yugoslavias implosion

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ChApter 3
province in the 1990s, following in the footsteps of others who had
departed for Western Europe to escape the repression of the 1980s.)
Despite this failure to reshape Kosovo demographically, Belgrade
never seriously considered the possibility of forming a genuine federation
of Serbia-Montenegro-Kosovo—that is, any form of a united
complex state. Serbia rejected the transformation of Yugoslavia into
a loose federation and even turned down such an offer from the
Hague Conference on Yugoslavia in 1991. All international attempts to
preserve the fry were manifestations of the international community’s
misunderstanding of the character of Serbian nationalism and
its aspirations. Serbian nationalists never renounced their intention
to prevent Albanians from remaining in Serbia.
The failure to resettle significant numbers of Serbs in Kosovo
forced the nationalists and Belgrade to recognize that they could not
overturn the Albanian demographic dominance in the province and
led them to embrace another option, one that had been talked about
from the 1980s onward: division of the province. The key argument
for division has always been the demographic expansion of Albanians,
as well as the fact that Belgrade preferred to negotiate with
Tirana, not with Pristina.
In 1996, Aleksandar Despić, president of the Serbian Academy
of Sciences and Arts, proposed that Serbs and Albanians (he didn’t
specify whether he meant the Albanian government or Albanians in
Kosovo) begin talks on a “peaceful, civilized partition and demarcation”
of Kosovo and Metohija along ethnic lines, a proposal identical
to one made by Dobrica Ćosić two decades before. 376 The Serbian
elite had simply been waiting for the right moment to put forward
such an idea. The proposal had been developed in detail in 1992
by Branislav Krstić, who suggested the establishment of a “peace
376 In his address to the annual assembly of the Serbian Academy of Arts and
Sciences, in June 1996, Aleksandar Despic voiced his concern over the Albanian
demographic explosion in Kosovo and maintained that division was the
only solution . “The two possible roads”, Naša borba, June 10, 1996 .