If you include countries that have stated their intent to do so, and are working the recognition through a legal or parliamentary procedure, you get roughly thirty-two, thirty-three countries thus far. And then there are another twenty or so that have said that they are in the midst of deliberations, and they are making up their minds about whether to recognize the state.

It is time for India to stridently oppose unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo, while under UN administration. India should openly support Russia and China in the UN and ask Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to explain to the world body as to how the US and allies could bury the UN mandate.

First, Kosovo is not gaining independence or even minimal self-government. It will be run by an appointed High Representative and bodies appointed by the U.S., European Union and NATO. An old-style colonial viceroy and imperialist administrators will have control over foreign and domestic policy.

In the aftermath of the U.S. recognition of unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo Albanians and subsequent violence targeting the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Undersecretary for Political Affairs in the State Department Nicholas Burns said had Serbia had a “fundamental responsibility” to protect U.S. diplomats and citizens.

The hypocrisy of US government officials is boundless. On February 18, the US government inflamed Serbians by recognizing Muslim separatists in Kosovo, a historic province of Serbia, as an independent country. Two hundred thousand Serbs marched in protest and the US embassy in Belgrade was damaged. Is this surprising?

With a stoke of his pen, President Bush, by heeding the State Department's bad advice to recognize a supposedly independent Kosovo, has triggered the perfect international storm: shattering the principle of the territorial integrity of sovereign nations, encouraging violent separatists worldwide, provoking a needless confrontation with Russia and other countries.

Setting aside the prime doctrines that have underpinned the international order since the second world war provides the most dangerous precedent of recognising Kosovo's independence.

There was no "genocide" – the International Tribunal itself reported that just over 2,000 bodies were recovered from postwar Kosovo, including Serbs, Roma, and Kosovars, all victims of the vicious civil war in which we intervened on the side of the latter. The whole fantastic story of another " holocaust " in the middle of Europe was a fraud.

The Council adopted the following conclusions: "Serbia The Council agreed on the text of the invitation at annex." The Council welcomed the entry into force of the visa facilitation and readmission agreements with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on 1 January 2008.