Serbian riot police beat back attempts by demonstrators to invade Belgrade's only mosque, but two McDonald's restaurants, the Slovenian Embassy -- Slovenia holds the rotating presidency of the European Union -- and offices of the only Serbian political party advocating recognition of a free Kosovo were ransacked.
The protesters chanted demands for war and attacked TV crews. Authorities said 12 people were arrested, and B92 television reported that 65 people, including at least 30 police, were injured.
The rioters may have been inspired by Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who used a televised address to reiterate Serbia's fierce refusal to recognize Kosovo.
"Today . . . a false state of Kosovo was illegally declared on the part of Serbia that is under the military control of NATO," Kostunica said. "A destructive, cruel and immoral policy carried out by the U.S. led to this unprecedented act of lawlessness."
Earlier in the day, Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci made official the proclamation that had long been anticipated: "We, the democratically elected leaders of our people," he said in a special session of parliament, "hereby declare Kosovo to be an independent and sovereign state."
Thaci made a point of reading a portion of his speech in the Serbian language and emphasized that the new Kosovo would respect the rights of its Serbian minority, many of whom have been harassed and fear for their well-being. The parliament also approved a new flag, a blue background with a yellow map of the Connecticut-sized province.
"We never lost faith in the dream that one day we would stand among the free nations of the world, and today we do," said Thaci, a former guerrilla leader.
Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations for nearly a decade, after NATO bombers in 1999 drove out Serbian forces that were attacking ethnic Albanian separatists. An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed in that war, and many more displaced.
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who commanded NATO at the time, said in a television interview Sunday that the brutality of then-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing" made it "inevitable" that Kosovo would never again be ruled by Belgrade.
Most of Kosovo's nearly 2 million people are Muslim but are largely secular and pro-Western. Serbia is an Orthodox Christian nation with historical cultural ties to the Kosovo region, part of the reason it is so valued by Belgrade.
