Kosovo 'Supervised' Independence Ends
U.S. President Barack Obama has hailed the end of international supervision for Kosovo's independence as a "historic milestone."
(KosovoCompromisStuff) Monday, September 10, 2012
In a written statement issued on September 10, Obama said: "Kosovo has made significant progress in solidifying the gains of independence and in building the institutions of a modern, multiethnic, inclusive and democratic state".
Kosovo took another step towards full sovereignty on September 10 as Western powers in the International Steering Group (ISG) formally announced the end of their supervision.
The ISG, made up of 23 European Union members, the United States, and Turkey, had overseen Kosovo since its 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia.
International oversight will still continue in the shape of 6,000 NATO peacekeepers and over 1,000 European Union police officers, prosecutors, and judges tasked with tackling deep-rooted corruption and sporadic ethnic violence in Kosovo.
Kosovo's two million majority ethnic-Albanian population has been under some form of international administration since the NATO bombing campaign of the Serbian province in 1999.
Serbia has never accepted Kosovo's independence.
It dismissed the sovereignty announcement as meaningless.
