Factbox: Kosovo
Following are key facts about Kosovo, whose future is the subject of UN-mediated talks that opened in Vienna on Monday.
Geography:
Kosovo is a province of Serbia-Montenegro, encompassing 10,900sq km – about the size of Belgium – bordering Albania and Macedonia.
The provincial capital is Pristina.
Serbia-Montenegro, with its capital in Belgrade, is a union of the former republics of Serbia and Montenegro that replaced Yugoslavia when that country broke up in the early 1990s.
People:
About two million. Ninety per cent are ethnic Albanian; most of the remaining 10% are Serb.
Status:
Kosovo has been run by the UN and Nato since 1999, when Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s forces were ousted after a Nato air war ended his crackdown on
independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.
Future:
Ethnic Albanians, who say they are descendants of Kosovo’s first inhabitants, want Kosovo to become an independent state. Serbs want the province to revert to tighter integration within the Serbia-Montenegro union.
Serbs consider Kosovo the birthplace of their identity, as it was the scene of an epic battle between Serbs and Turks in 1389 CE.