News | Serbian Unity Congress

May 8, 2008 on 5:29 am | In In Focus, Kosovo & Metohija, News in English |

Serbs in Kosovo are preparing to create a parliament of their own after Serbia’s local and parliamentary elections take place later on May 11.

“The Kosovo Serbs need a representative body in order to exercise their legal and legitimate rights. This is of the utmost importance given the Kosovo Ministry’s plan for the functional division of the Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo,” said Kosovo Serb leader Marko Jaksic.

Jaksic highlighted the decision as the ‘only way for the Serbs to be able to survive in Kosovo’.

The Serb leader sharply criticized Kosovo’s parliament for being made up of ‘puppets’ in hands of the West, adding they did not intend to consider the concerns of Serbs in the forefront.

Serbia lost control over Kosovo in 1999, when NATO bombs drove out Serb forces to halt Belgrade’s sever crackdown on the ethnic Albanian majority.

The UN-run breakaway province unilaterally declared independence from Serbia on February 17 and has been recognized by the US and the most of the European Union but has failed to rein in the minority Serbs in the north.

Related posts:

• The EU is about to land in Kosovo. But will it take off?, The Guardian
• The Chains That Bind: Constitutions, then and now, antiwar.com (Nebojsa Malic)
• Into the Bosnian Quagmire (Part 3), antiwar.com
• Western Media is “Ignoring The Man Behind the Curtain” in Serbia’s Elections, SerbBlog
• The Kosovo Dilemma, In These Times