Kosovo’s Constitution went into force yesterday, handing the newly independent nation’s ethnic Albanian government power after nine years of UN administration.
The charter — a milestone that comes four months after leaders declared independence from Serbia — has given the government in Pristina sole decision-making authority.
But it has threatened to worsen ethnic tensions between Kosovo’s Albanians and Serbs. Security in the divided northern town of Mitrovica was high a day after a gunman attacked a police station, wounding one officer.
Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders were to mark the Constitution in a low-key ceremony in Pristina later yesterday that would open with Kosovo’s newly approved anthem, but without the words to avoid offending Serbs.
Serbs, who make up less than 5 percent of Kosovo’s population of 2 million, strongly opposed the ethnic Albanian leadership’s decision to declare independence from Serbia after UN-mediated talks fell through last year.
“Serbia views Kosovo as its southern province,” Serbian President Boris Tadic said yesterday.
“It will defend its integrity by peaceful means, using diplomacy, without resorting to force,” he said.
In an attempt to undermine Kosovo’s independence and the ceremony in Pristina, Serbia’s top official for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, shunned the ceremony in Pristina, instead visiting the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica.
Samardzic is expected to promise an assembly for the north, the region of Kosovo bordering Serbia — a move that would bring Kosovo closer to a partition along ethnic lines.
Tadic said his government would insist on a new round of internationally mediated talks on Kosovo.
“This will be our strategy and our response to the proclamation of an illegal state in Kosovo,” he said.
The plan to shift Kosovo to government control envisaged a EU team acting as overseers and taking over from the UN administration, which stepped in following a 78-day, NATO-led air war in 1999 to stop former leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
An estimated 10,000 people died in the Serb crackdown, mainly ethnic Albanians.
However, Russia blocked the EU from taking on the role, prompting the UN to stay in charge of Serb areas while gradually handing areas over to the EU’s police officers, judges and advisers.
Russia said it considers the 2,200-strong EU mission illegal because it has not been approved by the UN Security Council.
Since 1999, Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs have struggled to bridge their differences.
Many Serbs lead isolated lives and have often endured attacks by vengeful ethnic Albanians.
Most of Kosovo’s 100,000 remaining Serbs live in Kosovo’s north in a region separated by a river from the Albanians.
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