Bombings ahead of Kosovo's likely independence

 

Bombings ahead of Kosovo’s likely independence

By WILLIAM J. KOLE
   

GNJILANE, Serbia (AP) - At a dusty market in the centre of this eastern
Kosovo town, Serbs and Albanians haggle good-naturedly over the prices of
their onions and tomatoes.

It's one of the few places in the province where people on both sides of the
ethnic divide live together and get along - and that makes the yellow police
tape and bomb crater a few blocks away seem even more ominous.

As Kosovo enters the final phase of UN-brokered talks that many believe will
give it independence from Serbia, recurrent explosions are rattling nerves
and raising troubling questions about what lies in store for a region trying
to put atrocities and animosities behind it.

"I am afraid," said Aziz Kryeziu, a 46-year-old ethnic Albanian who lives in
normally tranquil Gnjilane. "Afraid for all the innocent people who might
get hurt."

Over the past week, there have been four bombings, the worst of which
wounded four Serbs in a western town. Authorities said they think some of
the blasts may have been a settling of scores between rival politicians or
mobsters.

But parliament speaker Kole Berisha insists the violence is a deliberate
attempt to destabilize Kosovo at a delicate stage in its drive for
statehood.

"The closer we come to a decision, the risks and threats are higher for
sure," Prime Minister Agim Ceku conceded this week in an interview with The
Associated Press.

On Friday, chief UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari will brief the Security Council
on the lack of progress in UN-brokered talks that began in February to
determine the province's future status.

UN officials say the talks have done all they can to ensure the beleaguered
Serb minority will be protected and have a greater voice in an independent
Kosovo. Sometime this autumn, Ahtisaari will give the council his idea of
what a future Kosovo should look like, and a UN resolution paving the way
for independence is expected by the end of the year.

"This is a sensitive process with a lot at stake for a lot of people,"
Steven Schook, Kosovo's deputy UN administrator, told the AP. "But I believe
we must have a change in status and a new status as soon as possible. We
anticipate and hope it will be soon - this year."

Ethnic Albanians - Muslims who make up 90 per cent of Kosovo's two million
people - have sought independence for decades. In the late 1990s, their
quest to break free prompted the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to
launch a brutal crackdown that killed 10,000 people and made refugees of
thousands more.

Orthodox Serbs are willing to grant Kosovo broad autonomy, but see it as the
heart of their ancient homeland and want it to remain a part of Serbian
territory. Their leaders worry about the safety of Kosovo's 100,000 Serbs,
many of whom don't dare leave their small, scattered enclaves. After the
1998-99 war, 200,000 Serbs fled fearing reprisal attacks, and relatively few
have returned.

Serb unease is evident even in Gnjilane, considered a model for the kind of
peaceful, multiethnic republic Ceku hopes to govern.

Jadranka, a Serb woman so fearful she refused to give her last name, said
she pretends not to hear when Albanians occasionally taunt her with shouts
of "Go to Serbia!"

"It's a very scary situation for us," she said. "It's not a life when you're
afraid to go out."

With 16,000 NATO-led peacekeepers still patrolling the province, armed
conflict is highly unlikely. But the chances of more violence like the March
2004 riots that killed 19 people and displaced thousands "are unfortunately
rather high," warned Alex Anderson, Kosovo project director for the
International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention centre.

Although Ceku insists Belgrade will never invade, a Serbia still sullen over
Montenegro's independence earlier this year has made thinly veiled threats
that it might not let Kosovo go.

This past weekend, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica insisted Kosovo
must remain a "historic and integral" part of Serbia, and ultranationlist
firebrand Tomislav Nikolic urged the army to go on standby. A rare military
parade drove home their point.

"There's a sense of pressures building up behind the dam. A lot of violence
could be unleashed once the status issue is resolved," Anderson said. "At
best, we're going to have a very grumpy Serbia refusing to recognize Kosovo.
To Serbs, the idea of Albanians running anything is absurd and grotesque."


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