Quotes & Sayings About Kosovo

Yesterday, the country of Kosovo unveiled an 11-foot tall statue of former President Clinton. Yeah. That's right. The Clinton statue is so life-like, it's already been slapped 12 times. — Conan O'Brien

We have the EURO as a currency, which means a lot. It has not just stabilized the situation in Kosovo politically and economically, but also facilitated the direct contact that we have with Europe. — Ibrahim Rugova

The different Ministries have to work more on the promotion of the country, to build Kosovo's public image. Concrete projects must be assembled, in order to activate our businessmen to have more contacts. We have to create a positive image about ourselves. — Ibrahim Rugova

The ideal of all Kosovo is membership in the E.U. and a permanent friendship with the United States. I believe and I am convinced our dreams will come true. — Atifete Jahjaga

I literally touched down in Kosovo and the president, prime minister and mayor were waiting for me to get off the plane. Apparently that's unheard of. They don't wait for nobody. — Rita Ora

All sorts of artillery installations, rockets and tank units that are firing on civilians in Kosovo should be neutralized. If that means air strikes, then NATO should carry out air strikes. — Fatos Nano

In Sarajevo and in Syria, these are societies - in Bosnia, in Serbia, in Kosovo, in Syria - where ethnicities live side by side and intermarry for long periods of time until it becomes valuable to exploit the division. And yes, the division's there because you can always revert back to history, you can always inflame it, but it is manipulated for political ends. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

Kosovo today is closer to Europe than other countries in the region of South Eastern Europe. — Ibrahim Rugova

You think Vietnam was bad? Vietnam is nothing next to Kosovo. — Tony Snow

I've taken clowns into the war in Bosnia, the refugee camps of Kosovo, and none of those are any more important than clowning in a subway or an elevator or just walking down the street. — Patch Adams

But we acted pre-emptively in Kosovo in 1999 to stop Milosevic from doing what he was doing and increasingly doing the ethnic cleansing in a systematic way. — Lord Robertson

I want to emphasize the fact that the independence of Kosovo should and will be recognized. — Ibrahim Rugova

I built Kosovo for 10 years. — Ibrahim Rugova

Islam is one of the fastest-growing faiths within America, and America needs to show that we're not anti-Islam. We are for, for people being free and having opportunity everywhere, that ... We did that in Bosnia, we did that in Kosovo, we did that in numerous other places in the world. — William J. Clinton

The Kosovars were granted autonomy at the end of World War II, but then aspiring president Milosevic had the autonomy revoked in 1989, and the Dayton Accords of 1995, which ended the recent war in Bosnia and Croatia, failed to address the issue of Kosovo's status. — Sebastian Junger

The first thing you have to do is understand what success looks like. And to understand what success looks like you have to understand the intent. If you understand that intent is to make sure the sea lines are secure, then suddenly bombing Kosovo makes sense, because you don't want Serbia to reemerge as a major power. — George Friedman

I believe that during the intervention of NATO in Kosovo there is an element nobody can question: the air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty. This makes it legitimate to attack the Yugoslav Federation, although without the United Nations mandate. — Vaclav Havel

Kosovo is a small country but it also has a lot of riches that were granted to us by God. — Ibrahim Rugova

Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again - conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style. — Jurgen Habermas

The Kosovo campaign was a just and necessary war. And I believe that Blair - of whom I have many criticisms - in this case showed real determination in conducting it. — Margaret Thatcher

I was part of a government that tried to resolve the question of Kosovo by war. Perhaps there is some justice that today I should be the person most responsible for finding a peaceful solution. — Ivica Dacic

In Kosovo, the U.S. has chosen a course of action that escalates atrocities and violence. It is also a course of action that strikes a blow against the regime of international order, but which offers the weak at least some protection from predatory states. — Noam Chomsky

I have a few properties, some in the U.K., some in the States, some in Kosovo. It's a nice little empire - I'm trying to create something so my family can be all right. — Rita Ora

I know that if I feel any deprivation or fear [about money], the solution is to give. The solution is to go find some mothers on the streets of San Raphael and give them tens and twenties and mail off another $50 to Doctors Without Borders to use for the refugees in Kosovo. Because I know that giving is the way we can feel abundant. Giving is the way that we fill ourselves up ... For me the way to fill up is through service and sharing and getting myself to give more than I feel comfortable giving. — Anne Lamott

The Russians are going to be expansionist whether we [USA] provoke them to it or not. Russians keep saying that we're trying to encircle them. In what sense does the independence of Kosovo, a land-locked province, former Yugoslavia, with no common border with Russia, threaten Russia with encirclement? This is insulting. In what sense does the independence of Georgia constitute an encirclement? What we are facing, and we may as well give it its right name, is what I called it earlier, a chauvinistic, theocratic in part, xenophobic Russian imperialism. — Christopher Hitchens

Serbs can only leave Kosovo. — Ivica Dacic

The most important thing is that Milosevic agreed to sit at the negotiating table with the Kosovo Albanians. — Boris Yeltsin

