Islamic-Albanian bid for Kosovo independence, violence against Serb minority, rekindling ethnic tensions
BELGRADE, Serbia-Hundreds of ex-Serb militia members from the Balkan wars gathered in a central town Saturday and pledged to fight for Kosovo if the breakaway province is granted independence as proposed in a Western-backed plan. Police detained more than two dozen people.
The former Serb fighters gathered in the town of Krusevac, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Belgrade, to form a paramilitary unit similar to the ones that roamed the Balkans during the wars of the 1990s.
Police in Krusevac said they detained 27 people dressed in T-shirts with symbols of the disbanded Unit for Special Operations, whose former commander and several members are on trial for the 2003 assassination of Serbia’s reformist Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. The event is an illustration of the mounting nationalism here over prospects that Kosovo will split from Serbia as demanded by its ethnic Albanian majority.
Talks on the formation of a new pro-Western government in Serbia, meanwhile, remain deadlocked, triggering a political crisis that could pave the way for the return to power of the nationalists loyal to ex-leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Such a scenario would undermine Western efforts to find a lasting solution for Kosovo and the troubled region.
http://www.serbianna.com/news/2007/01632.shtml
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=496