Vienna
Leaders of Serbia and Kosovo began negotiations on the status of Kosovo this week by announcing that neither would budge. The ethnic-Albanian province of Serbia has been administered by the U.N. since 1999, when NATO bombed Serbia to end a conflict between Serbian militias and Albanian guerrillas. U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari said that so far, the attempt to settle Kosovo’s status does not look promising. Serbia “would agree to anything but independence,” he said, while Kosovo “would accept nothing but independence.” Kosovo is the site of a major 14th-century Ottoman battle that catalyzed Serbian nationalism, so Serbia is reluctant to give it up even though few ethnic Serbs actually live there.
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