		<div class="wpcnt">
			<div class="wpa">
				<span class="wpa-about">Advertisements</span>
				<div class="u top_amp">
							<amp-ad width="300" height="265"
		 type="pubmine"
		 data-siteid="111265417"
		 data-section="2">
		</amp-ad>
				</div>
			</div>
		</div><p>Italian mediation helped resolve a long-running dispute between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian government and the Serb minority, allowing a road project that will bypass a historic Christian Orthodox monastery listed as an endangered World Heritage site.</p>
<p>Serb Orthodox leaders long protested works to greatly widen a road brushing the 14th Century Visoki Decani Monastery, one of Kosovo’s top Serbian monuments.</p>
<p><!--Ads1--></p>
<p>They argued that it violated site protection rules and that heavy traffic using the road to access a planned ski resort would damage the buildings and their natural surroundings.</p>
<p>They also cited a series of grenade attacks against the monastery spurred by ethnic hatred after Kosovo’s 1998-99 war.</p>
<p>These led to Nato-led peacekeepers being permanently stationed to guard the complex, located some 60 miles west of the capital, Pristina.</p>
<p>The deal agreed Thursday will allow construction of a new road that bypasses the Unesco World Heritage site and leads to the resort and to neighbouring Montenegro.</p>
<p>The existing, widened road will remain, but is expected to be largely superseded by the new one.</p>
<p>Italy’s ambassador to Kosovo, Nicola Orlando and the head of the Kfor peacekeeping force, Italian General-Major Michele Risi, mediated the agreement.</p>
<p>An official involved in the talks said the bypass project’s cost was unclear but would likely be covered by the European Union.</p>
<p>“Such an agreement testifies that the Republic of Kosovo is a country of equality, of freedom and rights which are respected and protected similarly for everyone,” Kosovar prime minister Avdullah Hoti, who was also involved in the talks, said in a statement.</p>
<p>Monk Sava Janjic from the Visoki Decani monastery said on Twitter that the “arrangement will protect the monastery from the construction of the international road, which will go via a bypass, and in return will enable rehabilitation of the existing road … for local use”.</p>
<p><!--Ads2--></p>
<p>Kosovo’s foreign ministry also hailed the deal, saying in a statement that the road is “of strategic importance for all Albanians, eases the free movement of people and goods and also will be attractive for tourism development”.</p>
<p>Serbs are the biggest ethnic minority in Kosovo, though their number has decreased following the war when a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists led to the deaths of more than 10,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians.</p>
<p>Nato intervention forced Serbia to withdraw from the province Serbs and the Serbian church consider their historic and cultural heartland — containing hundreds of Serbian Orthodox Christian monasteries and churches dating back to medieval times.</p>
<p>Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move that Belgrade does not recognise.</p>
<p>Kosovo and Serbia have been in EU-negotiated talks, that included the Decani road issue, since 2011 but few of the signed deals are applied.</p>
<p>Visoki Decani Monastery was founded by Serbian King Saint Stefan Decanski, who was buried there after being killed by his son’s followers.</p>
<p>It blends western and eastern architectural styles and is richly decorated with frescoes.</p>
<p>During the 1998-99 war it sheltered civilians<br />
<!--Ads3--></p>
			<div style="padding-bottom:15px;" class="wordads-tag" data-slot-type="belowpost">
				<div id="atatags-dynamic-belowpost-68ed4f43ef469">
					<script type="text/javascript">
						window.getAdSnippetCallback = function () {
							if ( false === ( window.isWatlV1 ?? false ) ) {
								// Use Aditude scripts.
								window.tudeMappings = window.tudeMappings || [];
								window.tudeMappings.push( {
									divId: 'atatags-dynamic-belowpost-68ed4f43ef469',
									format: 'belowpost',
								} );
							}
						}

						if ( document.readyState === 'loading' ) {
							document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', window.getAdSnippetCallback );
						} else {
							window.getAdSnippetCallback();
						}
					</script>
				</div>
			</div>
Discover more from London Glossy Post
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
