yugoslavias implosion

Kosovar Serbs faced the biggest problem of all—from the very
beginning they had been nothing but instruments in the hands of
Belgrade, which ignored their real interests. Their participation in
the elections had been obstructed by Belgrade, yet some Kosovar
Serbs were aware that their survival in Kosovo depended upon their
integration into Kosovar institutions. The question was whether
they could withstand pressure from Belgrade. If not, they could face
a scenario similar to that experienced by Serbs in Croatia, whose
exodus from Croatia in 1995 was organized by Belgrade; this departure
was welcomed by Zagreb because the insurgent Serbs and those
who supported them had shown themselves unwilling to integrate
themselves into the new Croatian state. By killing 600 old people and
burning some 20,000 houses Tuđman cemented the return of Serbs.
Belgrade continued to pretend that Kosovo was an integral
part of Serbia. The Serbian Assembly adopted a new resolution
that insisted that Kosovo was an inseparable part of Serbia, rejected
the plan of the un secretary-general’s special envoy, and called for
new talks on Kosovo’s status. The Serbian Radical Party delivered a
threatening speech calling for unity. Only a few mp s (among them,
Nataša Mićić from the Civic Alliance and Žarko Korać from the
sdu) dared to denounce the farce. Serbian efforts to link the status of
Kosovo with that of Republika Srpska (on the grounds of the right
to self-determination) had become futile in the light of international
efforts to change the Dayton Accords in order to enable Bosnia to
become a functional state.
The Serbian political elite was pressed to adopt a uniform stand
on a proposal floated by the president of Serbia, Boris Tadić. According
to that proposal, the Serbian entity would encompass the current
and future Serb-majority municipalities, and part of the
Serbian entity would be the seat of the Orthodox faith institutions
and monasteries in Kosovo. “That applies to the patriachate of Peć,
Visoki Dečani, Bogorodica Ljeviška, Arhanđeli and Devič, with ‘safe
263
ChApter 3