Kosovo: Hoping for Peace

Sorry.  I was not sure if you were referring to Kosovo or not since your post didn't mention it.  As far as Serb anger goes, I fully expect the UN to remain in Kosovo for years to come.  I feel that they'll be able to handle the situation.
 
I don't think that Serbs will violently protest the Kosovar independence.  According to this article, jobs are a higher priority.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7189318.stm

Serbs put jobs before Kosovo
Serbia goes to the polls on Sunday in a presidential election that comes at a sensitive time, with the UN-administered province of Kosovo gearing up for independence. The BBC's Nick Hawton has been gauging the mood among Serbs.

The man who would be president, Tomislav Nikolic, beams benignly down from billboards around Belgrade.

He may be the deputy leader of the hardline nationalist Serbian Radical Party, but you would not think so at first glance.

His rhetoric has been moderate, you even have to look hard on his posters to see the Serbian flag hidden somewhere near the bottom. Rumour has it that an American advertising company is behind the new look.

The Radicals' official leader, Vojislav Seselj, is still on trial in The Hague, accused of war crimes.

Unlike Mr Nikolic, the Europhile President Boris Tadic has election posters showing him almost wrapped in the Serbian flag. His rallies have well-organised Serbian flag-wielding supporters. A giant video screen shows the president inspecting the troops.

All that is designed to reassure the public that the reformer and modernise can be trusted with looking after Serbia's national interests if re-elected.

Kosovo 'not top priority'

"It's a sign of a maturing democracy that candidates start grouping around the centre," says Marko Blagojevic from the election monitoring organisation CESID.

There may be nine candidates in the race, but virtually all analysts agree that it boils down to a race between the current president and the hardline nationalist.

The election comes at a crucial time for Serbia, with the issue of Kosovo hanging like a black cloud over the country.

Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanian population is expected to declare independence in the very near future, something strongly opposed by Serbia.

Although the presidential candidates' speeches have been peppered with references to Kosovo, and countless newspaper column inches written about the breakaway province, Kosovo is not uppermost in voters' minds, according to political analysts.

"Kosovo is definitely not the most important subject for most people. The top issues are improving living standards, employment and the fight against corruption. We found in our survey only 26% of people thought Kosovo should be the number one priority of the government," says Marko Blagojevic.

Plea for jobs

Serbia's third city, Nis, down in the south and not far from Kosovo, has seen its fair share of election rallies. But despite Kosovo's proximity, other issues are on people's minds.

"For me, and for other young people, having a better visa system so we can travel abroad more easily is the most important issue," says Maja, 27, a teacher.

Ljubisa, 56, selling wall calendars from a stall on the main pedestrian street, says she only gets 70 euros (£53; $104) a month as a pension.

"I can't live on that. There are just no jobs. Industry has been privatised and there are no more jobs. That's the main problem," she says.

Dragan, 41, who works for the Serbian military, says Kosovo is a side-issue. "In Nis, there is high unemployment. The priority is to get more jobs here. Belgrade takes most of the industry and money. More should come here."

Back in Belgrade, Milan Nikolic - no relation to Tomislav - from the Centre for Policy Studies says the elections are very significant.

"Serbia will choose between two paths: one of self-isolation and closer ties with Russia and even China, or one towards Europe and the European Union," he says.

For victory, a candidate must achieve more than 50% of the votes cast. If no one achieves that in the first round, the two candidates with the most votes will go into a run-off two weeks later.
 
The results of the elections in Serbia should be available later today.  Some western critics do not have much faith in the electoral system in that part of the world, but I think it will work out judiciously.  How well the new president governs -- only time will tell.  If the current president (B. Tadic) wins I think Serbia will slowly move closer to EU and away from Russia; the hardline nationalist T. Nikolic might have different views on the EU.  Nikolic campaigning has been rather mute on the issue of nationalism, however.  Typically one would expect nationlist campaigners to be draped in the nation's flag, but he's stayed away from clear nationalist visuals like this.  Maybe he is trying to appeal to the voters whose number one priority is jobs and economic growth.  It is hard to say.  There is definitely a pocket of Serbs who are disenchanted with the whole electoral process and believe no authority's promises of future improvements. 

