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Kosovo future

Last reviewed: 22-07-2009

NEGOTIATING A PRECARIOUS FUTURE


The breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo declared independence in February 2008, ending nine years in limbo.

  • 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are ethnic Albanians
  • West supports independence, while Serbia and Russia bitterly oppose it
  • Minority Serbs say they face discrimination

    Kosovo has been recognised as independent by more than 60 countries including the United States, but notably not by Serbia and its traditional ally Russia.

    The landlocked province was part of the republic of Serbia inside Yugoslavia after World War Two. After Yugoslavia began to fall apart, ethnic Albanian guerrillas took up arms against Serb forces.

    Some 10,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands fled their homes during a two-year Serb counter-insurgency war.

    NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 to halt the killing and ethnic cleansing of the province's Albanian majority by Serb forces.

    Kosovo was then run by the United Nations until it declared independence, when the European Union took over law and order duties in the new state. A small U.N. mission remains, mainly in Serb-dominated areas.

    Many of Kosovo's Serbs fled the province after the war. Of the 120,000 Serbs who remain, protected by NATO's peace force, KFOR, around half live in the north around the city of Mitrovica. The rest are scattered in enclaves.

    Almost two years of Serb-Albanian negotiations on the future status ended in deadlock in December 2007, prompting the unilateral declaration of independence.


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    An employee of the Albanian Mine Action Executive project trains in the north eastern of Kukes district, some 150 km (93 miles) from Tirana October 7, 2009. Hundreds of Albanians were ...


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