Word: kosovo
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...intransigence of Russia and Serbia has emboldened Kosovo's Serbs, who still make up just under 10% of the province's population. Their leaders in northern Kosovo are threatening to secede themselves if Kosovo breaks away. "Albanians don't want to be ruled from Belgrade; we don't want to be ruled from Pristina," Milan Ivanovic, head of the hard-line Serbian National Council in the northern town of Mitrovice, told TIME. "There is an impression," he added ominously, "that Serbia will not make any radical moves if Kosovo declares independence. That is wrong. If they try to kick...
...risk of real trouble? Belgrade is threatening to cut off electricity supplies and close trade corridors, but it has ruled out a military response, and 15,000 NATO peacekeepers remain on the ground in Kosovo to prevent open conflict. But in one scenario, ethnic Serb police stationed in northern Kosovo and supervised by the U.N. would change sides after a declaration of independence, thus compelling the U.N. to impose martial law. Violence could also flare if ethnic Albanians attempt to march on Mitrovice to prevent it from seceding. Any such conflict could easily spill across borders. Meanwhile, Serbs in neighboring...
...Belgrade itself, where politics is poised between moderately pro-Western forces who want Serbia to join the E.U. and nationalists who favor closer ties with Moscow, a decision by the E.U. to back Kosovo's independence could make waves. Aleksander Popovic, deputy head of the ruling Democratic Party of Serbia, told TIME that Serbia may well reconsider its "betrothal" to the E.U. if the E.U. recognizes Kosovo. Djelic, the Deputy Premier, agrees: E.U. support for a unilateral declaration, he said, "would throw the European orientation of Serbia - and certainly the speed of reform - into question." In one recent poll...
...sure, the consequences of a declaration of independence by Kosovo may not turn out to be dire; after the horrors of the 1990s, neither radical Serbs nor Albanians really want to risk a war. But nor does the region enjoy an instinct for reconciliation. Thousands of ethnic Albanians died at the hands of Serbs in the late 1990s; revenge attacks on local Serbs as recently as March 2004 left 19 dead and nearly 1,000 injured, with dozens of medieval Orthodox churches destroyed...
Back in Pristina, where preparations for independence day are under way, Thaci is putting the finishing touches to a personal makeover from irascible rebel leader to buttoned-down politico. In Kosovo's recent election campaign, he focused not on questions of independence but instead on energy supplies (those power outages), road-building and economic development. "I made mistakes in the past. But I've changed," Thaci says. After all the blood that's been shed there, let's hope that's true of his native land...