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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MNI who wrote (13204)	7/1/1999 10:37:00 AM
From: John Lacelle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

MNI, No problem. I enjoy studying history and often I feel that the only way to get a point across is to make some outrageous statement. I have the Newt Gingrich disease! We had a speaker of the house in our Congress that used to be a college professor. Newt liked to make amazing statements because it would capture the attention of people. However, while that may work great in some liberal arts college, it tends to make you a lightening rod for criticism. Newt became the focal point of all the liberal rage in this country and as a result, is no longer in Congress. As for me, I often like to point out the parallels in history. People act like what is occuring in Kosovo is some abberation when in fact, the United States has experienced many similar political problems. Last night I was reading about General T. Sherman who was given the assignment of subduing the Southern states that tried to break away (as did the Albanians of Kosovo). In his march through the South, he was continually amazed to find that the Southern villages were not happy to see the Union troops. Consequently, Shermans troops enjoyed leaving behind "Chimneyvilles" as they called em. These were towns where only the chimney was left behind because the fires they set would leave nothing but the stone chimney. It sounds a whole lot like Kosovo to me. I still think that Milosevic was justified in trying to defeat a rebel army in his backyard. Certainly, the United States has no tolerance for this kind of stuff. The last terrorist rebel army to operate in the US was a Puerto Rican group that even shot up Congress back in the 1950's...but now all those guys are in prison. -John

To: MNI who wrote (13204)	7/3/1999 12:33:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Santer backs Finland in language war Outgoing European Commission President Jacques Santer has backed Finland's stance in a dispute with Germany over how many languages should be used at the European Union's informal ministerial meetings. Just hours after Finland took over the presidency of the EU, Helsinki refused to allow German to be used as a working language at informal ministerial meetings during its six-month term. "The member states usually comply with these practices as they stand so I don't know what arguments are now used by the Germans to complain," said Mr Santer, himself a French- and German-speaking native of Luxembourg. Two official languages English and French are traditionally used at meetings along with the language of the country that holds the rotating presidency. But for the last 12 months the presidency has been held by Austria and then Germany, so German was used as a third language. Bonn stayed away from the first ministerial meeting under the Finnish EU presidency on Friday in protest at Finland's failure to provide German translation facilities. It was later joined by Austria which has also boycotted the meeting. Florian Krenkel, the Austrian foreign ministry spokesman, said he hoped Finland would revise its policy on language use at the meetings. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has written to Finland's Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen to try to persuade him to add German to the list. "Mr Schröder's letter is very clear," a spokesman for the economics ministry in Bonn said. "If there is translation into German then we will go. If not, then we will not." Setting a precedent Mr Lipponen has refused to give in, arguing that if one language were to get a favoured position then others would ask for similar treatment. And Jacques Santer pointed out that there are 178 possible different language combinations at EU meetings. The Finnish government points out that Spanish and Italian are spoken much more widely worldwide than German. German, on the other hand, is the first language of 90 million citizens in the 15 EU member states - almost a quarter of the 370 million people in the union. Helmut Haussmann, former German Minister for Europe and now European policy spokesman for the opposition Liberal Democrats (FDP), called the Finnish stance a "scandal". English and French are the official working languages of the EU, but since its unification in 1990, Germany has been trying to change the status quo. German has been used at all meetings during the past 12 months, when Austria and Germany held the presidency. German diplomats in Brussels say that German was also used during the past presidencies of Britain, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. They have rejected Finland's position that it would create technical problems and extra costs to have German as an informal working language. A Finnish official characterised the row as "unnecessary" - Finland had nothing against the German language. Another was clearly unhappy about the shaky start to his country's first stint at the helm of the EU. "We knew it was going to be tough, but we did not know it would be like this," he said. On a more positive note, the Finnish EU presidency Website is not only available in Finnish, English and French - but also in German. news.bbc.co.uk