Kosovo is a Serbian province, located in the southern part of Serbia. It has been administered by the United Nations (UN) since June 1999, with NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) providing the peacekeeping.

At the beginning of the 13th century Kosovo became part of the Serbian Kingdom, its population then being a mixture of Serbs, Albanians and Vlachs. It was not long before Kosovo became the cultural and religious heart of Orthodox Serbia, with many churches and monasteries being errected on its grounds. During the course of time, however, Kosovo's ethnic composition evolved into the province nowadays consisting mainly of Albanians professing the Islam, а great deal of this owing to the Medieval five-century Ottoman rule over Serbia, during which many Christian Serbs were driven out. Out of  the over-two-million people now living in Kosovo, about 92 per cent are Albanians and only five per cent are Serbs.

In 1912, during the First Balkan War, Serbia managed to regain control over most of Kosovo from the Ottoman Empire. Serbian sovereignty over the province was recognised and the Serbs started a re-colonisation of Kosovo. At the end of World War 1, Kosovo was fully subject to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (the transformed Serbian Kingdom).

During World War 2, most of Kosovo became part of the Italian-controlled fascist Albania. A big number of Serbs were either expelled from the province or killed.

After the end of WW2, Kosovo became a province of the Serbian Republic, part of the communist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In the 1960s and 1970s Kosovo gained more and more autonomy, until the 1974 Yugoslav constitution granted autonomous status to the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo and gave it privileges of a de facto republic within the Yugoslav federation. By the beginning of the 1980s the Albanians in Kosovo were already a vast majority.

In 1981, Kosovar Albanian students started protests requesting that Kosovo become an independent Yugoslavian republic. These protests grew into violent riots harshly suppressed by the Yugoslav authorities. Ethnic tension in the 1980s kept increasing, forcing big numbers of Serbs to emigrate out of Kosovo.

In 1989, Slobodan Milošević became president of Serbia, largerly thanks to championing the fight of Kosovar Serbs, who were protesting against Albanian harassment. Having used Serbian nationalism to boost his political career, upon becoming president Milošević undertook drastic actions to reduce Kosovo's autonomy and increase the federal control over the province.

Kosovar Albanians were prompt to react. They started a non-violent separatist movement, boycotting the official authorities and establishing their own separatist institutions. The climax came with the declaring of Kosovo's independence by a separatist Albanian parliament on July 2 1990. Neither Serbia, nor any other country, except for Albania, recognised this independence. As a response Serbia was quick to dissolve the Kosovar government. In the autumn of 1990 it sacked over 100 000 Albanian workers.

In 1992, Ibrahim Rugova was elected president of the self-declared Kosovar republic in a separatist Albanian election. Meanwhile the situation in Yugoslavia had become increasingly tense with the Yugoslav wars breaking out. In 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. The Serbs became fully occupied with fighting in Croatia and Bosnia and Rugova put his efforts into trying to achieve recognition of Kosovo independence, resorting mainly to peaceful means.

The 1995 Dayton Agreement put an end to the war in Bosnia, but it made no provision for Kosovo, thus convincing the more radical Kosovar Albanians the only way to achieving independence was through armed force. And it was to this aim that soon the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged and started its guerrilla attacks upon Serbian police and civilians. Serbia reacted by severe repressions against Kosovar Albanians and by 1998 the conflict grew into a virtual civil war, prompting NATO warn Milošević to stop.

Peace talks in France failed and in March 1999 NATO started its 78-day air strike on Yugoslavia. About 800 000 Albanians either fled or were expelled from Kosovo during the bombing with the worst massacres against Albanians taking place exactly at that time.

In June 1999, Milošević gave in and UN put Kosovo under its administration, with KFOR keeping the peace. Upon returning, Kosovar Albanians started revenge attacks on Kosovar Serbs, forcing over 200 000 of them to flee.    

In 2001, the UN Kosovo administration established the Kosovo Provisional Institutions of Self-Government, comprising a Kosovo assembly, president, government and judicial system. Since then, the UN administration has been transferring more and more competencies to these local administrative bodies. A Kosovo Police Service was also established under UN supervision.

During the course of the post-1999 years ethnic incidents in Kosovo occurred every now and then only to remind the issue, although stabilised, was far from resolved. The worst of them took place in March 2004, when 19 were killed and many more were injured in an outburst of Serb-Albanian violence.            

In February 2006, UN-backed international talks on the final status of Kosovo began under the guidance of UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari. In February 2007 Ahtisaari presented a draft plan for a future ‘supervised independence’ of Kosovo. The plan was meant to be used as a basis for a UN resolution. Russia, however, made it clear it would use its veto at the UN Security Council to prevent the adoption of a resolution granting Kosovo independence and on July 20 2007 efforts to adopt such a resolution were dropped.

In August 2007, a so-called ‘troika’, consisting of negotiators from the US, the European Union (EU) and Russia embarked on a new, four-month effort to reach a solution of the Kosovo issue. It reached no progress by its December 10 2007 deadline, as Kosovar Albanians kept insisting on independence, and Serbia -- that Kosovo was an integral part of its territory. The US and the EU favoured finally resolving the issue by Kosovo becoming independent, with Russia opposing the Kosovar independence.

In the meantime, Kosovar Albanians voiced their determination to proclaim Kosovo’s independence in the very near future. Kosovo prime minister Hashim Thaci, elected in November 2007, was clear from his very coming into office proclaiming Kosovo’s independence was a non-negotiable matter.