"We, the democratically elected leaders of our people, hereby declare Kosovo to be an independent and sovereign state. This declaration reflects the will of our people and it is in full accordance with the recommendations of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari and his Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement.We declare Kosovo to be a democratic, secular and multiethnic republic, guided by the principles of non-discrimination and equal protection under the law."
The declaration of independence was made by members of the Kosovo Assembly meeting in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, on 17 Feb,2008. It was approved by a show of hands, with no votes of opposition from the 109 members present.
值得关心的不仅是事件本身，各方的关注更值得玩味。
首先看自己人的反应，科索沃和塞尔维亚人的反应。先说科索沃地区的demography。Albanian majority is now estimated to constitute 90% of Kosovo’s population。剩余的10%是塞尔维亚人。阿尔巴尼亚族人以及邻国阿尔巴尼亚人欢呼雀跃，而塞尔维亚人却极其不爽，总理发表讲话这辈子都不承认这件事情（通俗说法）。
States planning to recognise Kosovo
Australia， Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Panama, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States,当然还有我们的小小台湾。顺便剪一段“发言人”的话：’We congratulate the Kosovo people on their winning independence and hope they enjoy the fruits of democracy and freedom,’ Phoebe Yeh, acting spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry said.
States planning to not recognise Kosovo
Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina, People’s Republic of China, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Indonesia, Romania,Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Vietnam.大多数国家的反应都不奇怪，有传统利益所在的，有分裂担忧的。西班牙是其中一个少有的传统西方国家，因为加泰罗尼亚地区也一直叫唤着要独立。政治从来都是功利的，呵。
中立的国家就不说了，但是还是关注一下瑞典的态度好了，呵呵。来自http://www.huliq.com/50555/no-immediate-kosovo-recognition，Sweden said it will not be one of the first EU countries to recognise Kosovo。个人认为这是明智的态度。
其实中国也未明确表明态度，至少我在国内各大网站未见什么官方的报道，新华网倒是贴了各方的态度，但是独缺中国。而且评论性的文章基本没有。但是西方基于一贯立场，把中国直接排在了States planning to not recognise Kosovo上。但是我相信以政府的外交手法，咱们没必要去当出头鸟。塞尔维亚自己都还没说什么呢，何必。政治嘛，玲珑很重要。是明智的态度，唯一值得担心的是将来若是台湾真的搞起来了，国际舆论会否出现当初科索沃怎样怎样你中国怎样怎样，但是个人认为不足虑。塞尔维亚本身急着加入欧盟，而欧盟恨不得马上把南联盟留下的破房子拆的更烂，塞尔维亚眼前只有两条路可选，选择欧盟放弃科索沃，or vice versa。
国际舞台，说话大声与否是国力决定的，台湾方面，全中国十几亿人不说全部但相信绝大多数是有绝对的决心要取回台湾的，外界的干扰再大也要做的事情。取回台湾，也许需要付出沉重代价，但是失去台湾，很可能是国破家亡的局面。而且科索沃与台湾问题有本质区别，不赘述。
拭目以待吧，看看事情的走向。3，22已经很近，8.8也已经很近。2008将会是中国历史上重要的一年。希望伟大的祖国能够顺顺利利地走过着风雨交加的一年吧。
科索沃独立历史和政治（from wiki）
Historical background （History of Kosovo）
Location of Kosovo in EuropeKosovo, which for some time was a territory of the medieval Serbian state, was conquered by the Ottoman Empire following Serbia’s defeat in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. Over the following five hundred years it gained a very mixed population that included Albanian, Slavic and Turkish Muslims living alongside the Christian Montenegrins, Roma and Serbs. The loss of Kosovo became a major theme in Serbian national iconography and its recovery became a key goal following Serbia’s formal independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. Serbia regained control of Kosovo in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. By this time, however, Serbs had become a minority in Kosovo, with Albanians now comprising the majority of the population. The restoration of Serbian rule was opposed by many Kosovo Albanians. Serbia lost control of the territory in both of the World Wars, during which many Kosovo Serbs were expelled by armed Albanian groups. Serbian control was nonetheless re-established at the end of the two wars.
When the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was established after 1945, with Serbia as one of its six constituent republics, Kosovo was made an autonomous province of Serbia rather than a republic in its own right. The extent of its autonomy varied considerably under the communist Yugoslav system; from 1974 to 1989 it enjoyed very extensive rights of self-government, along with Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina, which gave it a status on the collective Presidency of the SFRY that was virtually equivalent to a full republic. The autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina was drastically reduced in 1989 by the government of the Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Self-government by the province’s Albanian majority—now estimated to constitute 90% of Kosovo’s population—was ended. In response, the Albanian members of the Kosovo Assembly voted on 2 July 1990 to declare Kosovo an independent state, though this was only recognised by Albania. A state of emergency and harsh new security rules were subsequently imposed by Serbia following mass protests by Kosovo’s Albanians. The Albanians established an unofficial "parallel state" to provide education and social services while boycotting or being excluded from Serbian-run government institutions.
Kosovo remained largely peaceful through the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s, although the severity of the Serbian regime in Kosovo was widely criticised by the international community and human rights groups. In 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began attacking Serbian security forces and civilians whom it regarded as "collaborators". The conflict between Serbian and Yugoslav security forces and the KLA insurgents escalated until Kosovo was on the verge of all-out war by the end of 1998. In January 1999, NATO warned the Yugoslav government that it would intervene militarily if Yugoslavia did not agree to the introduction of an international peacekeeping force and the establishment of a democratic government in Kosovo. Subsequent peace talks failed and from March 24 to June 11, 1999, NATO carried out an extensive bombing campaign against targets in Serbia and Montenegro, including in Kosovo itself. The war ended with Milošević agreeing to allow peacekeepers into Kosovo and hand over its governance to the United Nations.
Political background （Kosovo status process）
Ethnic composition of Kosovo as of 2005After the end of the Kosovo War in 1999, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1244 to provide a framework for Kosovo’s interim status. It placed Kosovo under transitional UN administration, demanded a withdrawal of Serbian security forces from Kosovo and envisioned an eventual UN-facilitated political process to determine Kosovo’s status (i.e., whether it would become independent or remain part of Serbia). The resolution also explicitly upheld the existing sovereignty of Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is the legal successor, over Kosovo, "reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act and annex 2 [referring to status principles agreed at the end of the war]." It also established a requirement that the post-conflict constitutional process must take full account of "the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia".
In February 2007, Martti Ahtisaari delivered a draft status settlement proposal to leaders in Belgrade and Pristina, the basis for a draft UN Security Council Resolution which proposed ‘supervised independence’ for the province. By early July 2007 a draft resolution, backed by the United States and the European Union members of the Security Council, had been rewritten four times to try to accommodate Russian concerns that such a resolution would undermine the principle of state sovereignty. However, it had still not found agreement.[6] Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council as one of five permanent members, stated that it would not support any resolution which was not acceptable to both Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians.[7] While most observers had, at the beginning of the talks, anticipated independence as the most likely outcome, others suggested that a rapid resolution might not be preferable.[8]
The talks finally broke down in late 2007 with the two sides remaining far apart, with the minimum demands of each side being more than the other was willing to accept.
