Russian officials -- angered by U.S. and European support for the independence of Kosovo -- have said Abkhazia and South Ossetia should have self-determination.
That was a very odd thing to say the day before Martti Ahtisaari presented his plan for the independence of Kosovo to the United Nations Security Council.
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Trying to forestall the almost inevitable independence of Kosovo (see article), it has been warning foreign governments that, if Kosovo's Albanians win their independence, Serbia will be lost to the Radicals.
Shortly after the Annapolis conference fails, and no doubt in a bid to buck up its standing with the Arab world, the US may well stand by its stated intention to recognize the independence of Kosovo.
After three months of mounting violence in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo, peace talks have at last been arranged between Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Yugoslavia (which encompasses Serbia), and Ibrahim Rugova, the pro-independence leader of Kosovo's ethnic-Albanian majority.
Serbs resist the notion of independence for Kosovo, because centuries ago it was the center of their empire.
The Kosovo Liberation Army, for its part, took a massive step towards its goal of independence for Kosovo.
He knows that a renewal of last March's violence would be a disastrous setback to the cause of independence for Kosovo.
He will probably soon recommend some form of independence for Kosovo.
Clinton worked through NATO to protect the independence of Bosnia and the autonomy of Kosovo from a Serbia bent upon reestablishing its own version of hegemony over peoples that had suffered centuries of ethnic conflict under the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires.
Similarly, Russian attempts to draw analogies with NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999 and its encouragement of Kosovo's independence, or with the American-led invasion of Iraq, do not wash.
In a separate declaration on the future status of Kosovo, the EU has left the door open for a conditional independence of the disputed territory, by ruling out any partition or union of Kosovo with another country, as well as any solution resulting from the use of force.
Russia is one of many countries that call Kosovo's declaration of independence illegal, and will use its veto in the Security Council to prevent it from joining the United Nations.
Germany was one of the first countries to recognise Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 and has been an outspoken critic of Belgrade's refusal to accept the split, he adds.
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The West has stubbornly refused to make independence for Kosovo the subject of any discussions, for fear of encouraging secessionists elsewhere.
Five years on from its unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia, Kosovo's own judiciary is still weak and vulnerable to external influence, our correspondent says.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008, but many of the ethnic Serb minority in Kosovo have refused to recognise the authority of its mainly ethnic Albanian government.
The assault on the embassy by a rioting mob followed the United States' acknowledgment of Kosovo's independence.
Serbs may too, but they have technical problems because of Kosovo, whose independence Serbia refuses to recognise.
And there is certainly no recognition of Kosovo's independence by Belgrade, he adds.
"They follow the same agenda as the opponents of Kosovo's independence, " he added.
In revenge for the recognition of Kosovo's independence earlier this year, Mr Putin established legal ties with the governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
It should also state that as a consequence of Kosovo's independence, Israel rejects the deployment of any international forces to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, and refuses to cede its legal right to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem to international arbitration.
Later in the year, the province of Kosovo may well win independence too.
Russia has announced that it will veto an American-backed plan to grant independence to Kosovo - once a province of Serbia.
As part of the price of Western recognition for their independence, Kosovo's leaders agreed that their land should have room for non-Albanian minorities.
With the optimism, energy and determination characteristic of its people, Kosovo has made significant progress in solidifying the gains of independence and in building the institutions of a modern, multi-ethnic, inclusive and democratic state.
"With the optimism, energy and determination characteristic of its people, Kosovo has made significant progress in solidifying the gains of independence and in building the institutions of a modern, multi-ethnic, inclusive and democratic state, " he said.
We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence.
For its part, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has responded to Kosovo's declaration of independence with customary confusion.
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