yugoslavias implosion

Čović predicted that if Milošević were to accept the proposed agreement
(and nationalists feared that the combination of his unpredictability
and the pressure he was facing might well lead him to
accept it), “Kosovo [would] be swept away in a new storm” and he
accused Milošević of being ready to give up Kosovo, observing that
the state media were already busy making up justifications for such a
decision. 413
Alongside Koštunica, the spc was the most ardent defender of
Kosovo against Milošević and the international community because,
it said, “without Kosovo the Serb people will become an amorphous
mass of living matter, without a past and without a real future.” 414
“Kosovo is where our memory, monuments, churches and monasteries
are.” According to spc Patriarch Pavle, “Our forefathers went
there to defend their freedom and hearth, their land and faith that
are ours now.” 415 The Serbian Writers’ Association condemned the
proposed Rambouillet agreement as a “racist, Orthodoxophobic
and anti-Serb gesture,” investing international law with the “legitimacy
of terrorism, territorial annexation and lawful trampling on
the sovereignty of a country.” 416 Professor Kosta Čavoški joined the
chorus and said that because the Rambouillet agreement “recognizes
the Albanian side as an equal negotiator at the international
level, the possible agreement will have greater legal force than the
constitution.” 417
The Kosovar Serbs, Bishop Artemije, Bataković, and others in
the hard-line nationalist camp maintained that “with certain corrections
of municipal boundaries it would be possible to form five Serb
cantons having local Serb administration, police force and judiciary
413 Glas javnosti, February 2, 1999 .
414 Politika, February 7, 1999 .
415 Glas javnosti, February 13–14, 1999 .
416 Danas, February 9, 1999 .
417 Glas javnosti, February 23, 1999 .
239
ChApter 3