o How Kosovo Declares Its Independence

• How Kosovo Declares Its Independence

Published: February 18, 2008

(Page 2 of 2)

At the Security Council, Russia argued that the proclamation violated the 1999 resolution that established the United Nations mission in Kosovo. “Our position is that the declaration should be disregarded by the international community and declared null and void,” said Vitaly I. Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations.

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But Alejandro D. Wolff, the deputy American ambassador, said, “In our view, this declaration is logical and consistent and completely in line with” the 1999 measure.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pleaded with all parties “to refrain from any actions or statements that could endanger peace, incite violence or jeopardize security in Kosovo or the region.”

The Security Council agreed to a request by Russia and Serbia to hold an open meeting on Monday that will be addressed by the Serbian president, Boris Tadic.

Kosovo’s declaration followed nearly two years of United Nations-sponsored negotiations between it and Serbia. Those talks failed, as did a Security Council effort in December to resolve Kosovo’s future.

The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, appealed for calm, while NATO’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said the alliance would respond “swiftly and firmly against anyone who might resort to violence.”

Kosovo’s sovereignty remains severely circumscribed, making it reliant on the international community. NATO still provides international security, while the European Union has agreed to send an 1,800-strong police and judicial mission to help run the territory after the United Nations leaves.

Ulrich Wilhelm, the spokesman for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said Germany would decide what to do on Monday.

Kosovo played a central role in the collapse of the Yugoslav federation built by the Communist strongman Josip Broz Tito, who died in 1980. Albanian nationalism erupted in Kosovo in 1981, leading to bloody clashes.

In the 1980s, Mr. Milosevic used Serbs’ enormous sense of grievance that their ancestral heartland was now dominated by Muslim Albanians to come to power in Serbia. By 1989, he had abolished Kosovo’s autonomy, fired tens of thousands of Albanians from their jobs, suppressed Albanian language education and controlled the territory with a heavy police presence.

Ten years ago, Mr. Milosevic’s forces moved against the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, killing a guerrilla leader and his family at their compound. As violence escalated, NATO intervened in a 1999 bombing campaign, causing hundreds of thousands of Albanians and Serbs to flee.

An estimated 10,000 civilians were killed in the 1998-99 conflict, many of them Albanians, while 1,500 Serbs died in revenge killings that followed.

For the ethnic Albanians who make up 95 percent of Kosovo’s population, independence marks a new beginning.

“Independence is a catharsis,” said Antoneta Kastrati, 26, an Albanian from Peja, who said her mother and older sister were killed by their Serbian neighbors in 1999. “Things won’t change overnight and we cannot forget the past, but maybe I will feel safe now and my nightmares will finally go away.”

In Mitrovica, a 70-year-old Serbian engineer who would give only his first name, Svetozar, said: “I will stay here forever. This will always be Serbia.”

Kosovo’s declaration created immediate ripples in the former Soviet Union, where small, Russian-backed separatist areas — one in Moldova and two in the republic of Georgia — have existed since the early 1990s. Two of them — Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia — announced their intention to seek recognition as independent states.

Conversely, several of the European Union’s 27 member states — including Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia and Romania — oppose recognizing Kosovo because they fear encouraging secessionist movements within their own borders.

In Brussels, officials were drafting a statement for a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday. Senior European Union officials said they expected it to acknowledge Kosovo’s independence declaration without explicitly endorsing it.

The declaration of independence raises the prospects of a new constitution and emblems of nationhood, including a new flag bearing a map of Kosovo topped by six stars.

But in a sign of how hard it will be to forge the kind of multiethnic, secular identity that foreign powers have urged, the distinctive two-headed eagle of the red and black Albanian flag, reviled by Serbs, was everywhere Sunday, held by revelers, draped on horses, flapping out of car windows and hanging outside homes and storefronts across the territory.