Europe | Pandora’s box

The leaders of Kosovo and Serbia talk about swapping land

Their real plan may be to swap Serbian recognition of Kosovo for Serbian autonomy within it

|PRESEVO AND MITROVICA

THE end of the Yugoslav wars 20 years ago left hundreds of thousands of people in states they did not regard as their own. Tough, said the peacemakers: redrawing borders would only lead to more conflict. As a result, some 120,000 Serbs remain in ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo; some 60,000 ethnic Albanians live in the Presevo valley in Serbia.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Pandora’s box”

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