http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/gj081607.htm
Kosovo Serb leaders say partition is "out of the question" BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - August 17, 2007, Friday Text of report by Serbian newspaper Glas javnosti on 16 August [Report by "D.M.": "Only Crumbs for Serbia"] Belgrade -- "Chopping up Kosovo-Metohija would bring Serbia another war; it would turn Kosovska Mitrovica into another Beirut and the only thing 'gained' from the division would be a legalization of the position of the north of the province, which in fact is not under the rule of the Kosovo provisional institutions anyway. There would be no new municipalities created in the Pomoravlje region; 75 per cent of the Serb community would be abandoned at the mercy of the [ethnic] Albanians, as would 90 per cent of our cultural and historical heritage, in which our Serbian identity is rooted," Kosovo Serb representative Oliver Ivanovic warns in the strongest terms. And while the corridors of international diplomatic offices are abuzz with rumours about a division as an alternative to Ahtisaari's plan, our people in the province are appealing to Belgrade not to abandon them this time at least. They are insisting that much more than mere percentages of area is at stake. They are warning against the delusion that pro-European Serbia would be given a concession in the form of making a tiny municipality here and there or putting up more barbed wire around the holy places. "Everything south of the Ibar River would be lost forever. There would be no other demarcation line except the one that we have today. It would only be moved if we had another war and heavy casualties -- and that is what nobody needs today. We must have no illusions about the border. All Serbs left living on the other side of it would feel abandoned. They could not stay on in Lipljan, Gracanica, and so on. They would leave their homes either of their own volition or under pressure," Ivanovic insists. The north of Kosmet [Kosovo-Metohija] would be annexed to Serbia, but this would only be the beginning of the problems. The new border could easily go up in flames. "There would immediately come a new concentration and operation of extremists along this line. Mitrovica would undergo Beirutization and young people would be the first victims. In effect, we would even be left without a part of that town, too, and people would have to move out. They would leave Zvecan next. Out of all the divided areas, there would be only two municipalities left -- Leposavic and Zubin Potok. Also, nearly the entire economic potential of the province, about 90 per cent of it, would be left to the Albanians," Ivanovic, a member of the first Serbian state team [for Kosovo talks], explains. This time, however, Serbia would not be the only one drawn into the new war for a Greater Albania. Ivanovic insists that a division would trigger conflicts also in northern Macedonia and Greece and there would be problems, too, in northern and southern Montenegro, Bosnia, and so on. He maintains that a similar effect would be produced by creating two [ethnic] entities. The international community would not want to settle the status according to that model, anyway, because the practice in Bosnia has shown clearly enough its "reconciliation effect," our interviewee maintains. In order to avoid any possibility of such a scenario, another Kosovo Serb representative, Marko Jaksic, insisted yesterday [15 August], that the word "division" must not be mentioned even in the context of the remotest of theories. "A division is out of the question and therefore there must be no mention of such a thing. We must not mention such a thing in any shape or form, because that is not a possibility. There are no percentages, no boundaries, no borders. Our trump card is international law. We have the misfortune that NATO has occupied the country and has no intention of leaving. But we must not give up. A division would lose us everything," Jaksic candidly said. Source: Glas javnosti, Belgrade, in Serbian 16 Aug 07 p3
