Progress does happen . . . just look to Kosovo REALPOLITIK:

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jan 21, 2007 | by TREVOR ROYLE

THINKING about the final status of Kosovo, which is due to be announced this week by the United Nations, it was suddenly like old times again. Elections are taking place in Serbia today and the decision on Kosovo's future will be made later in the week. Both are linked and, as things now stand, the talk is of some kind of "supervised independence". This is a discreet way of saying that the impoverished province will be allowed to stand on its own two feet, albeit under international surveillance, and that Serb ambitions there are finally at an end.

Not so long ago, it seemed Kosovo would never recover from the process of ethnic cleansing after hardline Serb nationalists attempted to wipe out the majority Albanian population at the end of the 1990s. For the cleansers, Kosovo was not just a territory which happened to be Serb, it was also the mystical heart of their very existence and the cradle of their history.

It was at Kosovo Field (Kosovo Polje or the field of blackbirds) that the Turks, under Sultan Murad I, defeated Serbia's Prince Lazar and his Balkan allies to begin the long years of Ottoman suzerainty in 1389. Fifty years later the same field was the scene of another defeat when John Hunyadi's forces succumbed to an army led by Sultan Murad II. It is as potent a place as Culloden and accounts for much of the Serb obsession with Kosovo and its mainly ethnic Albanian inhabitants.

At the height of the turmoil in the Balkans, with the eruption of its age-old enmities and the apparent refusal of people from different ethnic or religious backgrounds to live in anything approaching harmony, many of us despaired of ever seeing sense restored.

Yet it has happened, even in troubled Kosovo with its historical symbolism and its ancient ethnic hatreds. The dividing lines are still there, not least in Kosovska Mitrovica where the bridge over the river provides a crossing point between the Serb community in the north and the ethnic Albanians in the south, but thankfully the most serious of the present generation of Serb politicians have dropped their obsession with Kosovo.

Today's election is going to be a closerun thing between the reformist Democratic Party led by Boris Tadic and Tomislav Nikolic's ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party. Also in with a shout is Vojisla Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia, the only grouping taking a hard line over Kosovo. But the most likely outcome is a hung parliament leading to a new coalition government.

If that happens, Serbia's future will be decided by whoever wins the battle for the country's soul.

On the one hand, there are the progressives who want to steer the country towards the goal of EU membership. On the other there are still the diehards who regret the loss of Kosovo and will not be comforted by the UN decision to lead it towards independence. In an attempt to influence matters, Kosovo's prime minister Agim Ceku claimed "the illusion that Kosovo will again be part of Serbia is better left aside" and he called on all Serbians to embrace the idea that Serbia does not need Kosovo to move into Europe.

He is right, of course, and as other parts of the Balkans have learned to forget ancient tribal enmities there is no reason why the Serbs should not follow suit. After all, only 100,000 of their number remain in the province compared with two million ethnic Albanians who might just want to have a say in how their future is managed.