Published: October 13, 2010
GRACANICA, Kosovo — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to soothe Kosovo’s Serbian population on Wednesday, assuring religious and political leaders that the United States would look out for the Serbs’ rights even though it had thrown the full force of American backing behind the Kosovo Albanians who declared independence from Serbia two years ago.
GRACANICA, Kosovo — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to soothe Kosovo’s Serbian population on Wednesday, assuring religious and political leaders that the United States would look out for the Serbs’ rights even though it had thrown the full force of American backing behind the Kosovo Albanians who declared independence from Serbia two years ago.
“I know the decentralization process has not been easy,” Mrs. Clinton told a group of Kosovo’s Serbian mayors gathered near a famed monastery. She said she believed that the only way Kosovo and Serbia would prosper “is if Kosovo Serbs see a future for themselves” in Kosovo.
On the last day of her three-day tour of the Balkans, Mrs. Clinton spent time with ethnic Serbs who did not flee from what was then a Serbian province during the war a decade ago. She got an earful at the Gracanica Monastery, founded by the Serbian king Stefan Milutin in 1321, where Vicar Bishop Teodosije Sibalic told her that his flock of parishioners was severely depleted.
In Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, Mrs. Clinton urged the government to protect the rights of the Serbian minority. Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said that Kosovo was open to talks with Serbia, and lavished praise on everything Clinton, calling Mrs. Clinton part of a family that had done much to ensure Kosovo’s emergence from Serbia.
Indeed, when she arrived in Pristina, Mrs. Clinton received a hero’s welcome.
Crowds lined the streets all the way from the airport into the city. Chants of “Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!” filled the air. Mrs. Clinton stopped her motorcade to pop out, shake hands and pose for photographs in front of a 12-foot statue of her husband.
The statue sits underneath a large painting of Mr. Clinton, which itself sits on a street named after him.
“Hello! Hello!” Mrs. Clinton called out as she cheerfully pressed the flesh, the golden effigy of her husband looming above. “How are you? It’s so great to be here!”
To delirious cheers, she stopped into a nearby boutique called Hillary.
A local reporter approached to ask which was better, the statue or the store.
“The statue, the statue,” Mrs. Clinton replied. “But I’m very proud of the store, too.”
In this most pro-American of Balkan states, 98 percent of people say in surveys that they approve of America and Americans.
Mrs. Clinton appeared determined to spend some of that political capital to try to get Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority to ease tensions with Serbia. At a town-hall-style meeting in Pristina, she defended Serbia when one questioner asked her why the United States was pushing for it to be admitted into the European Union at a time when right-wingers in Belgrade were attacking gay pride parades, or when Serbian fans forced the postponement of a soccer match, as they did in Genoa, Italy, on Tuesday night.
“Is it not too early to pamper Serbia?” the questioner asked, adding that the right-wing protest at the gay pride parade in Belgrade on Sunday had “demolished” the capital.
Mrs. Clinton said that all countries had fringe elements, and that the Serbian police should be praised for their efforts at the parade. “They stood for the rights of people in a vulnerable population,” she said. “The police were the ones who were injured by the extremist protesters.”
As for the riot in Genoa, she added, some of the worst-behaved fans at soccer games “come from the United Kingdom.”
Serbia Official Urges Crackdown
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s interior minister said Wednesday that the government would crack down on rising far-right groups trying to destabilize the country’s pro-Western government.
“The state must react to protect public peace,” Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said after disturbances this week by rioters at a gay pride parade and by fans at a soccer match against Italy.
More than 150 people were hurt Sunday in Belgrade in clashes with the police as demonstrators tried to disrupt a gay pride march by hurling firebombs and stun grenades at the police.
nytimes
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