Serbia to offer Kosovo full autonomy
Article from: Agence France-Presse >From correspondents in Belgrade September 23, 2007 10:33pm SERBIA will offer full autonomy, or "independence within Serbia", to the breakaway southern province of Kosovo during face-to-face talks this week in New York, a report said. “Our position is to offer Kosovo independence within Serbia - that is to say we are giving the Albanians a chance to manage their own lives,” Serbian negotiator Goran Bogdanovic was quoted as saying in the Glas Javnosti daily. “We are convinced that this is an opportunity to try to finally arrive at a compromise which satisfies both parties.” But he said Belgrade still wanted control over various aspects of the mainly ethnic Albanian province's administration, including education and health. Kosovo Albanians, who make up around 90 percent of the province's 1.8 million people, demand full independence and have threatened to make a unilateral declaration if the talks fail. Separatist guerrillas fought Serbian security forces for several months in 1998-1999 until NATO military intervention forced Belgrade to withdraw and turned the province over to UN administration. The two sides have been meeting representatives of the so-called troika - the European Union, Russia and the United States - to try to reach a solution. Brussels and Washington openly back independence but Serbian ally Russia insists it will not support any solution that does not have the agreement of both sides. A series of meetings starting Friday in New York and set to end on December 10 are a last-ditch attempt to bridge the differences. A UN envoy has recommended the province be granted independence under international supervision but this was effectively blocked at the Security Council by Russia, which threatened to use its veto http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22469139-5005961,00.html [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
