Just watched session. All 242 present mambers voted fore constitution, after that primeminister mr. kostunica allmost yelled "With this we claimed Kosovo", and that was followed by standing ovations.
Never saw something like that in Serbian parlament, unanimously voting and such national unity!
Does mean a move toward or away from Sharia Law for Kosovo?
Good for you, but what will the idiots in the UN and the EU do?
Interesting fact is that there are no troops availabe to force Serbia to relinquish Kosovo, especially if she is being supported by Russia.
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia will hold an early election after a referendum in four weeks on a new constitution reasserting its sovereignty over Kosovo, the prime minister said on Saturday.
Setting his course for a tumultuous conclusion to a year that has not resolved Serbia's crunch problems, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said the new constitution, approved unanimously by parliament, ensures that "Serbia will defend Kosovo with all democratic and legal means".
"Kosovo is ours," he told parliament.
Kosovo's 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority demands independence from Serbia, whose troops killed some 10,000 Albanians and embarked on a massive ethnic cleansing campaign during an Albanian guerrilla insurgency in 1998-99, until NATO bombed Serbia for nearly three months to compel its withdrawal.
On Friday, the European Union effectively told Belgrade it would not resume frozen talks on Serbia's EU membership aspirations because Serbia had not kept its promise to arrest Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Rako Mladic, indicted in 1995.
The West insists that it wants to see a democratic Serbia joining the EU, but is adamant that Serbs cannot escape justice for atrocities committed by their forces in the 1990s.
Serbia's new constitution will replace the old Socialist blueprint defunct since the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic was toppled in 2000. It treats Serbia as a single republic, following the last departure in the break-up of the Yugoslav federation when Montenegro declared independence in June.
SYMBOLISM IS ALL
The constitution's main symbolic point is to reaffirm that the heartland province of Kosovo is an inalienable part of Serbia, and that Kostunica, a moderate nationalist, has not given in to Western pressure to concede it.
Anti-government demonstrators chanted slogans against the constitution on Saturday, saying it was a rushed job pushed through for political reasons, not constitutional reasons.
No major political party in Serbia will publicly concede that Kosovo may be lost, despite polls indicating only 12 percent of Serbs think it may still be saved.
Pro-Western parties fear that to do so would cripple them in the coming election battle against the ultranationalist Radical party, Serbia's strongest.
Kostunica set no date for the snap election, but pundits say it will be in mid or late December. Parliament set an October 28-29 date for the referendum to ratify the constitution. If it passes, Serbia can call for new elections 45 days later.
Kostunica told a news conference earlier that he had asked the liberal G17 Plus party which supports his minority coalition not to carry out its threat to quit this weekend but to stay on until preparations for the elections were completed.
"I am sure that all this will go very fast. The government is bringing its mandate to a close," he said. "We have a job to do. We have a referendum and after that elections and there is nothing more important for Serbia than that."
"I am convinced the people will confirm at a referendum that Serbia needs a new democratic constitution and that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia," Kostunica said.
Belgrade has warned Western powers leaning towards granting Kosovo independence that it will set a dangerous precedent in the ethnically mixed Balkans, and could also boost the electoral strength of Serbia's ultranationalist Radical Party, the main threat to the re-election of a pro-western government.