Word: kosovo
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...procession had started at the Parliament, wending its way through damp Belgrade streets to the monumental St. Sava Church, the largest Serbian Orthodox church in the Balkans. There, high priests delivered "prayers for Kosovo." The former Russian dissident and Nobel Laureate Aleksander Solzhenitsyn sent greetings from his home in the U.S. state of Vermont, calling on Serbs to "stand by your graves." (Kosovo is the site of a famous defeat at the hands of the Ottomans that is deemed a cradle of Serbian identity...
...outrage, during which, among other things, no fewer than ten McDonald's outlets were vandalized, and a local supermaket chain was targeted because of its Slovenian owners (Slovenia currently holds the rotating EU presidency), as were Albanian sweet shops and bakeries. (Albania has consistently supported the secession struggle of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.) More than 80 people were injured in those protests, most of them police...
...Serb-dominated northern part of Kosovo, meanwhile, Kosovo Serbs descended on two border posts, torching one and blowing up the other, before NATO troops from the territory's 16,000-strong peacekeeping force arrived to take control of the posts. There were no casualties. Local Serbian leader Marko Jaksic, the head of the self-styled Serbian National Council in the northern town of Mitrovica, justified the attacks, saying that Serbs will not tolerate "symbols of a monster state" on their territory...
...recognition because the mission will likely replace the United Nations-approved administration in the territory. (The EU failed to reach unanimity on the issue, leaving the decision up to its member states.) Serbia's ambassadors have been recalled from the U.S., France, and other countries that have recognized Kosovo's independence...
...Although Kosovo's declaration of independence has been expected for months, the scale of the response - both among Serbs and by foreign governments opposed to the decision - has surprised many. It is not clear how long the protests will be sustained, but for many Kosovo Albanians, as well as U.N., EU and NATO officials in the territory, it has gone on long enough...