PRISTINA, Serbia — Faik Krasniqi epitomizes the frustration sweeping Kosovo: He wants independence from Serbia, and he wants it now.
“People here have waited for very long — much longer than they deserve,” the 50-year-old power-plant worker said Tuesday as diplomats again wrangled fruitlessly over the question. “After Dec. 10, they must decide for themselves.”
Anxiety is building with the approach of that day, the deadline for international mediators to report back to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on their efforts to negotiate some kind of arrangement acceptable to Kosovo and Serbia.
Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority says it won’t settle for anything less than full independence. Serbs insist the province must remain part of Serbian territory, offering to give it only broad autonomy.
With no deal in sight, there are fears Kosovo may declare independence unilaterally, triggering a chain reaction of potentially violent secessions across the Balkans and beyond.
Kosovo is part of Serbia but has been run by the U.N. and NATO since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended Slobodan Milosevic’s brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
