Byzantine Blog

Kosovo Albanians Launch Attacks at the U.N. in Serbian Province

Source: Reuters

PRIŠTINA, Serbia, 28 November 2006 -- U.N. police in Kosovo fired teargas to disperse ethnic Albanian mob attacking the U.N. HQ on Tuesday.

Thousands of protesters demonstrating against U.N.-led efforts to decide the fate of the breakaway province smashed windows and threw blocks of concrete and red paint on the U.N. Headquarters in Pristina, Kosovo parliament and government building during a surge of violence in the province capital. The violent Albanian mob has also partially dismantled a wall around the UN’s HQ.

A Reuters reporter said they dispersed after U.N. riot police fired teargas from inside the U.N. compound.

The U.N. mission in Kosovo province has been targeted by grenade attacks and shootings before. The current wave of violence targeting UNMIK came in response to decision this month by major world powers to delay a decision on the demand for independence of Serbian Albanians occupying southern Kosovo province until next year.

The United Nations, which has run Serbian southern province since NATO’s aggression on Serbia in 1999, reported “credible threats” against its personnel and property in Kosovo province on Monday. It said it was stepping up security but did not link the warning to Tuesday’s protest.

The organizer of the violent demonstrations, a group called Self-determination, has in the past vandalized U.N. vehicles and buildings, and the group’s Albanian Muslim leader, Albin Kurti, a former prisoner in Serbia, has been apprehended by the U.N. police and released several times already. The U.N. statement said attacks against U.N. personnel and property are “destructive and counterproductive” and represent a setback for Kosovo at a critical stage in the negotiations with Serbia.

Kurti has promised more violence in the Serbian province, telling the crowd “Pristina is the center and source of all the bad things that are happening to Kosovo.”

Speaking of Kosovo province’s Albanian political leaders, he said: “We are 99 percent, and they are only 1 percent, sitting in their offices.” The mob gathered around Kurti claims Serbian Albanians in the Kosovo province should have the right to vote for their independence, rather than negotiate with Serbian government.

Negotiations began in February, but have produced little sign of compromise. U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari (a.k.a. Adolfsen) is due to present his proposal on “final status” after the Serbian election.

Albanians in Serbian State Remove Serbian, Display Albanian Flag

PREŠEVO, BUJANOVAC, Serbia, 28 November 2006 -- Albanian minority in Preševo removed the Serbian flag off the municipal building and instead displayed three Albanian flags.

Preševo municipal president Ragmi Mustafa told journalists that the display of Albanian flags instead of the Serbian should “not be viewed as an incident”. Meanwhile, Democratic Union of the Valley president Skender Destani, also an Albanian Muslim, expressed his dissatisfaction with the act, and said it left him “surprised, depressed and offended.” He told journalists that had he seen the flag removed and replaced, he would have left the Flag Day celebrations. He also asked the authorities to establish who is responsible for the event.

Local minority Albanians gathered in another town of the region, Bujanovac, have placed the Albanian flag alongside the Serbian, displayed on the municipal parliament building.

Some 2,000 local Albanians, mostly elementary and high school students, took part in the Preševo Flag Day celebrations.

The organizers played the Albanian national anthem, after which the gathering paid tribute to the dead members of the officially disbanded branch of terrorist KLA/UCK -- Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac Liberation Army (UCPMB). The stage holding the choir collapsed at the end of the ceremony, but no one was injured.

Albanian terrorist KLA organization has attempted to spread its brand of terrorism beyond Kosovo and Metohija province, into Serbia proper and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, right after NATO troops occupied Serbian Kosovo province, in 1999. At the time, they changed their terrorist organization’s initials, from KLA (UCK) to UCPMB on the north of Kosovo province in Serbia (in the area of the so-called “demilitarized zone”), and NLA in FYR Macedonia, in order to create confusion and the impression these are different Albanian terrorist groups operating in neighboring areas. On the Serbian side, they were quickly pushed back to UN/NATO-created KLA safe-haven -- Kosovo province -- by the Serbian forces.