BELGRADE, SERBIA — Once the most powerful of the former Yugoslav republics and a kingdom that reached from the Adriatic to the Aegean, Serbia is about to lose the only vestige of its days of glory: Kosovo.
United Nations mediators say they will unveil their plan for the province, which is predominantly ethnic Albanian and Muslim, and has been governed as a U.N. protectorate since 1999, sometime after today's Serbian general elections.
Although the result of their deliberations appears to be a foregone conclusion and most outsiders have viewed Kosovo as a separate entity since a U.S.-led NATO air campaign forced the withdrawal of Serbian security forces, Serbs hardly see the same reality.
The imminent loss of the province has been a central issue in the parliamentary campaign. Serbian politicians, intent on proving their loyalty to the country's traditional identity, have pulled out the stops to convince the world that the province should remain within their nation's borders.
They have hired the high-powered Republican-affiliated lobbying firm of Barbour Griffith & Rogers in Washington. The Serbian Orthodox Church has allied itself with televangelist Pat Robertson, who shares its concern about the rise of Muslim influence in the West.
Serbian political leaders have been on the phone to the Russians, fellow Slavs who have veto power in the U.N. Security Council, which would have to approve any broad independence deal.
Symbol of righteousness
Why does the province exert such a hold on the Serbian imagination? Landlocked, poor and now populated mostly by ethnic Albanians hostile to Serbs, it nonetheless has become a symbol of Serbia's image of itself as a righteous nation, a beacon of the Orthodox Christian world.
"We were all raised on the Kosovo myth ... and Serbs, even if they don't go there, see it as part of their country, part of our history," said Rade Stanic, editor of the newsweekly Evropa.
Every Serbian schoolchild studies the epic poetry that describes the 14th century battle of medieval Serbian princes against the Turks. Although the Turks won, Serbs believe they won in the eyes of heaven by martyring themselves on Kosovo Polje, the battlefield that gives the province its name.
Prince Lazar, the hero, is given a choice by a gray falcon on the eve of the battle: "Which kingdom is it that you long for most? / Will you choose a heavenly crown today? / Or will you choose an earthly crown?"
