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...everyone agrees. Most Kosovo Albanians, who make up an estimated 90% of the population, do indeed see independence as long overdue. But Serbia itself and Kosovo's Serb minority remain implacably opposed to the idea. On the eve of the final round of talks this week between Kosovo Albanians and Serbs aimed at negotiating a solution to Kosovo's status (legally, it is now no more than a province of Serbia), Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica vowed that Belgrade would "never let an inch of its territory be taken away." Kosovo Serbs warned of "permanent instability" if Kosovo is granted...
Kosovo Albanians have been agitating for full independence from Belgrade since before NATO planes drove Serb forces out of the province in 1999. But the U.N. resolution which helped end that conflict left the province part of Serbia. Last year, the U.N. introduced a plan that envisioned "supervised" independence for the territory, with the full blessing of the international community. But Belgrade, backed by Moscow, refused to budge. "Kosovo is our Jerusalem," Bozidar Djelic, Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister, told TIME recently. "That's where our church was born. That's where our kings were crowned...
...took 77 days for NATO bombs to drive Serbian forces out of the small Balkan province of Kosovo during the 1999 war. The effort to get Serbs and Kosovars to agree on the 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...
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...
That makes Janko Tipsarevic, another leading young Serb player, proud in a vinegary sort of way. "All that we have in tennis came from mud, from nothing," Tipsarevic told reporters earlier this year about his compatriots achievements. Tipsarevic, an iconoclast with rings in his eyebrows and a quote from Dostoyevsky's The Idiot tattooed, in Japanese, on his forearm, is the most talkative of the new crop. "Nobody in our country invested one dollar into any one of our players," he said. His tongue-in-cheek explanation for why so many Serbs are suddenly playing...