SERBIA & MONTENEGRO: Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in Kosovo last night for talks with its top officials, who claim that a spate of explosions around the troubled province are intended to sabotage its bid for independence from Belgrade.
The three-day visit is Ms Albright's first to Kosovo since 1999, when she won hero status among the region's ethnic Albanians by advocating the NATO air strikes that stopped a Serb crackdown against separatist guerrillas and Albanian civilians.
But her arrival was marred by a series of blasts across Kosovo, which also coincided with the start of UN envoy Kai Eide's latest fact-finding mission to decide whether the province is democratic and stable enough to begin talks on its final status.
Mr Eide was due to visit northern Kosovo yesterday, hours after a town in the area was rocked by an explosion at the joint headquarters of the Serbian Democratic Party and the Ministry for Returns, which helps tens of thousands of Serbs who fled Albanian reprisal attacks after the 1998-9 conflict.
That blast, which is thought to have been caused by a hand grenade, came as police and NATO peacekeepers investigated a co-ordinated attack on three major institutions in the Kosovan capital, Pristina.
The first explosion occurred late on Saturday night outside the UN mission in the city, followed quickly by another near the provincial parliament and a third close to the headquarters of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. No one was hurt.
"The aim of these dangerous acts is to destabilise our country," said Kosovo's President Ibrahim Rugova.
"[ They] come at time when a positive assessment of progress in Kosovo is expected, which will open the way for the recognition of independence."
Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi also linked the attacks to Mr Eide's fact-finding mission.
"It seems there are forces that want to devalue the achievements that our institutions have made. But they cannot stop the path towards our goal," Mr Kosumi said.
Mr Eide is expected to report to the UN in autumn.
The United States has targeted 2005 as a key year for resolving the fate of Kosovo, where the ethnic Albanian majority wants independence - a prospect dismissed as unacceptable by Serbia, which views Kosovo as its spiritual homeland.
