Vojislav Kostunica, the prime minister-designate, signalled a major shift in Serbian policy yesterday which is likely to dismay the West, by vowing to partition Kosovo, and warning of limited co-operation with the UN war crimes tribunal. Mr Kostunica, a moderate nationalist, said the only way to secure the survival of minority ethnic Serbs in Kosovo province was through “territorial autonomy, partition of Kosovo into entities or cantonisation”. Tens of thousands of Kosovo Serbs live in the north of the province. Almost 200,000 fled Kosovo in 1999 after 11 weeks of Nato raids. Mr Kostunica’s minority government – his Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and two smaller parties – secured the majority by striking a deal with the socialists of the deposed Slobodan Milosevic, on trial for war crimes in The Hague. They demanded that the state pays for Mr Milosevic’s defence as a condition of support. The defence starts in June. Full Story
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