U.N. Security Council to Review Draft on Kosovo Independence
11 May NY Times - U.N. Security Council to Review Draft on Kosovo Independence by Warren Hoge.
Quote:
The United States and its European allies will circulate a draft Security Council resolution Friday to endorse a plan granting Kosovo supervised independence, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said Thursday.
The plan, brokered by Martti Ahtisaari, the United Nations mediator, is favored by the ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population of Kosovo, but it is fiercely opposed by Serbia and its veto-bearing ally on the Council, Russia...
Kosovo Independence Measure Withdrawn From U.N. Council
20 July NY Times - Kosovo Independence Measure Withdrawn From U.N. Council by Warren Hoge.
Quote:
The sponsors of a resolution putting Kosovo on the path to independence withdrew the measure from the Security Council on Friday in the face of a promised Russian veto and said a six-nation group would now seek a way to settle the contentious question of independence...
Kosovo's Actions Hearten a Hungarian Enclave
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SFANTU GHEORGHE, Romania — Dozens of wreaths trailing ribbons in red, white and green, the colors of the Hungarian flag, covered the base of a memorial to the 1848 revolution in the town park here on a recent day. Deep in the heart of Romania, just one lonely garland bears the country’s own blue, yellow and red banner.
New Year’s is celebrated twice here, first at the stroke of midnight and then an hour later, when it is midnight in Budapest. When Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in February, hundreds of the town’s Hungarians took to the main square to demonstrate in favor of Kosovo, and by extension their own aspirations for autonomy.
A Hungarian minority group is pressing for greater autonomy in a region where its members outnumber Romanians. A new and more radical organization, the Hungarian Civic Party, has risen to challenge the establishment Hungarian party, which has been a member of each coalition government since 1996.
Those who argue that independence for Kosovo has set a bad precedent tend to talk about frozen conflicts outside the European Union — Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Georgia, and Transnistria in Moldova. But even in the European Union, borders are often arbitrary. Many ethnic minorities, like the Basques and the Roma, remain stateless while others, like the Hungarians in Romania, as well as in Slovakia and Serbia, are still separated from their brethren.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/wo...in&oref=slogin