Kostunica Meets With EU Leaders To Discuss Kosovo

Brussels, 23 March 2004 (RFE/RL) -- The recent wave of ethnic violence in Kosovo is expected to be on the agenda when Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica meets with European Union leaders today in Brussels.
European Union foreign ministers on 22 March condemned last week's violence between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority and the province's minority Serbs. Twenty-eight people, mostly Serbs, were killed in the clashes and hundreds of others were injured.

The EU foreign ministers in particular called on Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership to take responsibility for the situation and to ensure that threats and violence end.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, on a visit to Kosovo's capital Pristina, said Albanian extremists had orchestrated the violence, which he called "unacceptable."

De Hoop Scheffer called on ethnic Albanian leaders to unanimously condemn the violence, which was the worst flare-up since NATO forces and the United Nations took control of Kosovo after the 1999 war.