Word: kosovo
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...north side, and its ethnic-Albanian south side - enclaves that have, for the past decade, been so separate that they might as well have been different countries. In fact, the reason the "Descendants" are burning Old Glory is ostensibly to protest Washington's support for the "fake state" of Kosovo...
...Since the 1999 Kosovo war, the smoke-filled, vinyl seated bar and cafe on the ground floor of a crumbling apartment block has been a gathering place for the hard line Serbs who want to keep ethnic-Albanians out of their enclave. Its position on the front line has made La Dolce Vita the target of bomb attacks against Serbs by ethnic Albanians (nine people were injured here in 2006), and also a bully pulpit for anti-Western tirades...
...still be the place to be seen in northern Mitrovica, but the riverside cafe no longer oozes a sense of imminent danger. It was tense, this past winter, when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, and La Dolce Vita's regulars gathered in a tense silence, sipping slivovitz plum brandy, smoking, and waiting for the news from Belgrade. As the Serb capital was gripped by violent protests that included an attempt to torch the U.S. embassy, life became in Mitrovica became dangerous for Serbian and foreign journalists covering local demonstrations: Several had their cameras smashed; some were beaten. A Serb reporter...
...Serbs attacked NATO soldiers and U.N. police with grenades and rifles, and several hundred people were injured in the resulting melee - including one Ukrainian policeman in the U.N. force who died from shrapnel wounds. Despite the occasional rumor, still, of ethnic Albanian "terrorists" coming across the bridge to threaten Kosovo's Serb minority, the Serb "bridgewatchers" gathered at La Dolce Vita as an early warning system barely glance at the bridge any more...
...writes in his diaries, said debt relief was like Mount Everest. Bono replied, "When you see Everest, Tony, you don't look at it, you f___ing climb it.") I had breakfast with Blair in his hotel room the next morning, anxious to know how the talks on Kosovo had gone. In hindsight, I'd missed the key point of the weekend; in its Cologne communiqué, the G-8 countries committed themselves to debt relief, proof that a new and powerful alliance had been born...