Interesting enough, UK and USA are barred from reported on the elections due to their stance on the Kosovo issue.  Russia is present, however.  I hope this is only an issue of pride and nothing more.
 
GK, quoting your Kosovo - Yugoslav position post;

According to Hoxha, when he visited Belgrade in June 1946, Tito (a Croat) told him: Kosova and the other regions inhabited by Albanians belong to Albania and we shall return them to you, but not now because the Great-Serb reaction would not actually accept such a thing.
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I don't believe this. Hoxha's statements carry no weight. In '70s, there were frequent violations of the Alban-Yugoslav border by both Albanian military and illegal imigrants. In one case, this resulted in a heavy wounding of one conscript that was stationed near the border. Almost led to clash of bigger dimensions...Yugoslav troops down there were under "red alert" condition.

Hoxha, normally, said that he doesn't know about anything back then. When communist documents were released after the fall of the system, it was clear that he was well aware of everything that's been going on, and every military action order had his signature on it.

Besides, what Great-Serb reaction? Great-Serbs in 1946 shared the same fate of "Great-Croats". Draza Mihajlovic was prosecuted and executed, Chetniks shared the fate of Ustasa, they were either killed on spot, or prosecuted, or forced to leave the country.

To say that Tito "cared" about "Great-Serb reaction" is a bit funny...

As a concession to Kosovar national sentiments, the Tito regime made Kosova an autonomous province of the Socialist Republic of Serbia when a new Yugoslav constitution was adopted in 1963.
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This had nothing to do with the Kosovar national sentiments, or their discomfort of the current position.

Vojvodina was also rendered into an autonomous province. Tito wanted to break Serbia a bit, because it was utterly largest and most influential socialist republic. It remained the most influential afterwards, but not in same strenght as before.

This concession, while earning Tito the enmity of Serbian nationalists, did not lead to any improvement in the position of the Kosovars. Between 1954 and 1957, another 195,000 ethnic Albanians were coerced by the Serbian authorities into emigrating to Turkey. Kosova was treated as a Serbian colony, its mines providing raw materials for Serbian industry. The average income of the Kosovars remained only a quarter of the Yugoslav average.
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Mostly illegal imigrants and their helpers coming from Albania due to Yugoslav-Soviet split of 1948. In that days, Yugoslavia was the destination of illegals coming from all the neighbouring Soviet bloc states.

The author of this article seems to look at Tito's Yugoslavia as an big Serbia.

Kosovo's industry resources didn't go to Serbia, they went into a centralized federal stack in Belgrade, for all of Yugoslavia. Bosnia's industry resources, and Croatia's industry and tourism income went there as well.

From there, they were allocated throughout all of the country, were they allocated fairly is a common issue in Yugoslav discussions, but that's not relevant here. What's relevant, is that Kosovo was not in a different situation from Croatia or any other Yugoslav state/province, and that kind of centralised ruling is considered as a general flaw in the Yugoslav economy system.

What the author didn't write, is the fact that all of the countries above the Yugoslav GDP average were allocating large amounts of money for Kosovo and all other below-GDP average states.

So it's an akward system, draw local money to the central system, then allocate the money back to locals if they needed it. Was it fair, it wasn't, but it was same for all.

Now on to current situation - i'm very pleased that Serbs are not showing much violent tendencies regarding Kosovo indepedence right now. Regarding Nikolic's party, western marketing is involved in his change of symbolysm, much like it was involved in Croatian's center-right and far-right marketing on several latest elections. I'm not really sure if he quitted with the great-serbia retorics, or is it only a election strategy.

Keep in mind, that Seselj, head of the party, recently said in Hague..."Croatians don't exist as a nationality. There were some ethnic Croatians in Austria and Slovenia several decades ago, but they are now scattered and low in numbers. People that call themselves Croatians in Croatia are mearly catholic Serbs that aren't aware of their roots".

Hilarious.

P.S. a neat thingy here. Was on TV two days ago...there's a town called Bujanovac 20-30 km outside the Kosovo border in the very southern Serbia. You can indentify it on the map here, if you know cyrillic. Southern of Kosovska Kamenica. In any case, it's in Serbia, not in Kosovo, but the majority of people are Albans there. Now they also want to get integrated into Kosovo, and break the ties with Serbia.

