| Page 3 of 3 < |
Impatient Kosovo Albanians Press For a Declaration of Independence
Veton Surroi talks to a farmer in Medevce during his three-week trek to promote independence for Kosovo.
(By Jonathan Finer -- The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Kosovo's Serbs, many of whom subsist on stipends paid by Belgrade, also fear they will be targets of violence if Albanians get greater control over Kosovo's affairs. In March 2004, Albanian mobs attacked Serb villages, burning several hundred homes and churches. At least 19 people died.
Milan Duncic, 48, the white-haired chief of the tiny Serb village of Binci, said its 50 residents are already renting apartments elsewhere in Serbia in case they need to flee. "If we stay, the Albanians will make Kosovo a concentration camp for Serbs."
Others are staying put but taking precautions. For centuries, the Serbian Orthodox Church has crowned its patriarch at the Patrijarsija Monastery in Peja, at the base of the Kurst Mountains. Last month, work began to build an eight-foot wall around the grounds.
For now, the leading proposal for Kosovo's future is a controversial plan, backed by the United States and the European Union, that falls short of full independence. It would invoke U.N. authority to formally separate Kosovo from Serbia, accord substantial minority rights to Serbs and give an E.U. representative power to annul legislation and fire officials.
Kosovo's assembly approved the package in April, but it is strongly opposed by Serbia and Russia, Serbia's traditional ally, which has blocked the U.N. Security Council from adopting the proposal. The result was a new round of talks, most recently in Pristina, among representatives of Kosovo, Serbia, the United States, the E.U. and Russia. Little progress has been made.
"I asked the Russian representative, 'If you will always veto any independence proposal that Serbia doesn't want, then why are we even negotiating?' He didn't answer," said Surroi, who took a break from his cross-country trek to attend recent talks in Pristina. "We won't change, Belgrade won't change. Moscow won't change. It's time to move on."
To prepare the residents for that possibility, throughout August the affable Surroi, the foreign-educated son of a former Yugoslav diplomat, has swapped his suit for hiking clothes and walked 12 miles a day on a campaign trail a world apart from the coffeehouse politicking of the capital.
On a sweltering evening, he came to Little Krusha, known in whispers as the "widow's village." One April afternoon during the war, Serb forces rounded up local men and boys and shot them dead.
Surroi asked women wearing mourners' robes for their thoughts on independence.
"The Serbs killed us physically. But since then we've been killed by having no government that cares for us," said Ayshe Shehu, 58, who lost her husband and four sons that day. "So, I am begging you. I have one son left and I don't want him to die in a place like this."
