This small state of 1.8 million people,

emerged as a result of one of Europe's

most brutal sectarian conflicts since the Second World War.

It was a conflict that pitted an authoritarian

nationalist leader, Slobodan Milosevic.

When bombing stop,

then it will be very easy to continue political process.

Against Western military power.

We must not allow, ethnic cleansing or genocide,

particularly at the edge of Europe.

Today, Kosovo is peaceful but poor.

Kosovo didn't only transition from war to peace.

It was transition now from communist country

to a capitalist one,

from a ravaged countryside to the one being rebuilt.

Kosovo was part of Serbia from 1912.

Then, in 1918, Serbia became part

of what would become Yugoslavia.

Serbs considered and say that Kosovo is their Jerusalem.

It was a sort of heart of Serbia.

To this day,

Kosovo is still divided along ethnic lines.

Over 90% of its population are ethnic Albanians,

who are mostly Muslim.

Serbs, who are Orthodox Christians, account for about 5%.

This is the southern city of Pristina,

capital of Kosovo Province.

Throughout the 1980s,

Kosovo enjoyed autonomy within Serbia.

But the majority ethnic Albanian population

wanted more political freedom.

Kosovo Albanian nationalism was growing.

There were demands that Kosovo become a republic.

Kosovo Serbs began to complain,

saying that they were threatened.

But there was one man standing in the way

of Kosovo Albanians, Slobodan Milosevic,

the leader of the Serbian communist party.

Milosevic wanted to keep Kosovo as part of Serbia.

He rallied the minority Serb population

and further divided Kosovo.

Slobodan Milosevic used the Kosovo Serb issue

to take power and to play the nationalist card,

which was to propel him to full power within Serbia.

In 1989, Milosevic became President of Serbia,

and within weeks, placed Kosovo back under the direct

control of his Serbian government.

Petrit Selimi was growing up in Kosovo at the time.

He and his family belong to the ethnic Albanian majority.

When Milosevic came to power, we lost our status.

Our political rights were lost,

our economic freedoms were lost,

and our education rights were lost.

As communism collapsed across Central

and Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia began to disintegrate.

From 1991, its republics declared independence.

Wars broke out in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia,

as ethnic Serbs living in these new countries,

opposed independence.

Milosevic wanted to carve a greater Serbia out of the ruins.

So he so he sent his troops

to support Serbs in these conflicts.

During this turbulent time,

Kosovo's political leadership declared independence, too,

but this was ignored by Serbia

and the international community.

In the late 1990s, a guerrilla group,

the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA,

began to attack Serbian police units.

Its aim was to win independence through force.

It was mixture of excitement,

but fear that something big is about to unfold.

Milosevic sent more Serbian security forces

into Kosovo to defeat the KLA.

The Serbian security forces

and the Yugoslav army were quite brutal.

I mean, the KLA were quite brutal as well,

but the overwhelming preponderance of force, of course,

was on the side of the Serbian security forces.

On January the 15th, 1999,

Serb forces attacked the village of Racak,

killing 45 Kosovo Albanian civilians.

Racak massacre was a turning point

because as soon as the massacre unfolded, people were there,

western journalists, observers, seeing the dead bodies,

and calling it what it was, a crime against humanity.

As Serbian forces

retook territory from the KLA,

thousands of Kosovo Albanians fled their homes.

The images shocked the West.

At a peace conference in France,

Western powers gave Serbia and Kosovo Albanians

an ultimatum, accept a peace deal or face military action.

We're not interested in a partial agreement.

We're interested in a settlement that works.

The Serbs rejected the deal.

We are not talking to Albanians.

We are talking to Americans,

who would like to take our territory for themselves

and for NATO.

And Albanians were just excuse for them.

NATO resolved to punish Milosevic and his army,

and began air strikes on Serb military targets in Kosovo

and throughout Serbia itself.

It is about creating the kind of world

where an innocent people are not singled out for repression,

for expulsion, for destruction,

just because of their religious and ethnic heritage.

During the war, my parents, my brother,

fled the neighborhood, were kicked out by paramilitaries.

They were hiding in the forest

I didn't know for several days, are they alive or not.

After 78 days of bombing

and hundreds of civilian deaths, Serbia capitulated.

Milosevic withdrew his forces from Kosovo.

NATO tanks rolled in,

and Petrit was reunited with his family.

As Kosovar Albanians returned,

tens of thousands of ethnic Serbs fled north to Serbia.

It would be another nine years

before Kosovo finally declared independence.

Today Kosovo has a rough and ready democracy

and a growing economy, but unemployment is high at 33%.

In recent years, clashes caused by ethnic tension,

have erupted on occasions.

Today most Kosovo Serbs consider themselves

citizens of Serbia.

They don't recognize the Kosovo state

and they don't feel a part of it.

External pressure could improve

those strained relations.

Both Kosovo and Serbia

are working to join the European Union.

I don't think either of us would be able to join

the European Union family

until we sort out the issues with each other.

Dialogue is the only way we can move forward.

If Kosovo and Serbia are to become

EU member states, their governments and peoples

will have to work together and bury their bloody past.