Like i said before, there is little historical background for Kosovo's indepedence. The UN declaration of the 1950, and the autonomy drawback in late '80s are essential here, both issues are legit and completely under international laws.

The Kosovo indepedence could serve as an example of the state filled with ethnic minority going indepedent. Russia opposes the issue because of similiar problems (chechnya), and Spain also (baskia).

Kosovo indepedence rolled the ball. Today, authentic Serb towns filled with Albanians also want indepedence. Tommorow, it could happen anywhere.

There a lot of issues here, that's why i think all parties should delay the thing a bit, consolidate and think about it more.
 
Uhh, excellent. Well Genghis Khan (and others) hold your breath and read (again) about Nikolic:

---------------

Serb hardliner Tomislav Nikolic on brink of power

The leader of the ultra-nationalist party Serbian Radical party, accused of ethnic cleansing in Croatia, is ahead in the Serbian polls

Andrew Wander, Belgrade

A HARDLINE nationalist is leading the polls in Serbia’s presidential election today, prompting fears that the country may revert to its former notoriety as a source of tension in the Balkans.

Tomislav Nikolic, 55, is on course to secure a narrow victory in the first round of voting, leading to a run-off with pro-western incumbent Boris Tadic next month. The contest is being billed as a referendum on Serbia’s future.

Nikolic is the leader of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical party. Its founder, Vojislav Seselj, who once threatened to “scoop out the eyeballs of Croats with rusty spoons”, is being tried for crimes against humanity in the Hague.

Nikolic said in an interview that he is “not very different” from Seselj, but insisted that if he wins, it will be a step forwards for Serbia.

His past tells a different story. He has been accused of ethnic cleansing in Croatia during the 1990s and was deputy prime minister to the Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 during his trial at the Hague for war crimes.

Nikolic has used widespread Serb resentment over western-backed moves towards independence for the breakaway province of Kosovo to breathe life back into ideas that many assumed had died with the Milosevic regime.

Once seen as a fringe party, the Radicals have softened their image and their supporters now include Marija Serifovic, 23, who won last year’s Eurovision song contest.

However, critics say the change is superficial, pointing to an incident last week when Nikolic supporters attacked rival campaigners with baseball bats as they put up posters.

Already the largest party in parliament, the Radicals face a shaky coalition of more moderate parties. Observers predict that Serbia’s relationship with the West would deteriorate under his presidency.

He has already warned that countries which recognise Kosovo’s independence would “damage their relations” with Serbia and that he would seek closer ties with Russia.


------

I read on Dutch teletext that he is against membership of the European Union.
 
@ Zare:  I never claimed that Tito was a Serbo-phile nor that he particularly loved the Kosovars and neither did the source I quoted.  All the source is stating is that for whatever reasons (read: political ones), Tito promised something to the Kosovars and something to the Serbs so that he can bring the country of Yugoslavia to a greater unity.  It is a common communist strategy.  The Kosovars of today are not going to look back and say "you know all the Slavs never really believed we should be independent, the only reason any inclincations for independence was given is to shut us up and to ensure Serbia was not dominating."  Kosovars wouldn't care for such things.  They need to point to a historical progress of their independence.

Whether or not Hoxha is to be believed I cannot say.  But the Kosovars do and have for a long time.

The V. Šešelj nonsense he is spouting in The Hague is nothing new and had existed at least since the time of Vuk Karadžić.  But this is beside the point... unless...

The article that Forostar just provided proves true.  I shudder.
EDIT: @ Zare:
As far as Bujanovac and other places close to Kosovo are concerned, the UN will not allow them to join in the break-up because the UN is not in the business of making new boundaries.  By that I mean that Kosovo already has clear boundaries.
 
In the first round of Serbian elections, the hardliner T. Nikolic wins by receiving 39% of the votes.  The current president, B. Tadic, received 35% of the votes.  These two hopefuls will go to the second round which requires a 51% margin to declare a winner.  Last presidential elections had similar results when Tadic won.  Most Serbs do not wish a severance with Europe, which Nikolic proposes, so I believe we'll see Tadic remaining as president.
 
Different papers have different election results.

Looks like this Jan 21st report that I wrote was not updated??? 

The actual votes for the two politicians are much lower, as reported by CBC news today.  The hardliner still wins with 28.3% vs 22.6% for the current president.  The votes are really split.  The next highest out of nine participants is 16.3%.
 
Dutch Block EU-Serbia Pact Ahead of Presidential Poll

The EU's plan to give the pro-Europe candidate a boost before presidential elections in Serbia was delayed by the Dutch. But foreign ministers agreed to offer Belgrade an interim agreement after the vote.

The European Union's attempt to sign a full Stabilization and Association Agreement with Serbia before the presidential election on Feb. 7 was hampered by the Netherlands, which demanded full Serbian cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal on former Yugoslavia (ICTY) before any deal was signed.

The pact, which would have secured closer ties ahead of the election run-off between Serbia's pro-European President Boris Tadic and nationalist challenger Tomislav Nikolic, a pro-Russian hardliner, was intended to boost Tadic's campaign and help ease Serbia's accession to the EU.

Instead EU ministers agreed to sign an interim agreement on cooperation covering trade and visas.

"This is a text that will open up doors for Serbia to the EU," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel told reporters.

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic welcomed the EU's invitation to sign an interim political accord after the run-off election.

"Today is a great day," he said. "I hope the citizens of Serbia will give us a mandate on Feb. 3 to sign this agreement."

Dutch European Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans said his country, which has led opposition to a lenient line on Belgrade, would continue to oppose the signing of the full SAA.

"We will not sign till we have full cooperation with the ICTY," he told reporters.

Timmermans insisted that his country is "prepared to sign an SAA with Serbia at the moment Serbia hands over the people indicted by the Yugoslavia tribunal," and not before.

The tribunal is seeking the arrest and transfer of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic on genocide charges over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 7,000 Bosnian Muslims.

The European Union has made full cooperation with the tribunal a condition for signing the SAA, which is a first formal step on the path to EU membership.

No change in EU policy

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the signing of an interim deal did not mean the EU was shying away from Serbia.

"The Stabilization and Association Agreement won't be signed in the coming days but this doesn't mean that our policy has changed," he told journalists. "We want to send a signal that our hand is stretched out to Serbia."

The interim agreement could assist Tadic in his campaign against Nikolic but EU officials admitted that they had received mixed signals from Belgrade as to whether a signing ceremony would hurt or help the pro-Europe candidate's prospects.

Tadic currently trails Nikolic who took a five-point lead in the first round this weekend.

EU boost to pro-Europe candidate ahead of Kosovo move

EU leaders are keen to see Tadic win to bolster pro-European forces ahead of an expected declaration of independence by politicians in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

The leaders of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, who make up 90 percent of the province's 2 million people, say they are within weeks of declaring independence from Serbia.

The EU plans to send a 1,800-persn strong mission to Kosovo to help ease its transition to local rule, but is still waiting for a signal from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to do so. The United Nations has run Kosovo since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign drove out Belgrade's forces waging a crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

Failure to deliver may increase Serbian distrust in EU

To help ease Serbia's pain in losing a province Belgrade considers to be an integral part of its territory and culture, the EU has made several moves in recent months to bring Serbia into the fold. But there is much skepticism in Serbia of the EU's motives and the latest stalling on the SAA is unlikely to help.

A failure to put an agreement in place soon would "fuel a widely present perception of permanent exclusion and unparalleled conditioning," Srdjan Gligorijevic, chief analyst for the Belgrade-based International and Security Affairs Centre think-tank, told Reuters news agency. "Serbia needs more collaborative relations with the EU, not just a carrot-and-stick approach."

-----------------------------------
Here another article, slightly different:

Holland firm on no EU deal with Serbia

The Netherlands will continue to refuse to sign an EU trade pact with Serbia as long as the country refuses to hand over suspected war criminals to The Hague tribunal, foreign minister Maxime Verhagen confirmed on Monday.

EU foreign ministers are due to discuss the stalemate today. Only Belgium supports the Dutch position, news agency ANP reported. Other countries want to sign the deal to send a positive signal to Belgrade and its pro-western president Boris Tadic.

The signing of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement is seen as the first step to EU membership.

'The Netherlands does support a European future for Serbia,' Verhagen told reporters. 'But then Serbia must adopt European standards and values. And that means, hand over war crimes suspects for trial.'

In particular, the Netherlands wants to see the arrest of Ratko Mladic. Mladic is charged with masterminding the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which 7,000 men and boys under the protection of Dutch UN peacekeepers were murdered.

On Friday evening, prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende told Bloomberg tv he did not believe the Dutch snub would strengthen an anti-EU candidate's position in the forthcombing Serbian presidential elections.

'The essential issue is that a state must not be willing to protect war criminals,' said Balkenende at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

'It is up to Serbia,' Balkenende was reported as saying.

--------------

From another article -->

Balkenende said the Dutch government won't accept blame if Serb voters turn their back on the West. "Giving an SAA in the hope that a candidate could win the election, I think that is speculation," he said. "It could also possibly have another effect. Who knows what Mr. Nikolic would do with such a situation?"

Anti-EU sentiment is on the rise in Serbia due to EU's support to the independence of breakaway province of Kosovo.
 
Red writing is from the newspaper above; the green writing is my response.  Thanks for these, Forostar.

"We will not sign till we have full cooperation with the ICTY," he told reporters.

Good for Belgium and The Netherlands.

The interim agreement could assist Tadic in his campaign against Nikolic but EU officials admitted that they had received mixed signals from Belgrade as to whether a signing ceremony would hurt or help the pro-Europe candidate's prospects.

There is no logical reasoning as to why this interim agreement could hinder Tadic and the pro-EU government.

But there is much skepticism in Serbia of the EU's motives and the latest stalling on the SAA is unlikely to help.
A failure to put an agreement in place soon would "fuel a widely present perception of permanent exclusion and unparalleled conditioning," Srdjan Gligorijevic, chief analyst for the Belgrade-based International and Security Affairs Centre think-tank, told Reuters news agency. "Serbia needs more collaborative relations with the EU, not just a carrot-and-stick approach."

Serbs need to stop their persecution complex.  Other countries in the former Yugoslavia have to go through the same process.  It is nothing personal.

On Friday evening, prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende told Bloomberg tv he did not believe the Dutch snub would strengthen an anti-EU candidate's position in the forthcombing Serbian presidential elections.

I agree.  If the anti-EU camp wants Nikolic to win, they'll vote for him regardless of the speed in which Serbia joins the EU.  If anything, wavering voters might even vote for Nikolic out of spite just so they don't feel like they're being manipulated.
 
Nikolic Admits Defeat, Tadic Thanks Him!

Boris Tadic thanked the radical for admitting defeat, and announced that he will be the first man he will work with to unite Serbia. Read more here.
 
I had just logged on to write the same post.  :)

Surprisingly, Nikolic was magnanimous in defeat.  That's good to see.

Forostar, I'm surprised you've used Javno website as a source.
 
Surprised? I don't even know that site to be honest. It was one of the options from my searching results in google news, heh.
 
Serbian president urges a stand against Kosovo

Tadic tells world leaders in Germany that independence for the province would be 'a dangerous leap into the dark unknown.'

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer / February 9, 2008

MUNICH, GERMANY -- Serbian President Boris Tadic made a last-minute plea to world leaders Friday to avoid recognizing an independent Kosovo, insisting that though Serbia remains committed to full integration with Europe, "we cannot accept the dismemberment of our nation."

With the Serbian province now widely expected to declare independence Feb. 17, Tadic warned that the only way to avoid potential new turmoil in the region was to achieve a negotiated resolution that was supported by all parties and backed by the United Nations Security Council.

"The alternative is a dangerous leap into the dark unknown in a time of great global turbulence," the Serbian leader told an international security conference here. "The precedent that would be established should Serbia be partitioned against its will -- which is what the imposed independence of Kosovo is, in truth -- could in turn result in the escalation of many existing conflicts, the reactivation of a number of frozen conflicts, and the instigation of how many new conflicts."

On Friday in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, a small explosion shook a shopping center and another mall had to be evacuated. A day earlier, about 300 members of the nationalist group Obraz had marched on an art gallery in an attempt to disrupt the opening of an exhibition from Kosovo, but were blocked by police.

