A visit to Kosovo

International media are reporting that the big news of Serbian president Boris Tadic's visit to Kosovo is that he said that he was opposed to independence (see this example from the ABC and this example from the BBC). It doen't make too much sense that if an official repeats his government's well-known position that this is somehow news. More likely, Mr Tadic said the only thing that his position allows him to say. But the news is something else. If you look at election returns, the margin for the Milosevic-regime parties was generally provided by Serbs from Kosovo, either by actual voting or by fraud. That margin is still there but it has been diminishing since 2000. The news is that Mr Tadic did what his verbally strident opponents did not do: he showed up. If he had only done that and not said anything, he would already be securing the return of DS to power in the next election. That he did say something says very little.
balkania