Serbs to Reassess Role in Kosovo After Shooting

GRACANICA, Yugoslavia —  Kosovo’s moderate Serbs might reconsider participating in the province’s interim U.N.-led government after the shooting of a Serb during a clash with NATO-led peacekeepers, according to a spokesman.

“Violence against the Serbs” is bound to increase opposition to such participation, spokesman Aleksandar Vidojevic said Friday, a day after a Serbian man was shot in the leg when Swedish peacekeepers fired on protesters armed with farm tools who were trying to attack the Gracanica monastery.

“For the moment, we are staying with our decision” to take part in the government, Vidojevic said. “But we will meet to reconsider.”

Vidojevic also said he understood violent Serbian reaction when Kosovo’s dwindling Serbian minority remains at threat from the ethnic Albanian majority. “They are afraid that we will support the independence of Kosovo.”

Independence remains the goal of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians more than a year after the start of the crackdown by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s troops that led to North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention.

Radical Serbs fear that any cooperation with the ethnic Albanians only furthers that goal of independence for the province, which formally remains part of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic.