Explosion Hits Monument to Kosovo Unity
An explosion rocked downtown Pristina on Saturday, damaging a Communist-era monument to ethnic harmony and reflecting anew the hatreds bedeviling international efforts to establish normality in postwar Kosovo.
Nobody was hurt in the predawn explosion, said members of the NATO-led peacekeeping force, but the power of the blast rattled windows in the provincial capital.
The three-pronged concrete Brotherhood and Unity monument was erected during the rule of Josip Broz Tito, founder of Communist Yugoslavia and a proponent of multiethnic coexistence. Tito died in 1980, and the breakup of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines turned bloody a decade later, with the fighting between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo just the latest conflict.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops deployed in Kosovo--a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic--have been unable to stop a wave of revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians against Serbs, Gypsies and other non-Albanian groups. Ethnic Albanians had formed 90% of Kosovo’s prewar population of 2.1 million.
The violence underscores the depth of hatred in Kosovo following the 18-month war, which ended with a pullout of Serbian forces after NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days. During the Serbian crackdown, more than 800,000 people were driven from their homes and 10,000 civilians were killed.
Late Friday, international peacekeepers found the corpse of a woman in her late 30s near Belo Polje village in central Kosovo. She was apparently beaten to death. The body of a 60-year-old Serbian woman was also found Friday, in the southwestern city of Prizren. No other details were given.
Ethnic distrust is also responsible for a standoff between ethnic Albanians and peacekeepers in the southwestern town of Orahovac. Ethnic Albanians there have been blocking Russian peacekeepers from taking up quarters since early this week.
Kosovo Albanians say the Russians--traditional allies of the Serbs--were involved in atrocities against them during the crackdown.
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