Boris Tadic

By Barnaby Phillips in Africa, Europe on April 27th, 2010
Picture from AFP

Africa does many things badly, but one thing especially well. It has perhaps unparalleled ability to reconcile and overcome painful divisions in the aftermath of conflict. 

I was reminded of this last week, in Belgrade, of all places, when I interviewed Boris Tadic, Serbia’s president, for the Talk to Al Jazeera programme.  He wanted to talk about the recent resolution passed by the Serbian parliament, which condemned the 1995 massacre of Bosniak Muslims at Srebrenica, carried out by Serbs.

President Tadic said he was proud of his parliament, arguing that it had shown how Serbia distanced itself from the crimes of the 1990s and "shared Western European values".

By Barnaby Phillips in Europe on April 23rd, 2010

Could Kosovo be geographically divided, and a portion given back to Serbia? The question has been floating around for some time, of course.

It seems like a possible solution to an otherwise intractable problem. The ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo do not want to be part of Serbia, and declared independence unilaterally in 2008.

But the Serb minority in Kosovo are adamant they will never accept the Albanian-dominated government in Pristina. 

Many of Kosovo’s Serbs live in the north, in an area that is geographically contiguous with Serbia proper.

So a possible solution would be for Serbia to accept Kosovan independence,

in return for which Pristina would agree to relinquish its claim to that northern sliver of territory, (over which it has never had practical control, anyway).

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