KOSOVO POLJE, Serbia -- The tavern run by Zvonimir Grujic is for sale. So is the home where the Jovanovic family has lived for generations. Serbs own about 220 houses near here, but all will be abandoned, the locals say, if the province of Kosovo is sliced away from their motherland to make a new nation with an ethnic Albanian majority.
"We want to go somewhere where we are free to move and we can speak our language," Grujic said from the cool shadows inside his red-brick, no-name bar. "Yes, we get along with the Albanians we live with ... but can we move around? Do we feel safe? No, no. We don't know who is out there."
Eight years after U.S. and NATO forces bombed them into submission, Serbs are jittery as the UN considers a plan of "supervised" independence for Kosovo, a southern stretch of Serbia where ethnic Albanians, who have the highest birthrate in Europe, outnumber Serbs nine to one.
A final fact-finding mission from the UN Security Council is heading to Serbia this month. Then UN powers will vote on whether Kosovo, a province of 2 million people, should be helped to build its own democracy. If Kosovo advances toward independence, a NATO mission of soldiers known as KFOR will remain while a UN peacekeeping mission draws down and a contingent of European supervisors moves in.
The UN proposal, strongly supported by the U.S. and allies who went to war in 1999 to stanch brutal Serb army attacks on ethnic Albanians, has been cast as a compromise between Albanians who want immediate statehood and Serbs who want Kosovo to remain part of Serbia. Under the plan, Serbs are guaranteed roles in government and assured of their security, but those promises bring scoffs from Belgrade's political elite.
This month the Albanian majority in the provincial parliament in Pristina gave a standing ovation to the UN draft, which would in essence replace a UN resolution that ended the bloody conflict in 1999. Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu, an ethnic Albanian, said later in an interview that his people were eager to put old wars and fears behind them.
It is time, Sejdiu said, for Albanians, Serbs and all their neighbors to accept who lives where and focus on building a stable region for new generations.
"Every delay now is counterproductive," said Sejdiu, who flew to New York for the presentation of the UN plan.
"You can't erase what happened from our people's memories," Sejdiu said, referring to years of repression of ethnic Albanians by Yugoslav authorities, but "our thought is never to have Serbs live through what we did."
Kosovo was the last Balkan battleground of the 1990s, a decade riddled with wars among Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims in the then-splintering Yugoslavia. In 1998, then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, a Serb blamed for earlier bloody advances by the Yugoslav army, tried to enforce Serbian rule in the south with a brutal crackdown on Albanian separatist guerrillas known as the Kosovo Liberation Army.
NATO bombing interrupted Milosevic's plans and left his regime in tatters; Albanians in Kosovo, who for years shunned Serbia's control, found themselves with new NATO allies and hopes for independence.
More than 200,000 Serbs are said to have left Kosovo since 1999. Most of those who remain say they fear the UN plan is offering too much too soon to Albanian leaders who have yet to prove that they can protect the Serb minority.
Specter of extremists
Cracks in the walls of a medieval Orthodox monastery in northern Kosovo offer the latest proof of their vulnerability. An anti-tank round was lobbed from the hills above Decani monastery in the early hours of March 30, crashing into the roof of an outer wall. Father Sava, a Serbian monk who oversees the grounds near the Albanian border, said no one was hurt in the blast, but the credibility of the UN plans has suffered.
It was the third such attack against the UNESCO world heritage site since 2000, and an investigation continues into Serb accusations that Albanian extremists are behind them. Soldiers recovered a rocket launcher, but local police have yet to find a culprit.
"A little more to the right, and [the shell] would have hit KFOR," said the monk, referring to NATO troops who have guarded the marble-and-stone church for much of the past decade.
"KFOR can offer security, but what happens after?" said Father Sava, a soft-spoken moderate and one-time English literature professor known for his Web site that details Serbia and Kosovo issues. NATO officials have described anti-Serb incidents as infrequent, but Father Sava said that was because Serbs are too fearful to move far from home.
No one travels freely, he said, including himself. He said he wanted to speak at a town meeting last year and planned to walk to town in his distinctive black robes. NATO soldiers warned him that he was taking a risk and insisted on driving him.
"They said they worried about extremists. Well, until the extremist network is dismantled, we cannot have a normal life -- not only us but the Albanians," Sava said.
The UN push has stirred some dissension among world powers. The idea that what is now sovereign Serbian land could be wrested away by international decree -- in what some critics call a precedent for other ethnic conflicts -- has roused an otherwise dispirited political class in Belgrade and raised objections from defenders of sovereignty.
Russia, an ally of Serbia with its own ethnic problems, has threatened to veto any measure that strips Serbia's territory or authority. Serbia stands to lose about 15 percent of its land if Kosovo becomes independent.
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica took his fight for sovereignty to New York this month. The UN had no right to redraw Serbia's borders, he told the UN, even though the Serb army fell to NATO forces in 1999.
"You can rest assured that Serbian people will never permit its state to be dismembered nor ... recognize the existence of another independent state on its sovereign territory," Kostunica said.
Albanians grateful, impatient
U.S. and British ambassadors in Belgrade have been campaigning for acceptance of a new Kosovo. "We're doing this for the Serbs, for the Albanians, for everybody here to be able to move on," U.S. Ambassador Michael Polt said in an interview.
Some analysts have suggested other motives at play. Independence for Kosovo could help free up troops at an opportune time for the United States and Britain, who are deeply engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others say that the West, facing Islamic extremism at home and abroad, wants to nurture a friendly and dependable Muslim nation in its sphere. The great majority of Albanians are Muslim.
The Bush administration recently added a burst of rhetoric about "grim" prospects without a free Kosovo. "One way or another, the status quo will end," Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said in Germany this month. "It will either end through a controlled, organized process ... or it will be uncontrolled and much more violent."
There is a palpable impatience among ethnic Albanians. Although there is fear that some Serbs could react violently to independence for Kosovo, many also worry that Albanians could rise up if the Security Council decides to delay its decision.
A pro-independence movement in Pristina called Vetevendosje, or Self-Determination, has clashed with police during protests and with their Albanian elders over their demands for immediate and full independence. A march in February turned deadly when police fired on protesters, killing two people. The shooting is under investigation. "Freedom for us is not negotiable," said Glauk Konjufca, 25, a university student who is one of the movement's leaders. "Independence will translate into concrete gains for us, and we are not willing to wait."
Grateful Albanians who remember the U.S. military effort in 1999 have reason to believe Washington will support their ambitions. Today, Bill Clinton Boulevard is lined with hotels and cafes in the heart of Pristina. Robert Dole Street, named for the former senator and staunch critic of Milosevic, bustles with small businesses. But the road to real political stability and prosperity in Kosovo remains a challenge.
Four of every 10 people are jobless, the highest rate in the Balkans. Kosovo's main export is scrap metal. Albanians here are young and hungry -- half are under 25 -- but half of that youth population would leave Kosovo if they could for better economic prospects, according to recent UN surveys.
Torbjorn Sohlstrom, head of a European Union team poised to pump millions of dollars into an independent Kosovo, argues that the province's bad economic numbers are evidence for, not against, Kosovo transition. Whether Albanian or Serb, the people of Kosovo should be better positioned to ask more from their own leaders, and that won't happen unless Kosovo has a clear future, he said.
"Yes, I think there are people who are very nervous," Sohlstrom said. "But we are trying to tell them: 'Look at the choices.'"
