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Kosovo to enter historic era
Celebratory cakes are already iced. Street celebrations are being planned.
- AP
- Published: 01:26 February 17, 2008
Pristina: Celebratory cakes are already iced. Street celebrations are being planned.
After centuries of dominance by Serbia, a war that killed 10,000 people and a decade of UN rule, tiny Kosovo - poor, mostly Muslim but feverishly pro-Western - geared up for a declaration of independence from Serbia on Sunday.
"Tomorrow is a historic day in our effort to create a state," Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said on Saturay on a visit to a village where Serbian troops massacred 53 ethnic Albanians in 1998.
"Independence is a dream for all the people of Kosovo, and I am very happy, like everybody," said a giddy Lumturije Bytyqi, 20.
But tensions soared among Kosovo's small Serb minority. Many vowed never to accept the loss of a region they consider the heart of their ancestral homeland, and greeted secession as though it were an amputation.
"I'm asking all the Serbs to reject the monster state of Kosovo, and to do everything to prevent its birth," said Marko Jaksic, a Kosovo Serb hardline leader.
The dancing and drum-beating that pulsed through Pristina - awash in red and black Albanian flags with their distinctive double-headed eagle - contrasted sharply with the gloom gripping the ethnically divided northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica, a Serb stronghold and a flashpoint for violence.
"We are Serbs and this will always be Serbia," said a defiant Djordje Maric, 18, pointing toward a bridge that splits the gritty mining settlement in two. "We are ready to defend our territories at all costs, including with our lives."
EU policing
A day before Kosovo is expected to declare independence, European Union nations on Saturday agreed to send a 1,800-strong mission to Kosovo to help the fledgling state build its police force and judiciary.
The mission will include 700 police officers, as well as judges, prosecutors and other legal experts, to help the ethnic Albanian leadership with security, legal and customs issues after Kosovo breaks away from Serbia.
Although Kosovo formally remains part of Serbia, Kosovo has been administered by the UN since 1999, when Nato airstrikes ended the late Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
Ninety per cent of Kosovo's 2 million people are ethnic Albanian - most moderate or non-practising Muslims, the rest Roman Catholics - and they see no reason to stay joined to the rest of Christian Orthodox Serbia.
Thaci, a former leader of the now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, was expected to call a special session of parliament this afternoon to vote on a declaration of independence and unveil a new flag and national crest.
The US and most EU nations, including Britain, France and Germany, are expected to recognise Kosovo's sovereignty.
However, Russia and some EU nations, including Spain, Romania and Greece, back Serbia in opposing Kosovo's move to independence, which has been closely orchestrated with EU and US officials.
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