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ChApter 3
that Kosovo was of great geostrategic importance for the region,
especially for Serbia, because Kosovo links Serbia with Montenegro
and Macedonia. Kosovo’s military-strategic importance was likewise
underlined as being “part of the southern sector of the strategic
front of the fry” and, consequently, “part of the first line of its strategic
defense.” In the opinion of the majority of the participants, the
loss of Kosovo would open a black hole in the most sensitive area of
Serbia’s state territory dominated by an Islamic population. The participants
rejected international arbitration on the grounds that internationalization
of the crisis would force “a solution contrary to the
vital state and national interests of the Serb people as a whole.” Participants
also ruled out any “ethnic preponderance of the Albanians,”
insisted that the Albanians demonstrate total loyalty to the Serbian
state, and proposed regionalization as a first step toward rearranging
Kosovo and Metohija. 381 Political debates were dominated by the
view that the Kosovo issue was a matter of ownership of territory.
Participants ignored specific political issues, especially the practice of
state terror, as well as the political aspirations of the majority population
and its rights to be treated in conformity with international
law.
One proposal to divide Kosovo had been circulating since 1988:
the Kosovo cantonization project, authored by Dušan Bataković, a
historian very close to the Serbian Orthodox Church (and who was
appointed Serbian ambassador to Canada in 2007 and to France in
2009). Bataković envisaged joint Albanian-Serbian administration of
Kosovo. Cantons would be established in the agrarian regions with a
Serbian majority population and would include the Serbian monasteries
and the land that was in their possession until 1941. The proposal
was submitted to the French Foreign Ministry by the Serbian
Orthodox Church in February 1999, after Bishop Artemije had made
381 Institute of Geopolitical Studies, Kosovo i Metohija: Izazovi i odgovori (Kosovo
and Metohija: The challenge and the answer), Belgrade, 1997 .