The pro-western Boris Tadic was sworn in for a second term as Serbia's president yesterday, and immediately began preparing his people for the impact of Kosovo's likely declaration of independence tomorrow. Daniel McLaughlinreports.
In the region's capital, Pristina, prime minister Hashim Thaci refused to confirm the timing of the proclamation, as European Union diplomats laboured over the details of how to recognise the new state and dispatch a mission to oversee its first years of sovereignty.
As excitement grew among Kosovo's 90 per cent ethnic-Albanian majority, Serb officials in the province pledged to ignore any declaration of independence, remain part of Serbia and hold elections to a Kosovo-Serb parliament in May.
"I will never give up fighting for our Kosovo and I will, with all my might, fight for Serbia to join the European Union," said Mr Tadic, who is under pressure from political rivals to cut ties with the EU if member states recognise Kosovo's independence.
"I am opposed to cutting off diplomatic relations with states that are inclined to recognise the supposed independence of Kosovo," he said.
A vast majority of Serbs oppose independence for Kosovo, which is the cultural and spiritual heartland of the nation, and home to several important medieval Orthodox churches.
But in private many officials admit that Belgrade has no chance of retaining a region where Serb troops launched a brutal crackdown against separatist rebels in 1998-99. The conflict accounted for some 10,000 ethnic-Albanian civilian deaths, and was only ended by Nato air strikes against Serb targets.
In Pristina, as posters celebrating independence appeared around the city, Mr Thaci promised to make sovereign Kosovo a safe place for all its people, including about 100,000 Serbs and smaller communities of Roma, Croat, Bosnian and other groups.
"In independent Kosovo, not one citizen will feel discriminated against or neglected . . . Kosovo is the homeland of all citizens," said the former guerrilla leader, who was convicted for alleged atrocities in absentia in Serbia.
"I invite all those who want to, to return to their homes and their property, including displaced Serbs living outside Kosovo," Mr Thaci said, referring to the 200,000 Serbs who fled reprisal attacks by Albanian mobs in 1999.
While anticipation grew in Pristina and other Albanian-dominated parts of Kosovo, tension was mounting in isolated Serb enclaves and the northern town of Mitrovica, where the Ibar river divides the Serb half of the town from the Albanian half. It has been a flashpoint for ethnic clashes, including riots in 2004, and a small bomb exploded outside the local EU mission office on Thursday night. No one was injured.
"We call all Serbs to ignore this provocation and realise we remain part of the Serbian state," Kosovo Serb leader Marko Jaksic said of the independence announcement.
The US, Britain, Germany and France are expected to be among the first to recognise Kosovo's independence. Most EU states will follow, but talks were continuing in Brussels last night over the wording of a statement on Kosovo's new status.
Diplomats were also putting the finishing touches to a plan to send to the region a 2,000-strong police and judicial mission and a political oversight team led by Dutchman Peter Feith.