Word: serbia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...implications of that outcome has taken eight years, consumed billions of dollars and entangled a legion of diplomats. It's not working. By Dec. 10, Serb and Albanian negotiators are supposed to sign on to a detailed, internationally vouchsafed plan for a peaceful separation of Kosovo from Serbia. But Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders are on the verge of scuppering the already deadlocked talks by unilaterally declaring independence. And Serbia, backed by Russia, remains loudly opposed to Kosovo's independence under any circumstances. "We're looking at a slow-motion train wreck," says Tomas Valasek, a Balkan specialist...
...wreck has its origins in the 1999 United Nations resolution that ended the Kosovo war. Under pressure from U.S. warplanes, Serbia's then President Slobodan Milosevic agreed to withdraw troops from Kosovo and cede control to the U.N., provided the province legally remained part of Serbia. But that condition has proved unacceptable to ethnic Albanians, who make up 90% of Kosovo's population. A subsequent U.N. plan to grant Kosovo full but "supervised" independence foundered on Russian threats of a veto in the U.N. Security Council. So last summer, the U.S., Russia and the European Union decided to give...
Behind all such calculations loom concerns over how Serbia and Russia might react to Kosovo declaring independence. All politicians in Belgrade, including pro-Western ones, have publicly opposed full independence; Serbs in neighboring Bosnia have even threatened to split from Sarajevo in retaliation. Serb officials say war is not an option, but Belgrade could suspend diplomatic relations with the U.S. and other countries that recognize Kosovo. Losing Kosovo, a vital locus of Serbian national feeling, may also radicalize Serbian politics and push moderate nationalists like Kostunica away from the E.U. and into Russian hands. "Serbia should not seek the company...
...have been the unlikeliest of scenarios, but today parts of the Balkans--that powder keg of Europe--are on the verge of a golfing boom. At KPMG's Golf Business Forum in Budapest in May, Croatia attracted attention from big-name developers. Montenegro is also generating interest. And while Serbia and Bosnia are unlikely to attract foreign golfers--as neither share Croatia's tradition of tourism--both report a burgeoning domestic market. "We have very often quoted Croatia as one of the countries with the highest potential for development for golf tourism, and we expect significant development there," said Andrea...
Similar challenges face developers in Bosnia and Serbia, where all that remains of the Belgrade course opened by Prince Paul Karadjordjevic in 1936--and bombed a few years later--is a restaurant named Golf. A new course in Belgrade opened in 2003 and has since seen its membership quadruple. The game is part of a new experience, a new Serbia, in which bunkers are sand traps, not places to hide. "Another three or four years, and I'll go pro," local champ Ognjen Radovic, 14, said nonchalantly, as if planning for one's future was never a luxury in Serbia...