He talks about Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February. “There’s no country in the world that would just sit quietly whilst a part of it just unilaterally declares independence. And as far as we see, Kosovo’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, this is an ethnically motivated attempt as succession from an internationally recognized state, in defiance of the Security Council. And as such, is actually illegal.”

“What we want to do is try to make history in the Balkans, by trying to resolve a dispute of this complexity in a peaceful way.”

He also talks about U.S. support of an independent Kosovo. “What I think the US government failed to understand is that Serbia today is a very different country that the Serbia of the 1990s. We were a dictatorship in the 1990s, but the Serbian people overthrew that dictatorship. I was part of the underground movement that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in the year 2000.”

“Kosovo UDI provoked the UDI in Georgia. If we don’t put a stop to this kind of conduct, there are many parts of the world that would be in the same danger.”

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©2008 PoliGazette . All Rights Reserved.

At this moment, fewer than 50 countries have recognized Kosovo’s independence. That is significantly less than Kosovo hoped for when it announced its independence earlier this year, but significantly more than countries that have recognize South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence - only Russia and Nicaragua have recognized the independence of these two Georgian breakaway regions.

©2008 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.