Serbia and Kosovo.

Belgrade -- Serbian voters have approved a new constitution which reaffirms sovereignty over Kosovo. Since the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, Kosovo has been administered by the U.N. with the aid of NATO troops. There are indications that UN special envoy Maarti Ahtisaari will soon recommend that Kosovo be separated from Serbia and become an independent country. James Bissett, Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1990 to 1992, says that this would be a serious mistake. His reasons include:

* Kosovo, now almost entirely Muslim, is one of the most dangerous places on earth;

* it is the centre of heroin, weapons, and human trafficking into Western Europe;

* murders of non-Albanians are a daily occurrence;

* civil society is non-existent, and living standards are equivalent to those of Haiti;

* under the eyes of the UN and NATO, more than 200,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma, and other non-Albanians have been expelled from Kosovo. Those who remain are in constant danger.

Prime Minister Agim Ceku, a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, has been accused of war crimes against Serbs. He led Croatian forces in 1993 which overran Serbian villages protected by Canadian peacekeepers. When his fighters were driven out, the Canadians found that all of the civilians and animals in the villages had been slaughtered.

In a deliberate effort to remove all memory of Christian influence in Kosovo, more than 150 Orthodox churches and monasteries have been destroyed since 1999. Some of these dated from the 13th and 14th centuries.

A UN resolution calls for democratic institutions, security for all citizens, and the rule of law in Kosovo. Apparently the UN and NATO administrations have no intention of honouring these commitments. Duplicity, double standards, and cowardice have marked their regime. If Kosovo is given independence, another "damned silly thing" as Bismark once remarked, may lead to new warfare.