SERBIA:As the former Yugoslav province prepares to declare independence, Serbs blame a US plot, writes Daniel McLaughlin
Nine years ago, Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic was pouring scorn on western efforts to negotiate a peaceful end to his brutal crackdown on Kosovo's separatist rebels, which killed some 10,000 ethnic-Albanian civilians.
At the same time in Rambouillet, France, a young separatist rebel called Hashim Thaci had emerged from the rugged mountains of Kosovo to impress international leaders during talks aimed at stopping the bloodshed.
"We will not give up Kosovo, even if we are bombed," Milosevic raged, as the West warned that it would take military action against him unless he halted the violence.
In France, Thaci was helping win over powerful statesmen to Kosovo's decades-old demand for independence from Belgrade, and had been told by then US secretary of state Madeleine Albright that he could become "Kosovo's Gerry Adams" by turning the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) into a peaceful political force.
Now Milosevic is dead and buried and Thaci, still only 39, is prime minister of a Kosovo that is expected to declare independence tomorrow or Monday, and to embark on life as a sovereign country overseen by a 2,000-strong EU mission led by a powerful high representative.
It will be a triumphant end to almost nine years under UN control, and a long drive for freedom from Belgrade that began in the late 1960s, when Yugoslav police arrested pro-independence demonstrators in the region.
Marshal Tito gave Kosovo autonomy within Serbia in 1974, but unrest broke out again just seven years later during rallies demanding that the region be given the status of a full Yugoslav republic.
Milosevic's tough line against Kosovo's overwhelming Albanian majority helped catapult him to power in 1989, and he quickly abolished its autonomy.
Serb security forces used riots against that decision to justify repression of Kosovo activists, prompting many Albanians to set up parallel organisations that were not answerable to Belgrade.
They actually declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1990, but their demands were drowned out by the internecine wars which broke out across the federation as Milosevic tried to stop Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia escaping his rule.
Led by academic Ibrahim Rugova, Kosovo's separatists embarked on a campaign of passive resistance to Belgrade's rule, even while Milosevic turned the screw of repression to prevent another chunk of Yugoslavia slipping from Belgrade's grasp.
The KLA emerged as a potent insurgent force in 1996 with several bomb attacks against Serb police targets, and by 1998 it was engaged in concerted guerrilla warfare with Belgrade's forces.
Nato's decision to intervene was accelerated by an alleged massacre by Serb fighters of 45 Albanian civilians in the village of Racak, on January 15th, 1999.
While Albanians say the victims were executed, many Serbs claim they were actually KLA members killed in fighting and then dressed in civilian clothes by rebels and western intelligence agents intent on blackening Serbia's reputation.
The man who found the bodies and pronounced them the victims of a "massacre close to crimes against humanity" was William Walker, an American in charge of an international monitoring mission.
Many Serbs accuse Walker of having close ties with the Central Intelligence Agency from his days as a US diplomat in Central America during the 1980s, when Washington was involved in several dirty wars in the region.
They also claim the "massacre" and subsequent Nato bombing of Serbia gave US president Bill Clinton a pretext for a war that distracted some attention from his impeachment over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Serbs still feel deep anger towards the West over its 1999 bombing campaign against their country, which killed several hundred people and wrecked major infrastructure.
They believe the EU and US, having blamed Serbia for the Yugoslav wars earlier in the 1990s, either failed to see or deliberately ignored the terrorist nature and atrocities of the KLA.
That resentment will be exacerbated by the sight of Thaci proclaiming Kosovo's independence, and sealing the Serbs' loss of the so-called cradle of their nation.
It was in Kosovo in 1389 that Serb princes lost an epic battle against the forces of the Ottoman sultan, an event that the Serb national myth portrays as a heroic defeat suffered while defending Christendom from Muslim invaders.
Kosovo is also home to the most precious churches of Serb Orthodoxy, some of which were damaged during vicious Albanian reprisals in 1999.
The loss of Kosovo will be deeply painful to Serbs, but Walker, who returned to Racak this month, says only one man is ultimately to blame.
"This would still be part of a Yugoslavia of some sort . . . if the Milosevic government had just shown some recognition of the needs of the people of Kosovo," he said.
Daniel McLaughlin will be reporting from Kosovo on developments in Monday's paper