The eruption of violence between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo depressingly confirms that relations between them have not improved since NATO intervened there in 1999. The passions were unleashed after two Albanian children drowned in the River Ibar, into which they had jumped to escape Serbian youths chasing them with a dog in the partitioned northern Kosovo town of Kosovska Mitrovica.
Immediately an Albanian crowd attacked the Serbian quarter, 300 people were wounded, at least six shot dead, a dozen French peacekeepers injured and churches and mosques in the town and much farther afield damaged by fire in tit-for-tat attacks. Irish peacekeeping troops serving with the joint NATO-United Nations force have been involved in trying to keep crowds apart.
As always, such incidents express and reveal deeper political and cultural conflicts and conditions. Four years after the NATO intervention there has been little progress towards a political settlement. Constitutionally Kosovo remains part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor-state of Yugoslavia. Although its leadership continues to demand independence, this is entirely unacceptable to nationalist opinion in Serbia, recently strengthened in general elections, nor does it have international acceptance.
Since the Kosovo conflict international attention has been concentrated on conflict-prevention and peacekeeping in neighbouring Macedonia, a more successful exercise. Progress has been much slower with reconciling divisions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, despite the more elaborate international force in place there.
The partition of Mitrovica symbolises the troubled history and experience of Kosovo in its wider regional setting. The Serb minority there comprises 10 per cent of the two million population and has been suffering human rights abuse discrimination, as is acknowledged by international officials.
In response Serb leaders have been demanding a programme of cantonisation or decentralisation, euphemisms for ethnic partition of the territory. This is rejected by Mr Harri Holkeri, the Finnish UN governor of the province, as a recipe for reopening the war.
NATO yesterday sent 1,100 more troops to Kosovo and appealed for an end to the violence. There are fears that if it continues the conflict will escalate, affecting efforts to stabilise other parts of the former Yugoslavia. This eruption is a warning of how dangerous that would be, not only for Kosovo but for its neighbours too.