo Chavez has just announced the proposals for a new constitution.
It is this end of re-election limits that many people in Venezuela have been wondering about for a long time. Chavez has been talking about the idea since before his re-election last December. His desire to be president for longer than the current Venezuelan constitution allows, a constitution that he rewrote in 1999, is one of the reasons he is compared so often to Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Chavez is unveiling these proposals quite a bit earlier than expected. Though nobody knew for sure when he was going to make the proposal public, next December or February was what I was hearing when I was in Venezuela last June.
Some people inside Venezuela think that Chavez announcing the proposed changes now is to distract from the news that a Venezuela businessman was caught smuggled 800,000 thousand dollars in cash into Argentina a few days ago.On the plane there were also officials from PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company and Argentine government officials. That corruption was at play seems pretty obvious.
The Venezuelan opposition has spoken out against the proposed changes.
Its unclear if these proposals will lead to any new demonstrations against Chavez’s government. The protests against the government’s closure of RCTV last May and June faded away fairly quickly. Chavez is firmly in power with the support of the majority of Venezuelans. With so people getting decent social services for the first time in history a strong democracy may not be first thing on their minds. At this moment any proposals that come from Chavez are gold in the eyes of most Venezuelans
Albanian Rap August 14, 2007
My plans for going to the Balkans are coming together well.
The latest on the independence process here.
Kosovo August 10, 2007
The latest in the Kosovo Independence process.