Kosovo's president condemns Serbia move

December 30, 2007 - 0:0

PRISTINA (AP) -- Kosovo's president accused Serbia of aggression Thursday for passing a parliamentary resolution that calls for reconsidering ties with any country that recognizes Kosovo as independent.

Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu called the move ""unjust and baseless, in line with other constitutional aggressions"" by Belgrade.
""Serbia will not decide Kosovo's fate,"" Sejdiu told reporters. ""This policy that Serbia is setting ... has led to bloodshed and it is not in their interest to continue with this approach. We are against war and confrontations.""
Serbia is telling Serbs in Kosovo to ignore an Albanian declaration of independence early next year, Reuters reported.
Serbs dominate a thin slice of northern Kosovo, frustrating efforts by leaders of Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian majority and their UN overseers to extend control over the entire territory of Serbia's southern province.
Kosovo's 2 million Albanians are expected to declare independence in the first months of 2008, almost nine years since NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a Serb counter-insurgency war.
The Albanians have Western backing after almost two years of failed Serb-Albanian negotiations. But the flag-raising is unlikely to extend beyond the Ibar river that slices through the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, forming a natural boundary between Serbs in the north and Albanians in the south.
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, promoting a resolution implicitly rejecting EU and NATO membership if the two recognize Kosovo, told parliament this week Serbs in Kosovo ""should ignore any unilateral declaration as an illegal act.""
Cabinet minister Mladjan Dinkic was more explicit on Friday. Western recognition of Kosovo ""would certainly open the question of Serbs living in Kosovo and it would lead to the necessary integration (into Serbia) of the territories where Serbs live,"" he said.
Dinkic, Serbia's economy minister and a pro-Western reformer, told the Belgrade daily Blic that Kosovo's secession would also reopen the question of the Serb Republic half of neighboring Bosnia ""and its integration with Serbia.""
But Albanians in Kosovo are also not beyond using the taboo prospect of ""Greater"" ethnic states to drive their argument for independence and warn Serbia to keep its hands off the north.
""Albanians live in four countries other than Albania,"" outgoing Kosovo prime minister Agim Ceku was quoted as saying this week, in reference to Kosovo and Serbia's southern Presevo Valley, western Macedonia and Montenegro.
""If Kosovo is partitioned along ethnic lines, those would want to discuss uniting with Albania,"" he said.
Talk of a Greater Albania, officially rejected by Albania and played down by most ethnic Albanian leaders, is unlikely to go down well in Western capitals. It would appear to justify their fear of partition as an almost certain trigger for Balkan land swaps and forced population movements.