June 29, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 24, 1429

MITROVICA (Kosovo), June 28: Hardline Serbs in Kosovo convened their own assembly in the divided city of Mitrovica on Saturday in a fresh challenge to the new state’s ethnic Albanian majority and its Western backers.

The assembly has no executive authority, but reflects a deepening ethnic partition of Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia in February.

“The Serb parliament will fight against the creation of yet another Albanian state in the Balkans,” Kosovo Serb nationalist leader Marko Jaksic said.

A statement read out at the session said the assembly would be “the representative body of the Serbian republic in the autonomous province of Kosovo.”

Kosovo’s Albanian leadership has condemned the move as an illegal provocation. But their UN overseers noted the assembly had no “operational role” and was merely symbolic.

Ninety per cent of Kosovo’s 2 million people are Albanians.

They declared independence four months ago, nine years since Nato bombs drove out Serb forces. But the secession is being challenged by Serbia, with the backing of Russia, and a thin slice of north Kosovo dominated by 50,000 Serbs, just under half the Kosovo Serb population.

The north, which backs onto Serbia, is beyond the institutional reach of Pristina and currently out of bounds for a European Union police mission looking to take over law and order duties from the United Nations.

Analysts say the assembly lacks the full backing of Serbia’s pro-EU Democratic Party (DS), which is poised to lead a new coalition government in Serbia having defeated nationalists.

—Reuters