At least 90% of Kosovo's 2 million residents are ethnic Albanians who have chafed in the past under often-brutal Serb dominion. Yet the province is viewed passionately by most Serbs as the heartland of their ethnic identity -- the site of several historic monasteries and the scene of a 14th century battle between Serbs and Turks whose story of devastating loss is told to Serb children.

The failure of years of negotiations to produce any result has left the U.S. and leading nations of the European Union prepared to recognize Kosovo's independence, though it is strongly opposed by several smaller EU nations and, most vigorously, by Russia.

Russia sees Serbia not only as an Orthodox Christian ally, but fears the decision to break up a sovereign nation to create a new ethnic state could have worrisome implications not only for Russian regions such as Chechnya, but could activate a series of latent conflicts around Russia's flanks in such places as Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Trans-Dniester.

Tadic indirectly acknowledged his nation's role in starting the Kosovo conflict under the late President Slobodan Milosevic. "The folly of Milosevic brought my nation to the awful choice between treason or intransigence. We don't deserve this today," he said.

With the EU preparing to authorize deployment of a substantial new force in Kosovo, Tadic said the Serbs "welcome as a matter of principle any demonstration of Europe's deepening commitment to the western Balkans, . . . but at the same time, we must all be very careful about cutting corners."

"Any fresh international engagement in our southern province must pass the scrutiny of the Security Council of the United Nations," he said.

------------

I told you. Still, a lot of idiots live in Serbia, who are too dumb to learn from the past.

I am for independence of Kosovo, but some people in Serbia will pay for it. We'll see how strong and wise Tadic is, as a president, as a protector for all his citizens.
 
Tomorrow it's Independence Day.

EU Gives Final Approval To Kosovo Mission

EU member states have given their final approval to sending a policing and administration team to Kosovo to help enforce the rule of law in the southern Serbian province, which is expected to declare independence on February 17.

The 1,800 foreign personnel, plus around 1,000 local staff, will make up the EULEX Kosovo mission.

The EU police and customs officers, prosecutors, and judges, which will begin deploying to the region next week, are to help build institutions for Kosovo that are free of political interference.

The mission will be able to intervene in sensitive areas such as fighting corruption and organized crime and arresting war crimes suspects.

EULEX is to be put in place over the next four months, and is expected to take over from the United Nations by early June. The UN has administered Kosovo since a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 drove out Serbian forces.

The decision was formalized by a so-called "silent procedure," under which members of the 27-nation bloc had until midnight on February 15 to voice objections.

Speaking after a meeting with religious leaders in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci suggested that the province will declare independence from Serbia on February 17.

"Tomorrow will be a day of calm, of understanding and of state engagements for the implementation of the will of the citizens of Kosovo," he said. "The Belgrade authorities cannot influence the flow of processes in Kosovo."

Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Xavier Bout de Marnhac, commander of NATO's peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR), said peacekeepers would not tolerate any unrest in the region.

"KFOR is almost fully deployed and we will still increase our level of activities for the next couple of days," he said. "I just want to state very strongly that KFOR will react and will oppose any kind of provocation that may happen during these days wherever they come from -- either from the Albanian or Serbian side."

Meanwhile, Serbia's pro-Western President Boris Tadic pledged to continue fighting for Kosovo to remain in Serbia.

"I swear that I will invest all my efforts in the preservation of the sovereignty and the integrity of the territory of the Republic of Serbia, including Kosovo and Metohija as its integral part, and I will also protect human and minority rights and freedoms," he said in parliament in Belgrade on February 15 as he took the oath of office after winning reelection.

The United States and most EU members say they will support Kosovo's independence, but Serbia and Russia fiercely oppose the move.

Belgrade has threatened to use diplomatic and economic measures against Kosovo, though it has ruled out using force. The Serbian government adopted a resolution on February 15 calling any unilateral act by Kosovo's ethnic-Albanian leadership to declare independence invalid and illegal.

Speaking on February 15 at a ceremony in Orasac to mark national statehood day, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said the resolution preemptively annuls the creation of a state in Kosovo.