A final and long-lasting solution to the Kosovo issue cannot be achieved without an agreement with Serbia, especially in regard to the U.N. — Ivica Dacic

The EU should have consolidated its different presences and purposes in Kosovo earlier. — Emma Bonino

As a Republican, I voted with President Clinton consistently in our efforts to bail out our European friends in Kosovo to stop genocide. I am proud of those votes. I am proud of President Clinton for that. — Gordon Smith

There will be a lot of competitive and strong companies coming here and even though Kosovo is a small country that undoubtedly has a lot to offer to global trade; one of our main interests is to expose it to the world market. — Ibrahim Rugova

Milosevic will never stop, because he is fighting for personal power in Serbia. The only way to stop him is cutting the functioning of his war machine. He is spending $1.7 million a day on his war machine in Kosovo. — Fatos Nano

By very conservative estimates, Turkish repression of Kurds in the 1990s falls in the category of Kosovo. It peaked in the early 1990s; one index is the flight of more than a million Kurds from the countryside to the unofficial Kurdish capital, Diyarbakir, from 1990 to 1994, as the Turkish army was devastating the countryside. — Noam Chomsky

As the president of Kosovo, I am more concerned about the current situation with the employment standing at around 70 % of the population, which is young, with great potential, speaking many foreign languages and having wide expertise. — Ibrahim Rugova

They'd arranged to meet with an Omegan mole who worked in the Clinton administration. He was helping them with a new Omega Agency operation involving the Kosovo War, which had just broken out in Europe. Naylor and his cronies were seeking to use Kosovo as a transit route for Afghan heroin bound for EU countries. Despite the official news stories being circulated by mainstream media, Omega knew the extremely lucrative heroin trade was behind the war. — James Morcan

Kosovo is now the biggest problem confronting Yugoslavia — Josip Broz Tito

I saw my job [as president] as to try to move the world from an unstable condition of interdependence toward more integrated cooperative world community. Therefore, my approach was to cooperate wherever possible and to build institutions of cooperation, an expanded NATO, the World Trade Organization, the Summit of the Americas, the Asian Pacific Leaders, all those, the coalition to fight in Bosnia and Kosovo, to cooperate wherever possible but to act alone if we had to. — William J. Clinton

I tried to go to Kosovo to establish a statue to commemorate those who died during the wars, and to discuss moving on, so we could move into a new era. But I was banned from there. — Ivica Dacic

If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the "peace movement". — Christopher Hitchens

The views of the Contact Group member-states must be taken seriously, as well as the guidelines set out in their document on Kosovo, which clearly says that the province should not be divided, — Martti Ahtisaari

Imagine a part of the U.S.A., from which the U.S.A. started - where is the cradle of your history? This is Kosovo for Serbia. — Novak Djokovic

I believe that ultimately the situation in Kosovo can only be resolved through self-determination. — Eliot Engel

I don't really remember much about Kosovo. I only remember growing up in London, where my parents had to basically start from scratch. — Rita Ora

We think that Kosovo will continue to serve as a centre of violence and regional instability in future. — Boris Trajkovski

For 10 years, Kosovo was taboo. No one could officially tell the truth. — Ivica Dacic

My vision is to have an independent Kosovo, democratic, with a politically tolerant society and with a solid economy, integrated into the EU, the NATO and to continue with our good relations with the USA. — Ibrahim Rugova

It depends on the situation. I mean, on one hand there's the argument that people should be left alone on the other hand, there's the argument to wade in a stop slaughters in places like Bosnia and Kosovo and what we probably should have done in Rwanda. — Jello Biafra

Fallujah was a Guernica with no Picasso. A city of 300,000 was deprived of water, electricity, and food, emptied of most of its inhabitants who ended up parked in camps. Then came the methodical bombing and recapture of the city block by block. When soldiers occupied the hospital, The New York Times managed to justify this act on grounds that the hospital served as an enemy propaganda center by exaggerating the number of casualties. And by the way, just how many casualties were there? Nobody knows, there is no body count for Iraqis. When estimates are published, even by reputable scientific reviews, they are denounced as exaggerated. Finally, the inhabitants were allowed to return to their devastated city, by way of military checkpoints, and start to sift through the rubble, under the watchful eye of soldiers and biometric controls. — Jean Bricmont

I very much regret that our administration has pushed the whole issue of Kosovo to the back burner. — Eliot Engel

Kosovo is too close to Europe. It is not only close to Albania, it is close to Greece, Italy, Germany and Switzerland, where there are still many Kosovo refugees. Spontaneous reactions could multiply. — Fatos Nano

NATO bombing of Serbia was undertaken by the 'international community,' according to consistent Western rhetoric - although those who did not have their heads buried in the sand knew that it was opposed by most of the world, often quite vocally. Those who do not support the actions of wealth and power are not part of 'the global community. — Noam Chomsky

