Kosovo Declares Its Independence From Serbia

PRISTINA, Kosovo — The breakaway province of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, sending tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians swarming through the streets to celebrate what they hoped was the end of a long and bloody struggle for national self-determination.

Kosovo’s intent to be recognized as Europe’s newest country — after a civil war that killed 10,000 people a decade ago and then years of limbo under United Nations rule — was the latest episode in the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, 17 years after its dissolution began.

It brings to a climax a showdown between the West, which argues that Serbia’s brutal subjugation of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority cost it any right to rule the territory, and the Serbian government and its allies in the Kremlin, which counter that Kosovo’s independence is a reckless breach of international law that will spur other secessionist movements across the world.

In declaring independence, Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaci, a former leader of the guerrilla force that just over 10 years ago began an armed rebellion against Serbian domination, struck a note of reconciliation. Addressing Parliament in both Albanian and Serbian, he pledged to protect the rights of the Serbian minority.

“I feel the heartbeat of our ancestors,” he said, paying tribute to Kosovo’s war dead and to the European Union and the United States. “We, the leaders of our people, democratically elected, through this declaration proclaim Kosovo an independent and sovereign state.”

Ethnic Albanians from as far away as America streamed into Pristina this weekend, braving freezing temperatures and heavy snow, to dance in frenzied jubilation. Beating drums, waving Albanian flags and firing guns into the air, they chanted: “Independence! Independence! We are free at last!” A huge birthday cake was installed on Pristina’s main boulevard.

In an outpouring of adulation for the United States, the architect of NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against Serbian forces under President Slobodan Milosevic, thousands of revelers unfurled giant American flags, carried posters of former President Bill Clinton and chanted “Thank you U.S.A.” and “God bless America.”

The spirit of exaltation in Pristina contrasted sharply with the despair, anger and disbelief that gripped Serbia and the Serbian enclaves of northern Kosovo.

In Belgrade, up to 2,000 angry Serbs converged on the United States Embassy, hurling stones, smashing windows and lighting firecrackers.

In the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Mitrovica, long a flashpoint, three hand grenades were thrown at buildings of the United Nations and European Union. One exploded, causing minor damage.

Vojislav Kostunica, the prime minister of Serbia, which has regarded Kosovo as its heartland since medieval times, vowed that Serbia would never recognize the “false state.”

In an address on national television on Sunday, he said Kosovo was propped up unlawfully by the United States and called the declaration a “humiliation” for the European Union. The Serbian government has ruled out using military force in response, but was expected to downgrade diplomatic ties with any government that recognized Kosovo.

European Union officials said that Britain, France and Germany were expected to recognize Kosovo 48 hours after the declaration, in part to try to prevent Russia and Serbia from rallying opposition to recognizing Kosovo. Recognition by the United States other European Union member states was expected to follow in the coming days.

Russia called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to be held Sunday. Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador, said he would argue that the United Nations was obliged by existing resolutions and documents “to declare the unilateral proclamation of independence null and void.”

Serbia and Russia, he added, have asked the Council for a formal and open meeting on Monday which, he said, the president of Serbia, Boris Tadic, would address.

He said that Russia’s immediate concern was for “the safety of Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo” and warned against “any attempt at repressive measures should the Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with this unilateral proclamation of independence.”

President Bush, speaking Sunday in Tanzania on a tour of Africa, said the United States would continue to work to prevent violence in Kosovo, while reaching out to Serbia.

“On Kosovo, our position is that its status must be resolved in order for the Balkans to be stable,” he said. “We also believe it’s in Serbia’s interests to be aligned with Europe, and the Serbian people can know that they have a friend in America.”

In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said in a recorded statement that the United States was “discussing the matter with its European partners.”

Warren Hoge contributed reporting from the United Nations, Nicholas Kulish from Berlin and C.J. Chivers from Moscow.

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