UN seeks pact for Kosovo's 'separate worlds'

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE (FRANCE) By Nicholas Wood The New York Times, TUESDAY, JULY 26, 2005

PRISTINA, Kosovo In the six years since NATO bombers forced Yugoslav troops out of this troubled province, progress toward resolving the entrenched enmity here between Serbs and ethnic Albanians has been slow. The United Nations, which has been administering Kosovo, now wants to broker a deal and step aside.

The negotiations are bound to be painful. Serbs are determined to keep Kosovo, their religious heartland, while ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population, demand independence after suffering years of ethnic violence that culminated in the war of 1998 to 1999. The majority of each community barely acknowledges the existence of the other.

Serbs face the possibility of living in an independent, Albanian-dominated state. Diplomats say that if Albanians want to achieve anything like independence they will have to give the Serbs basic rights, such as freedom of movement, as well as the right of return to those Serbian refugees who fled the region.

The framework for the negotiations is far from clear. The United Nations has commissioned a report to determine if and when talks can start. Despite some Russian and Chinese opposition in the Security Council, most diplomats expect the negotiations to begin by early October. The talks would involve local Albanian and Serb leaders as well as the Serbian government and representatives of the leading industrial democracies.

While many Western officials privately acknowledge that independence is perhaps the only solution that the Albanian population will accept, the Serbian government is hoping Kosovo will remain within Serbia, but be granted substantial autonomy.

Any resolution has to grapple with Kosovo's nearly complete division along ethnic lines, a rupture that goes back to June 1999, the month the Serb-dominated Yugoslav forces who were accused of committing atrocities against Albanians were forced by NATO troops to withdraw.

As the soldiers left, the returning ethnic Albanian refugees sought revenge on their Serb neighbors, and forced up to 200,000 to flee the province. Those Serbs who stayed - their numbers are seasonal and fluctuate between 70,000 and 130,000, according to local aid agencies - have led volatile lives.

Interethnic violence, which can dissipate for months on end, often reappears without warning. In March last year, 50,000 Albanians rioted across the province, attacking Serbs and other minorities and forcing 4,000 from their homes. Few Serbs remain in Kosovo's cities, with the exception of Mitrovica, which is divided down the middle along ethnic lines. Instead, most Serbs live in rural enclaves like Gracanica, the largest such enclave with a population of 5,000, just three kilometers, or two miles, south of Pristina.

Gracanica, like most Serbian villages across Kosovo, retains links with the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Serbia provides such basic services as health and education, and some documentation, like passports and birth and marriage certificates, services that rankle Albanians who regard the United Nations and their regional government as the only rightful authorities in the province.

Albanians drive through the town, which lies on one of Kovoso's main trunk roads, but pedestrians and those in the cars studiously ignore each other.

"We live in two separate worlds," said Sasa Sekulic, a Serbian business owner in Gracanica. Forced to leave his home in Pristina by ethnic Albanian looters, Sekulic set up a small business making Turkish delight, a sticky jellylike candy. He planned to sell it in Kosovo, but while Albanians are happy to sell him the ingredients to make the sweets, Albanian shops refused to stock his products after a television news show revealed they were made in Gracanica.

"They will buy products from the rest of Serbia, but if it is from Kosovo they don't want to know," he said. "Their ultimate aim is for us to move from here altogether." Without the international community there to protect them, he said, most Serbs do not see a future in a Kosovo dominated by Albanians.

"You won't find us here," he said. "We don't want to live in an independent Kosovo."