Kosovars celebrate in Brussels

Europe is a sovereign state richer. At twenty to 4 Sunday afternoon Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. The MPs present on the 17th of February 2008, unanymously declare the independence of Kosovo as a republic, sovereign and democratic state.

The Kosovo parliament declared independence in an extra session on Sunday in the capital Pristina.

"Kosovo is a republic- an independent, democratic and sovereign state," parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi said as the chamber burst into applause after the unanimous vote. This ends a long chapter in the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia.

Across Pristina, revelers danced in the streets, fired guns into the air, waved red and black Albanian flags and honked car horns in celebration at the birth of their new republic.

 An estimated 25,000 Kosovars live in Belgium. Hundreds of them took to the streets of the Belgian capital to celebrate.

They gathered before NATO headquartes, – a symbolic choice of venues, because it was the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation that chased the Serbian army from Kosovo in 1999.

The group paraded through the streets of the capital, passing by the European institutions to the Stock Exchange in the Centre of Brussels.

Ninety percent of Kosovo’s 2 million people are ethnic Albanian- mostly nominal Muslims who are secular and eschew radical Islam, according to Associated Press News Agency. They see no reason to stay joined to the rest of Christian Orthodox Serbia.

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