HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------Yugoslavia deal wins mixed reactions in Kosovo
By Shaban Buza
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 14 (Reuters) - The agreement to consign the Yugoslav state to history won mixed reactions in Kosovo on Thursday, greeted by some Albanians as a step towards independence but described by Serbs as a move away from it.
Politicians across most of the Balkans hailed the EU-brokered deal as a stabilising force. Under it, Montenegro shelved its independence plans and agreed to the redesigning of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a union called simply "Serbia and Montenegro."
To some Kosovo Albanian leaders, the disappearance of Yugoslavia from the map means only one thing -- the end of the road for the international administration installed after NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 for its repression of Kosovo Albanians.
Under United Nations Security Council resolution 1244, the Albanian-majority province is to remain part of Yugoslavia under U.N. rule pending a decision on its status. Despite Western insistence to the contrary, Albanians hope this is now close.
"This agreement will accelerate the process of independence for Kosovo, because from today Yugoslavia no longer exists," said Ruxhdi Sefa, a senior official in the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), the province's third-biggest party.
"So, now it's up to the people of Kosovo to decide on their future status through a referendum," Sefa added.
SERBS SAY DEAL BINDS IN KOSOVO
Not so, said leaders of Kosovo's Serb minority, a community of about 180,000 people huddled into enclaves and periodically harrassed by extremist remnants of the Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas who fought against domination from Belgrade.
"This agreement is a very good message from the Balkans to the world -- a message of integration, not disintegration or separatism," said Rada Trajkovic, head of the Kosovo Serb coalition Povratak, echoing sentiments voiced across the region.
"I expect Serbs to be integrated in Kosovo and Kosovo to be integrated in the new state with Serbia and Montenegro."
In the hope of eliminating confusion, the plan to revamp Yugoslavia drafted by the European Union explicitly states that all international documents, especially resolution 1244, will apply to Serbia if Montenegro leaves the new union.
Although there is no other reference to Kosovo, officials from the province's U.N. administration said this implied no change to its status unless announced by the Security Council.
Others throughout the Balkans hope this is so, particularly in neighbouring Macedonia, where minority Albanian guerrillas from Kosovo battled government forces for six months last year before disbanding in return for more civil rights.
Politicians from Macedonia's ethnic majority, which widely believed the insurgency was part of a wider plan to carve out Albanian autonomous areas, stressed separatism had no future.
"We firmly support the idea of not redrawing borders or pushing for independence," Foreign Minister Slobodan Casule said. "It is in Macedonia's highest national interest that the region start generating stability and economic prosperity."
The message was similar in Croatia, which has looked west towards the EU in the years since its 1990s war of independence.
"This fully removes the possibility for further conflicts in our neighbourhood and will enable Croatia and Yugoslavia to improve relations more quickly than before," a senior Foreign Ministry official in Zagreb said.
But the deal between Belgrade and Podgorica may lead to an end of U.N. control over another part of the Balkans -- the area around a key port on Croatia's Adriatic border with Montenegro.
"We are particularly optimistic about resolving the border issues, primarily the Prevlaka peninsula," the official said.
(With reporting by Kole Casule in Skopje and Zoran Radosavljevic in Zagreb)
10:13 03-14-02
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