Serbs vow to keep Kosovo at historic battle ceremony

SERBIA:Hundreds of Serbs gathered yesterday at the site of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo to commemorate their nation's historic defeat to the Ottoman Turks and vow never to relinquish the disputed province to its independence-seeking Albanian majority.

Nato troops and local police were out in force after threats of violence from Albanian radicals and the Serb nationalist Guard of Tsar Lazar, which is named after the medieval leader whose soldiers were routed near Kosovo's current capital, Pristina.

The ceremony at the Gazimestan battlefield was attended by scores of Serbs from the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica, who arrived on buses that were searched for weapons by police and closely monitored by Nato troops that lined much of their route.

A service conducted by Orthodox Church bishops was attended by the Serbian cabinet ministers and the crown prince of Serbia's former monarchy, Alexander Karadjordjevic.

"This is our land, Serbian land. We don't want to lose it overnight," said Mr Karadjordjevic. "The government is working hard to find a solution. The United Nations is working hard. We must all work together using common sense and maturity." The Belgrade government refuses to bow to US and European Union pressure to let Kosovo go free, while the region's 90 per cent Albanian majority will accept nothing less. Russia has threatened to block any UN resolution that is not amenable to Serbia.

"Those who wish to cut the heart from this people want to wipe them from this Earth," said Orthodox Bishop Amfilohije, at the site of a battle that Serbs consider a heroic defeat suffered in the holy cause of defending Christian Europe from the Muslim Turks.

Serb prime minister Vojislav Kostunica asked in an article for a national newspaper whether "force will prevail over justice in this new Kosovo battle?" "Serbia knows that only justice can win in Kosovo . . . while the policies of force remain impotent and powerless," he wrote. "There is no force that can change the fact that Kosovo always has been and always will be part of Serbia."

That sentiment was echoed across the former battlefield at Gazimestan, where some Serbs wore T-shirts bearing the image of former president Slobodan Milosevic, whose infamous, inflammatory speech here in 1989 presaged the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

"This was and is Serbia," said one such man, Radisav Stojanovic. "If the Albanians don't want to live here, we will help them go to Albania."