80's deja vu

After an extraordinary cold and long winter, with not much electricity if you were living in Kosova, cherry trees are at full bloom and this is turning to be another interesting Spring in the Balkans. It comes with accusations of ethnic cleansing and other such common talk.

The notorious Kosovo Coordination Centre (feeling British for a moment there, eh?) accused Istok/Istog/Burim municipality of planning to stop the return of 30 Serb families to the municipality. But,

Istok Municipal President Fadilj Ferati denied the claims made by the Kosovo Coordination Centre that the local government was not allowing a group of returnees to return to their homes in the region. (B92)

Such an attempt to stop them of course never happened. And the 30 families said they would not give in to threats and come anyways. Today they should be in Kosova rebuilding their homes with the help of a German NGO.

K-Serb leader Rada Trajkovic on the other hand revealed her knowledge of a plan that according to her UNHCR is preparing for the displacement of 40,000 Serb refugees that will result in case of an "unsatisfactory outcome" of the talks.
Serb representatives of UNHCR in Belgrade know nothing about the plan and have denied it, Kosovo international ones will do the same shortly.

This is not the first time that talk like this comes from the Serb politicians. This is a shrewd indirect threat by them to bargain for a "fairer" solution by using the logic the more unbearable it gets, the more they'll be able to bargain for seperate monoethnic structures. The strategists make the key assumption that the West cares what happens to 40,000 Serbs, which of course it doesn't, and the local autonomy being prepared for them will cover any remote guilt of impartiality in the West.

However, this kind of talk by politicians also does much more lasting damage to the weak confidence that Serbs have of coming back. Check for the same line being repeated to the media by common Serbs.