Thousands of Kosovo Albanians protest UN-Serbia plan

20/11/2008| IslamWeb

Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in the Kosova capital of Pristina Wednesday in protest at a United Nations plan they say it is a step toward the partition of Kosovo.

Some 30,000 people participated at the demonstration voicing their displeasure with UN-Serbia deal which they say it allows Serb state interference in Kosovo internal matters, New Kosovo Report said.

The demonstrators' path symbolically drew a virtual "S" for sovereignty and ended by the UNMIK building, now occupied by EULEX.

The protesters, most of them young, carried banners that read: "U.N. proposes war" and "Kosovo in EU not under EU."

"The aim of Belgrade is to partition Kosovo through the (U.N. Secretary General) Ban Ki-moon's plan," said Igballe Rogova, one of the protest organizers.

The crowd chanted "independence, sovereignty, equality, sovereignty," citing Article 2 of the Republic of Kosovo Constitution, which says that sovereignty derives from the people.

Another slogan was "development, not plans," which was aimed at the European Union, which has supported the Serbia-Ban plan.

Another protest will be held today as well in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

According to the plan there would be two separate chains of command for Albanian and Serb policemen in Kosovo. In majority Albanian areas, police would be under the EU umbrella, while police in the northern part held by Serbs would report to the U.N. administration.

Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci rejected last week an amended United Nations plan for deployment of the European Union police and justice mission (EULEX) in Kosovo.

Since 1999 when the U.N. mission arrived in Kosovo, the two ethnic groups have maintained separate education systems and, at the moment, some 16,000 NATO peacekeepers oversee the fragile peace.

PHOTO CAPTION

People take part in a protest in Kosovo's capital of Pristina November 19, 2008.

Agencies