Kosovo Declares Its Independence From Serbia

[umalak_]

full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/wo...html?th&emc=th

PRISTINA, Kosovo — The province of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, sending tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians streaming through the streets to celebrate what they hoped was the end of a long and bloody struggle for national self-determination.

Kosovo’s bid to be recognized as Europe’s newest country — after a civil war that killed 10,000 people a decade ago and then years of limbo under United Nations rule — was the latest episode in the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, 17 years after its dissolution began.

It brings to a climax a showdown between the West, which argues that Serbia’s brutal subjugation of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority cost it any right to rule the territory, and the Serbian government and its allies in the Kremlin. They counter that Kosovo’s independence is a reckless breach of international law that will spur other secessionist movements across the world.

As Albanians danced in the streets and fired guns in the air in the capital, Pristina, international reaction was sharply divided, suggesting that the clash between the principles of sovereignty and self-determination was far from resolved.

Britain, France and Germany were expected to be the first to recognize the new nation as early as Monday, while other nations, fearing separatist movements within their own borders, have said they will refuse. Russia demanded an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to proclaim the declaration “null and void,” but the meeting produced no resolution.

The United States and additional European Union member states were expected to recognize Kosovo’s independence in the coming days.

President Bush, speaking in Tanzania, said the United States would continue to work to prevent violence in Kosovo, while reaching out to Serbia. He said that resolving the conflict in Kosovo was essential to stability in the Balkans and that “the Serbian people can know that they have a friend in America.”

In declaring independence, Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaci, a former leader of the guerrilla force that just over 10 years ago began an armed rebellion against Serbian domination, struck a note of reconciliation. Addressing Parliament in both Albanian and Serbian, he pledged to protect the rights of Kosovo’s Serbian minority. “I feel the heartbeat of our ancestors,” he said. “We, the leaders of our people, democratically elected, through this declaration proclaim Kosovo an independent and sovereign state.”

Kosovo, a desperately poor, predominantly Muslim landlocked territory of two million, has been a United Nations protectorate since 1999, policed by 16,000 NATO troops. Its unemployment rate is about 60 percent and average monthly wage is $250.
Electricity is so undependable that lights go out in the capital several times a day. Corruption is rife and human trafficking threatens to entrench a lawless state on Europe’s doorstep.

Ethnic Albanians from as far away as the United States poured into Pristina over the weekend, braving freezing temperatures and heavy snow to dance in frenzied jubilation. Beating drums, waving Albanian flags and throwing firecrackers, they chanted: “Independence! Independence! We are free at last!”

A 100-foot-long birthday cake was installed on Pristina’s main boulevard.
In an outpouring of adulation for the United States, the architect of NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against Serbian forces under President Slobodan Milosevic, revelers unfurled giant American flags, carried posters of former President Bill Clinton and chanted, “Thank you, U.S.A.” and “God bless America.”

Hundreds of people, many waving Albanian flags, celebrated in Times Square. Revelers in cars drove in circles around the area, leading chants whenever they passed the crowds gathered on the sidewalks.

That spirit of exaltation contrasted sharply with the despair, anger and disbelief that gripped Serbia and the Serbian enclaves of northern Kosovo. In Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, as many as 2,000 angry Serbs converged on the United States Embassy, hurling stones and smashing windows.

In the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Mitrovica, a grenade was thrown at a United Nations building, the police said. No one was injured.

Vojislav Kostunica, the prime minister of Serbia, which has regarded Kosovo as its heartland since medieval times, vowed that Serbia would never recognize the “false state.”
In an address on national television on Sunday, he said Kosovo was propped up unlawfully by the United States and called the declaration a “humiliation” for the European Union. The Serbian government has ruled out using military force in response, but was expected to downgrade diplomatic ties with any government that recognized Kosovo.
Demonstrations were planned for Monday in Serbian enclaves across Kosovo. Serbs said they were under orders from Belgrade to ignore the independence declaration and remain in Kosovo to keep the northern part of the territory under de facto Serbian control, raising questions about Serbia’s long-term aims.

At the Security Council, Russia argued that the proclamation violated the 1999 resolution that established the United Nations mission in Kosovo. “Our position is that the declaration should be disregarded by the international community and declared null and void,” said Vitaly I. Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations.

[umalak_]

Kosovo Recognized by Some but Rebuked by Others
By NICHOLAS KULISH and C. J. CHIVERS
Published: February 19, 2008

Kosovo won the recognition of the United States and its biggest Western European allies, but was rejected by other states facing their own separatist movements.

[Dionysos]

For once, we might be on the right side of a human-rights issue.

Or maybe not, it's been awhile since I read up on it but iirc the Serbs have been doing heinous shit in Kosovo for years now. I don't remember reading anything about it happening the other way around.

[Adam D]

The KLA were not always...the most polite guerrilla force on earth. However, I do hope the independence sticks, although it may turn ugly, especially for Russia.

[Hey Bubu]

Unless they have a new flag and place it somewhere really high, it ain't for realz.

[PETA]

well... well... well.... weirdo hippy rears his freakish head

[Tymeless]

I hope this sticks. The people there are some of the friendliest people I have ever met. I spent 7 days in the capitol back in 2006 in July. I had a blast, even then they were shooting for just being independent from Serbia. Near the end I had a chance to have dinner with the Now Prime Minister, and he was truly addiment about trying to gain independence, if anything to give his people something to look forward too.

[Hey Bubu]

Originally Posted by xian

well... well... well.... weirdo hippy rears his freakish head

[djetaine]

Originally Posted by Dionysos

For once, we might be on the right side of a human-rights issue.

Or maybe not, it's been awhile since I read up on it but iirc the Serbs have been doing heinous shit in Kosovo for years now. I don't remember reading anything about it happening the other way around.

This shit hits a little too close to home for me to get too far into but this is NOT a good thing for the rest of the world. Kosovo broke international law by breaking a treaty THEY entered in to. Now it sets a precedent for any other area that has an immigrant majority to declare independence because they are just that, immigrants. Who is to say that the bottom half of cali shouldnt break off from the US and declare themselves the democratic republic of southern california?
A stupid stretch for sure but the idea is the same. I dont agree with a lot of the things the serbs did but you cant call the KLA angels

[ali]

maybe the kla werent angels in the day but boy did they have good reason to be devils....i kno an old kla guy and he personally witnessed the carnage that the serbs commited ...just for speaking with an albanian tongue ur home could be ransacked and a woman tha was found in it (true story) was pregnant and evicerated they waited for her husband to come home and slit his throat...the day that kosovo is truly seperated from the govt. that allowed these attrocities to be commited is a better day for all...

[DJPePe]

God bless, Kosova deserves independence.

I find it funny that all the Serbs I have encountered bitching about the destruction of churches by Albanians had no problem with their own paramilitaries torching Catholic Croat churches and raping Croat nuns in the early 90's.

Kosovo has always been Albanian! Long live Kosova!