Kosovo Serbs End Boycott, Send Observer to Government Session

A lone Serbian observer attended a session of Kosovo’s U.N.-run interim government Tuesday, ending a four-month boycott prompted by Serbian suspicions that the organization is pro-Albanian.

Kosovo’s top U.N. official depicted the move as the start of democracy in the restive southern province of Serbia, and the U.S. office in Pristina, the provincial capital, said the move marked renewed Serbian involvement in rebuilding Kosovo.

But the rare positive development underscores differences between Serbian moderates who seek to cooperate with the West and hard-liners who refuse any form of cooperation with Kosovo’s Albanians and support Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Rada Trajkovic, the Serb who attended the session, alluded to the tensions that still exist between Albanians and Serbs when he said he hopes to one day be able to come to meetings without an armed escort.

Almost a year after NATO’s 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia ended, ethnic violence remains a near-daily occurrence, with many Serbs targeted by ethnic Albanians seeking to get even for the nearly yearlong Serbian crackdown.

The Serbs plan to decide whether to become full members of the Interim Administrative Council after three months.