"All statehood institutions and citizens should stay united in defending Kosovo," he said. "That is the only issue in which we should not be divided on. The government of Serbia yesterday made a historic decision to annul, preemptively and forever, the creation of the false state of Kosovo."

Speaking to reporters the same day in Pristina, Kosovar Prime Minister Thaci sought to reassure the province's Serbian minority that it would not face discrimination.

"In independent Kosovo, none of the citizens will be discriminated against or left aside. I will be strongly engaged in the protection of citizens, as well as the Kosovo government under local institutions, to ensure that issues concerning minorities are protected by our constitution," Thaci said.

EU foreign-policy chief Javier Solana said the EULEX mission will be headed by retired French Lieutenant General Yves de Kermabon, who was the commander of NATO's KFOR mission in the province in 2004 and 2005.

Veteran Dutch diplomat Pieter Feith will act as the EU special representative in Kosovo.

Germany, Italy, France, and Britain are to be the main contributors to EULEX, which will also involve personnel from non-EU countries Croatia, Norway, Turkey, Switzerland, and the United States.
 
Thanks for keeping this up to date Forostar. 

The town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo will be a hotspot to watch in the upcoming days.  The town is ethnically divided with the Serbs living north of the Iber river and the Kosavars living south of the river.  Many citizens still claim that their land or property is occupied by the other ethnic group.  A committee set-up to solve such issues no longer exists, and commercial properties were never re-examined by the said committee.  This left many citizens on either side of the river bitter and desparate for justice.  I wonder what the newly set-up EULEX mission will do to rectify that.  The promising part of this is that when the new bridge in the town was made, Serbs and Kosavars worked together.

In other news, Russia is threatening to play hardball.  There are breakaway parts of Georgia, that Russia is now considering of supporting for their own self-interest.

Source.

Tension builds as Kosovo celebrates looming independence

PRISTINA, February 17, (RIA Novosti) - Thousand of residents of Pristina, the capital of Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo, have taken to the streets to celebrate the impending declaration of independence by the Albanian-dominated region.

Kosovo's parliament is to meet at noon (11:00 a.m. GMT) on Sunday, and an official declaration of unilateral independence is widely-expected to follow. The U.S. and many European countries have said they are ready to recognize Kosovo.

Crowds were also gathering in other cities across the province, which has a population of some two million. There were fears, however, that ethnic clashes could break out between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said on Saturday that, "The success of Kosovo's independence as a new beginning will be clearly measured by respect for the rights of minorities, especially Serbs."

NATO peacekeeping troops are on alert, ready to deal with any clashes between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo.

U.S. President George Bush, currently on a week-long tour of Africa, said in Tanzania that, "The United States will continue to work with our allies to the very best we can to make sure there's no violence."

"We are heartened by the fact that the Kosovo government has clearly proclaimed its willingness and its desire to support Serbian rights in Kosovo," he went on.

Belgrade has ruled out the use of force to prevent the breakaway of Kosovo.

Serbia's ally, Russia, remains deeply opposed to any unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo, saying that it would contradict international law, and would set a dangerous precedent for other secessionist regions.

"We are speaking here about the subversion of all the foundations of international law, about the subversion of those principles which, at huge effort, and at the cost of Europe's pain, sacrifice and bloodletting have been earned and laid down as a basis of its existence," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on February 12.

Russia has hinted that it may now recognize Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

"The declaration of sovereignty by Kosovo and its recognition will undoubtedly be taken into account in [Russia's] relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia following bloody conflicts in the wake of the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse.

The European Union gave its final approval for sending a civilian and police mission to Kosovo to replace the current UN mission, diplomatic sources in Brussels said on Saturday.

Kosovo has been a UN protectorate since the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia ended a conflict between Albanian and Serb forces in 1999.
 
I really, REALLY hope Kosovo's declaration of independence won't end in violence - Especially now that my brother will be shipped off to Kosovo as part of KFOR.
 
It won't be an Euro Disney trip I'm afraid. I wish your brother the best, he's doing an important job, needed for stability.

Expect violence (since the first day it's 1-0 for the Serbs in Belgrade, where I suspect more violence than in Kosovo). The Kosovars are calmer, until now that it. *fingers crossed*
 
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