Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica today urged Serbs to unite behind his drive to stop the breakaway Kosovo province from securing independence.
"It is of crucial importance today that all Serbia . . . stand strong and united behind their country," he told an executive meeting of his Democratic Party of Serbia.
By "keeping Kosovo part of Serbia, all of us preserve Serbia itself", he said in a speech reported by the state news agency Tanjug.
Ethnic Albanians make up 90 per cent of the southern province's two million people, and the United States and its European Union allies see independence as the only way of ending Kosovo's eight-year-old status as a UN protectorate.
About one million Kosovo Albanians were temporarily driven out by Serb forces in 1999, and 10,000 were killed as Belgrade fought Albanian guerrillas and Nato bombed Serbia to force a halt to the killing.
Mr Kostunica was returned to office last week in a coalition deal to avoid fresh elections, after nearly four months of political wrangling with his rival President Boris Tadic.
He has made the preservation of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo a test of patriotism for his fellow countrymen.
He has successfully enlisted the aid of Russia, which could veto a Kosovo independence resolution in the UN Security Council, which is being pushed by Western powers.
Mr Kostunica made no reference to the wishes of the ethnic Albanians who live in the province.