Blast in Kosovo Capital Damages Serbian Church

A large explosion damaged a Serbian Orthodox church in the center of Pristina early today, a NATO spokesman said.

The blast was heard throughout Kosovo’s capital, rattling buildings, setting off car alarms and dogs barking, and sending a large cloud of smoke and dust into the air.

Capt. Stefan Eder, a NATO spokesman, said there were no initial indications of any casualties. “There are structural damages,” he said.

But Eder said officials did not know what caused the blast or who was involved.

Several British soldiers said they were awakened by the 1:30 a.m. blast, which rattled windows in their barracks nearly a mile away.

The church is not one of the historic Serbian religious sites that NATO has put under heavy guard. Some ethnic Albanians in Pristina said few Serbs attended the yet-to-be-finished church, which they said was built more as a monument to Serbian rule than as a house of worship.

Violence has continued in war-torn Kosovo, despite the 35,000 NATO-led peacekeeping troops in the province. Most of the attacks are acts of revenge by the majority ethnic Albanians on Serbs for the killings, rapes and forced removals that prompted a bombing campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The blast occurred after British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a triumphant visit to Pristina on Saturday, urging grateful ethnic Albanians, who gave him flowers and kisses, to live in peace with rival Serbs.

Blair’s trip was his first to Kosovo since the end of NATO’s bombing campaign and the return of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees driven out by Serbian forces. Kosovo is a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic.

Blair told several hundred people gathered in Pristina that NATO fought the war to bring peace and justice to Kosovo, not to allow the minority Serbs in the province to be oppressed.

“We know that justice must apply to all people whatever their race, whatever their religion, whatever their class, whatever their background,” Blair declared in a speech regularly interrupted by chants of “Tony! Tony!” and shouts of “Thank you, Tony!”

Blair visited British troops Friday after attending a summit in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, at which more than 50 nations and international organizations agreed to the Balkans Stability Pact.

Serbia on Saturday dismissed the pact, which offers help to all Balkan countries except Serbia, as a cover for Western exploitation and said it would rebuild its economy through trade, not aid.

In a commentary headlined “Sarajevo Farce,” the pro-government daily Borba described the summit as a “tragi-comical gathering of powerful Western [countries] and their Balkan bootlickers.”

Summit leaders endorsed the plan to foster prosperity in the Balkans but said Serbia was excluded until it rid itself of President Slobodan Milosevic and introduced democratic reforms.