Where is Urosevac?

NIN, Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, December 9 1999

"Looking in the newspapers at the photos of Clinton's visit to Kosovo, I see a lot of excited Albanians and placards and signs in the background. The signs are in Albanian and English; none are in the Serb language. I see Ferizaj, but I cannot find the Serb name for the same town; I can't find Urosevac. It seems that the disappearance of the Serb language from the public is a general trend in Kosovo.

"I recall one of the first fierce parliamentary debates (1991) in the era of Slobodan Milosevic, regarding the official use of language. One of the points that were fiercely contested had to do with the names of settlements. The proposal for the new law abolished the coexistence of names in the Serb language and languages of ethnic minorities. 'Urosevac will never be Ferizaj!' thundered one of the representatives. A few of us advocated the position that it is impossible to achieve ethnic peace or modernization without coexistence of names used by different peoples in certain localities. We believed that Serb names should be used in parallel with Albanian, Hungarian and names in other languages. 'Subotica' together with 'Szabatka'. I am a member of an ethnic minority, but I want to emphasize that the amendments proposed by me (the amendments allowed for parallel use of names in different languages) were endorsed by two ethnic Serb representatives. Our amendment was rejected. My impression was that by doing that the Serbian parliament refused to get on a path towards Europe. I still share that impression; however, if my belief is correct, that also implies that Ferizaj without Urosevac is not the European way.

"I know that it is not easy to confront heated emotions and intolerance. The last ten years have offered too much evidence about that. However, I know from my own experience that it is possible to confront intolerance(...)"