Bush hails Kosovo's claim to nationhood

Amid a blaze of celebrations Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership announced its independence from Serbia, and has sent 192 letters to separate countries asking them to formally recognise their country as a sovereign state.

"It's something that I've advocated along with my government," Mr Bush said in a television interview during a five-nation tour of Africa.

President Bush jumped the gun. Formal recognition of Kosovo by the US state department only came later in the day.

Kosovo itself was quiet on Monday morning, after an independence celebration party that continued until dawn and kept tens of thousands of ecstatic Kosovo Albanians partying, dancing, drinking and singing in bars and on the freezing streets of the former Serb province.

Occasional staccato lances of red tracer-fire from assault-rifles fired in celebration swished through the air, but the majority of the pyrotechnic display came from the colourful whooshing of 80 tons of Bulgarian fireworks bought specially for the occasion.

Morning on the streets of Kosovo's capital Pristina was a public holiday, the boulevards and pavements scattered with empty beer bottles, burnt-out fireworks and bunting. Red and black Albanian flags hung everywhere.

Passers-by stopped to scribble names and messages on a sculpture spelling out "NEWBORN" in giant iron letters across from the UN headquarters in central Pristina.

Ninety per cent of Kosovo's two million people are ethnic Albanian – most of them secular Muslims – and they see no reason to stay joined to the rest of Christian Orthodox Serbia.

The four largest EU states, Germany, France, Britain and Italy all recognised Kosovo yesterday. However, Spain and Slovakia called the independence move illegal.

Several other EU states have serious concerns over the declaration, either because of their own issues or because of ties with Serbia.

Serbia meanwhile vowed to block the territory that it still claims from joining any world body and launched legal action against Kosovo's leaders for making Sunday's declaration.

"The so-called Kosovo state will never be a member of the United Nations," Vuk Jeremic, the Serbian foreign minister said.

Serbian police filed charges against Kosovo's leaders for "organising the proclamation of a phoney state on Serbian territory," the interior ministry said.

Many countries, from China to Russia, have expressed opposition to Kosovo's independence but its prime minister Hashim Thaci said he was confident countries would soon recognise the new state.

Violence flared across Serbia in the hours after the declaration with angry protesters stoning the Belgrade embassies of the United States and Slovenia, the current EU president.

Chanting "Kosovo is the heart of Serbia," the mobs smashed windows of two McDonald's restaurants and the US embassy before police used tear gas, rubber bullets and batons to disperse them.

More than 5,000 protesters, including many students, gathered in central Belgrade on Monday for a peaceful demonstration. Other protests which turned out mostly peaceful were held in the Kosovo towns of Mitrovica, and Strpce, and Banja Luka, the main town in the Serb-run Bosnian entity of Republika Srpska.

In Mitrovica, thousands of Kosovo Serbs chanted "This is Serbia" and "Down with America"; others carried banners reading "Russia Help!" and posters of US flags with Nazi swastikas scribbled over them.

Another 800 Serbs also staged a noisy demonstration in the Serb-dominated enclave of Gracanica outside Pristina.

"Our obligation is to stay in our homes and live as if nothing happened yesterday," one protester Goran Arsic said.

Some kissed red, blue and white Serbian flags and carried banners saying "We trust Russia."

The UN Security Council has not yet recognised Kosovo's independence and Russia is leading an attempt to build a coalition to force the Council to oppose the declaration.