SERBIA:NINE YEARS after western powers started bombing Belgrade's forces out of Kosovo, Serb leaders yesterday denounced the fledgling country as an illegal "Nato state" and confirmed making plans to divide the territory along ethnic lines.
"Now it is more than obvious that the cruel destruction of Serbia during the Nato bombardment had only one aim: to turn the province of Kosovo into the world's first Nato state," said nationalist prime minister Vojislav Kostunica.
"The illegal construction of the huge American military base Bondsteel and Annex 11 of the Ahtisaari plan - which enshrines Nato as the ultimate authority in Kosovo - reveal the true reason why Serbia was mindlessly devastated and why on February 17th a Nato state was illegally declared," he added.
Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders proclaimed sovereignty last month.
Mr Kostunica has aligned himself with the ultra-nationalist Radicals and the Socialists, who still idolise former autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, in demanding an end to talks on closer ties with the EU until it scraps the mission and rejects Kosovo's sovereignty.
In a snap election called for May 11th, they will face the Democrats of President Boris Tadic and his liberal allies, who also denounce Kosovo's independence but insist that Belgrade should not freeze negotiations with Brussels or turn away from the West towards Russia. Moscow yesterday offered humanitarian aid to Kosovo's Serb population.
After days of speculation that Mr Kostunica's ally Slobodan Samardzic, who is Serbia's minister for Kosovo, had handed UN officials a set of proposals to divide the new state along ethnic lines, the plan was published yesterday.
Mr Samardzic said the proposals, which have been delivered to UN headquarters in New York, lay the basis for the "functional separation" of the 1.9 million ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and the 100,000 Serbs who live in northern areas and several scattered enclaves.