While Financier George Soros was investing money in Kosovo's reconstruction, the George Soros Foundation for an Open Society had opened a branch office in Pristina establishing the Kosovo Foundation for an Open Society (KFOS) as part of the Soros' network of "non-profit foundations" in the Balkans. — Michel Chossudovsky

You can walk around this culture now, as a proud supporter of the so called anti-war movement and it's made up of a lot of people I used to know ... I'd like for them to be asked more often than they are, if your advice had been taken over the last 15 or so years; Slobodan Milosevic would still be the dictator of not just Serbia but also of a cleansed and ruined Bosnia and Kosovo. Saddam Hussein would still be the owner of Kuwait as well as Iraq, he would of nearly have doubled his holding of the worlds oil. The Taliban would still be in charge of Afghanistan. Don't you feel a little reproach to your so called high principle anti-war policy? Would that really have led to less violence, less cruelty? — Christopher Hitchens

But anyone who believes that the eternal issue of war and peace in Europe has been permanently laid to rest could be making a monumental error. The demons haven't been banished; they are merely sleeping, as the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo have shown us. — Jean-Claude Juncker

All those who prefer peace to power, and happiness to glory should thank the colonized people for their civilizing mission. By liberating themselves, they made Europeans more modest, less racist, and more human. Let us hope that the process continues and that the Americans are obliged to follow the same course. When one's own cause is unjust, defeat can be liberating. — Jean Bricmont

The privatization law draft was recently released and I believe that very soon we will start applying it, of course taking into consideration the provisions of UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo). — Ibrahim Rugova

Kosovo's destiny is clearly to join the European Union at some point. — Emma Bonino

The many questions about the bombing of Yugoslavia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - meaning primarily the United States - come down to two fundamental issues: 'What are the accepted and applicable 'rules of world order,' and how do these apply in the case of Kosovo?' — Noam Chomsky

[Today's left] would have left us with Slobodan Milosevic in power, Bosnia ethnically cleansed, Kosovo part of Greater Serbia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Iraq the property of a psychopathic crime family. Now, I'm sorry to say, I've no patience with that leftist mentality anymore. — Christopher Hitchens

I think it's appropriate for the international community in situations like this to intervene in Kosovo. I am in favor of an intervention. On some level, you have to say that at least somebody is doing something. — Mike Farrell

An international presence in Serbia's Kosovo province is not a problem. But only a civilian and unarmed mission under U.N. auspices, with Russia's participation, would be acceptable. — Ivica Dacic

For as long as anyone can remember, the history of Kosovo has been a battlefield pitting Serbs against Albanians. Each believes different things because each has been taught different things, and as they reach further back into time it becomes easier to argue whatever they want in order to find support for their view of the present. — Tim Judah

So as far as Serbia is concerned, it does not have the right to influence the privatization or to claim any property, because Kosovo is a former member of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. — Ibrahim Rugova

The speed of movement towards independence will depend on Kosovo demonstrating that it is capable of treating minorities well. We have not always seen that. — Emma Bonino

I had covered wars in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and elsewhere, but the work had started to feel routine. I wanted to leave the journalistic herd, to find a project that would both daunt and inspire me. Facing down the Congo was just such a project. — Tim Butcher

At the time when this famous historical battle was fought in Kosovo, the people were looking at the stars, expecting aid from them. Now, six centuries later, they are looking at the stars again, waiting to conquer them. — Slobodan Milosevic

That there could be death camps and a siege and civilians slaughtered by the thousands and thrown into mass graves on European soil fifty years after the end of the Second World War gave the war in Bosnia and the Serb campaign of killing in Kosovo their special, anachronistic interest. But one of the main ways of understanding the war crimes committed in southeastern Europe in the 1990s has been to say that the Balkans, after all, were never really part of Europe. — Susan Sontag

I support the recommendations made by the International Crisis Group. The primary responsibility is for Kosovo Albanians to demonstrate that their treatment of minorities is adequate. — Emma Bonino

We continue to receive reports that the morale of some elements is being damaged, .. They are being affected by the impunity with which NATO aircraft can operate over Kosovo and Serbia, the accuracy and the growing knowledge.. of deployed locations. In summary, NATO has eroded the capability of Milosevic's war machine and it is being further reduced as each day goes by. — John Day

Albania's future is towards Christianity, since it is connected with it culturally, old memories, and its pre-Turkish nostalgia. With the passing of time, the late Islamic religion that came with the Ottomans should evaporate (at first in Albania and then in Kosova), until it will be replaced by Christianity or, to be more exact, Christian culture. Thus from one evil (the prohibition of religion in 1967) goodness will come. The Albanian nation will make a great historical correction that will accelerate its unity with its mother continent: Europe — Ismail Kadare

Kosovo is not a part of Serbia. It is the very heart of Serbia. — Slobodan Milosevic

Kosovo is Serbian, only if my mother is a Virgin — Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare. — Michael Ignatieff