Word: rugova
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...K.L.A., as well as the moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, insist that outright independence is the only acceptable solution. Milosevic shows no willingness to countenance that and has stalled on negotiations in order to launch his crackdown. The West frets that escalation of the conflict could lead to a Balkan war wider and more destabilizing than Bosnia's, drawing in Albania, Macedonia and even Greece. Holbrooke's aim is to cajole everyone to the bargaining table...
Tuesday, 1:08 p.m., the U.S. embassy in Skopje. Holbrooke and Hill meet with Rugova. It's 90[degrees]F., but the Kosovar novelist and literature professor arrives wearing a sweater, coat and red silk ascot. As the men sit down, Holbrooke asks Rugova if he wants to remove his jacket. "No," Rugova responds. "I'm an Albanian snake...
...Milosevic's hard line has radicalized the Kosovar population, eroding support for moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova and -- to the consternation of the West -- boosting the ranks of the armed guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army. "The more Serb forces attack civilians, the weaker Rugova's position becomes," says Calabresi. Rugova today refused Milosevic's offer of talks, demanding Serb withdrawal as a precondition. But even that, says Calabresi, may not be enough: "Troop withdrawal wouldn't mean much unless Milosevic was prepared to make significant concessions on the political status of Kosovo" -- a notion that sticks in the craw...
...exceptions, Kosovars have been willing to follow their leaders' policy of nonviolence and passive resistance. In May they evaded attempts by Serbs to block unauthorized elections, but their new assembly has been barred from meeting. The President of the unrecognized Independent ! Republic of Kosovo, Democratic League leader Ibrahim Rugova, says, "We hold meetings every week with local representatives" despite repeated Serb arrests of Albanian activists...
...from the Muslim fanatic portrayed in Serbian propaganda, Rugova, 47, seems an unlikely nationalist leader. A Paris-educated Ph.D. in linguistics, he explains, "I opted for nonviolence because there has been too much violence in the Balkans. But since the war in Slovenia and Bosnia, Serbian ideology is one of brute force. Nonviolence may become absurd in these circumstances." The Kosovars harbor the dangerous conviction that the U.S. and Europe will help them win independence from Serbia -- the same conviction once held by moderates in Bosnia. But because Kosovo has never been an independent republic and is technically part...