U.S. to Move Some Diplomats Out of Serbia

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Emotions Run High as Kosovo Declares Independence

Poor and mostly Muslim but feverishly pro-Western, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, ending a long chapter in the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. U.S. President George Bush hailed the newly independent Kosovo and officially recognized it as a state and a "close friend" on Monday.

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"As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia," Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the crowd in front of the old Yugoslav parliament building. "Serbia has annulled and will annul every act of the illegal and fictitious state created on its territory by the use of force."

The rally matched the size of past demonstrations in Belgrade, including the October 2000 popular revolt that toppled Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. He died in The Hague in 2006 while on trial for war crimes committed in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Western diplomats have argued that the independence of Kosovo, which has been administered by the United Nations for the past nine years, was inevitable following the brutality of Milosevic's campaign to subdue an insurgency there in the 1990s. It culminated in the mass expulsion of tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes and into neighboring Albania and Macedonia.

Despite its size, the main rally yesterday, a mixture of speeches and patriotic songs, was somewhat listless, observers said.

Sporadic violence in the predominantly Serb region of northern Kosovo, including attacks in recent days on U.N. border posts, have raised fears that Belgrade might attempt to partition the new state.

But such a move, even if it could be achieved in the face of NATO's presence on the ground, would essentially abandon nearly half of the Serbs who live deeper in the former province and are surrounded by ethnic Albanian communities.

Moreover, it would effectively end Belgrade's claim on all of Kosovo, something Serbia does not appear willing to countenance.

International officials fear that Serbia, and Serbs living in northern Kosovo, will attempt to draw ethnic Albanians into conflict to undermine their claims that they intend to build a multiethnic democratic state.

Kostunica told the crowd yesterday that Serbia has the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia has been Serbia's most vocal ally in opposing Kosovo's declaration of independence, which has also been recognized by leading European countries such as Britain, France and Germany.

"The Russians are behind this because they have encouraged the worst and most extremist elements in Serbia for the last year," former U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated with Milosevic in the run-up to NATO's bombing campaign, said on CNN.

Despite skirmishes around the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, riot police were largely invisible yesterday when demonstrators, their faces covered, rammed their way into the facility.

One man ripped down the U.S. flag while others waved the Serbian flag from a chancery balcony. Smoke began to billow from the building as protesters tossed furniture and papers -- none of them sensitive, U.S. officials said -- out of broken windows. The crowd chanted, "Serbia, Serbia."