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Serbians reject Kosovan demand for independence
SHABAN BUZA AND BETI BILANDZIC

KOSOVO formally made its pitch for independence face-to-face with Serbia yesterday, at their first top-level talks on the issue since NATO bombs drove out Serb forces in 1999.

The one-day meeting in Vienna placed the Albanian majority's demand for independence on the agenda of a UN-led mediation process that began in February, seven years since the West intervened to halt a wave of ethnic cleansing and the United Nations took control.

UN mediators conceded the two sides remained "far apart".

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian president, Fatmir Sejdiu, said independence was "the beginning and end of our position." He added: "The will for independence cannot be ignored or negotiated away."

Instead, Serb leaders again offered "substantial autonomy".

It was the first time the presidents and prime ministers of both sides had held direct talks since Serbia's 1998-9 war with ethnic Albanian guerrillas. Some 10,000 Albanian civilians died and 800,000 fled, marking the culmination of a decade of Serb repression under the late Slobodan Milosevic, the former president.

Seven turbulent years later, the West says Kosovo's economic and political limbo is unsustainable. It wants a settlement within the year, which diplomats say will likely bring some form of independence with or without Serbian consent.

"Belgrade would agree to anything but independence," Martti Ahtisaari, the UN chief mediator told a news conference after the meeting. "Pristina would accept nothing but independence."

There were no handshakes, and Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, opted out of a joint lunch with the Kosovo delegation, which included two former guerrillas.

But the atmosphere at the talks, which took place in a Vienna palace, was better than expected, Mr Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland, said. "It was not an easy thing for both sides to come to such a meeting."

Mr Ahtisaari had played down hopes of a breakthrough, given what diplomats say is an unbridgeable chasm between the two sides. Some 90 per cent of Kosovo's two million people are Albanians, who reject any return to Serb rule.

But Serbia sees Kosovo as its "Jerusalem", the cradle of Serbdom and home to scores of centuries-old Orthodox churches and monasteries.

Mr Kostunica, who says independence would drive Serbian voters into the arms of ultranationalists, said Belgrade "cannot accept the creation of a new state from 15 per cent of its territory".

Too late, argued Kosovo's negotiator Veton Surroi. "After everything we've been through, it is unrealistic to discuss modalities of autonomy. Kosovo will go its own way."

Mr Ahtisaari opened lower-level direct talks in February on the rights of 100,000 Serbs still in Kosovo, with little success.

Diplomats say the major powers see little alternative to independence. Despite the deadlock, the European Union is going ahead with plans to take on a policing and supervisory role.

The United States is pushing hard for a deal in 2006, concerned that delay could spark fresh violence in a territory patrolled by 17,000 NATO soldiers. Russia, a traditional ally of Serbia, has cautioned against any "artificial timetable".

Half the Serb population fled a wave of revenge attacks in 1999. Many who stayed live in isolated enclaves, and view the prospect of independence from Serbia with increasing trepidation. The mainly Serb north has threatened partition.

Some Serbian nationalist politicians have already pointed to the majority ethnic Serb population of a substantial part of Bosnia, arguing that if Kosovo becomes independent because of the make-up of its people, then Serbia would have claim to a part of Bosnia.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1077212006

Neil · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 5:10 pm Post subject:

In turn, if the Bosnian Serbs have the right to secede (as NATO insisted the Bosnian Moslems had a right to secede from Yugoslavia) then the Serb/Gypsy etc parts of Kosovo clearly have a right to decide their own fate.

The real atrocity against Yugoslavia was not the western powers deciding to break it up, which was just the sort of imperialism big nations always do to small ones, but deciding that the division should cut across ethnic lines & then, in Krajina, Srpska & eastern Kosovo assist the local Nazis to kill or drive out the locals. Borders should fit with human beings - instead we have decided that human lives are expendable but the borders we have created are sacrosanct. This is an an obscenity.

The question to which I have no answer is what do we do in areas, such as much of Kosovo, where we have already ethnicly cleansed the popuklation.?

Should the decision as to where the border goes be dependent on the (former) legal owners whom we allowed to be ethnicly cleansed or murdered or the current inhabitants. To give it to the occupiers is to legitimise genocide but to give it back to people who no longer occupy (& in some cases it belongs only to surviving relatives) it would mean that Albanian immigrants would face a new round of dispossession.
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The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken

LAz · Nationalist Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 113

Russia says that they will veto any UNSC resolution on this. China is probably gonna do so too.

I think that we will see war.

But seriously, the Albanians have no intention to stop their expansion. They want more parts of Serbia, as well as parts of montenegro, macedonia and greece. They should get nothing. But if nothing is done about this they will become the majority because their demographics are such that makes them the fastest growing ethnic group in europe.

In kosovo they were 65% of the population in 1953 I think. Since then this number has only gone up, and it is not going to stop. These albanians in Kosovo have continued a systematic policy of eliminating non albanians from the region - serbs, muslim slavs, croats, roma, and jews. They have also damaged or destroyed over 150 Serbian churchs. And the west promotes this.

It's awful that the west supported the KLA and that they bombed Serbia for nothing. The Serbs have not forgotten this and it is a major cause of hatred towards the west, for the West hit 480 schools and 33 hospitals in 1999. This poses a problem... what if the radicals in serbia come to power and Serbia goes towards Russia and no the west? I certainly hope that this happens.

Neil · Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:56 pm Post subject: