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Serbia proposes de facto division of Kosovo along ethnic lines
Nine years after NATO launched its bombing of Serbia over Kosovo, Belgrade has proposed the newly independent state be divided along ethnic lines between the majority Albanians and minority Serbs.
- AP
- Published: 16:45 March 24, 2008
Belgrade: Nine years after NATO launched its bombing of Serbia over Kosovo, Belgrade has proposed the newly independent state be divided along ethnic lines between the majority Albanians and minority Serbs.
The proposal, published by Belgrade media Monday, has been submitted to the United Nations which has administered Kosovo since the 78-day NATO air war ended a bloody Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999.
The document says that Belgrade recognizes the UN jurisdiction in Kosovo. But it adds that only Serbs, and not Kosovo Albanians, can control police, judiciary and border customs services in about 15 percent of Kosovo where Serbs represent a majority.
"The Serb police officers are answering to the local Serb authorities, and work under the command" of the UN police in Kosovo, the document says. +
So far, the UN police has comprised both the Serb and ethnic Albanian officers.
Analysts say that Belgrade is trying to take political and administrative control of the mostly northern parts of Kosovo where Serbs represent a majority.
Serbia's minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, has said that because of the "illegal" declaration of independence by Kosovo's Albanians last month, only the Serbs, with the help of Serbia, can implement UN authority.
He said that the proposal would create a "functional division" between the Kosovo Albanians and Serbs.
There was no immediate reaction from ethnic Albanian officials. Albanians represent 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people.
Deputy chief of the UN's Kosovo Mission, Larry Rossin, said the document has been sent to UN headquarters in New York for consideration.
Kosovo's parliament declared independence from Serbia on February 17. Serbia, which considers the territory the historic cradle of its nation, says the declaration is invalid under international law.
Kosovo Serbs earlier this month clashed with UN and NATO troops in the northern, Serb-held town of Mitrovica, leaving a UN policeman dead and dozens hurt.
The UN accused Belgrade officials of orchestrating the violence with the goal of trying to maintain control over Serb-populated areas of Kosovo.
Serbs and ethnic Albanians on Monday marked in sharply different ways the ninth anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing over Kosovo.
Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and other Serbian officials attended a service at a church in Belgrade, commemorating hundreds of Serbs who died during NATO air strikes.
But in Kosovo, its President Fatmir Sejdiu thanked the alliance for the bombing that "stopped the aggression of Serbia's military and paramilitaries against the people of Kosovo."
"We express our deepest gratitude and thanks to the US, EU for helping Kosovo when our people were threatened by extinction," Sejdiu said in his message marking the anniversary.
Kostunica, whose government collapsed earlier this month over differences between his nationalists and pro-Western coalition partners over Kosovo and EU integration, criticized NATO over the bombing.
"Now it is more than clear that the merciless destruction of Serbia in the NATO bombing had only one goal, and that is to turn Kosovo into the first NATO state in the world," Kostunica said in a statement.
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