"Kosovo is a republic — an independent, democratic and sovereign state," Kosovo's parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi said as the chamber burst into applause.
Serbia immediately denounced the declaration as illegal, and Russia also rejected it, demanding an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
President Bush said the U.S. would work to prevent violence after the declaration and the European Union appealed for calm, mindful of the risk that the declaration could plunge the turbulent Balkans back into instability.
Remember that the Russians marched into Kosovo in 1999 using troops in Bosnia in order to snatch a piece of territory in Kosovo to occupy in order to "protect" the Slavs of Serbia following the 1999 Kosovo War. Years later, pleading poverty, the Russians pulled out of Kosovo altogether.
We shall see if Putin attempts to leverage Russia's traditional role of "protector" of the Slavs to muck around in the Balkans over this issue. He's been looking for an excuse to assert Russian power. Will he seek to put Russian troops into Serbia to bolster his allies?
Will the Serbs regard Russian troops and the hope of getting Kosovo back more important than EU membership?
Hopefully, American and European troops in Kosovo won't find themselves in a shooting war between Serbs and Kosovo Moslems within Kosovo, or a new DMZ drawn somewhere in Kosovo if the Serbs try to in turn secede from Kosovo and perhaps unite with Serbia.
The EU is divided over the issue, though the leading states support the move.
Russia won't likely get UN Security Council action since France, Britain, or America can veto any Russian or Chinese initiative there.
It will be interesting to see how many states recognize the new nation.
And I guess we'll see how the Kurds of Iraq and the Taiwanese react if this settles down with no major bad side effects.
It's hard for me to be upset with this move by Kosovo in isolation. Yet nonetheless I'd have rather not had to deal with this right now. The Balkans may not be worth the bones of any particular grenadier, but history shows quite a few have died for just that issue.
If it's not one damn thing, it's another.
