Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova dies at 61
Updated Sun. Jan. 22 2006 7:23 AM ET
Kosovo's President Ibrahim Rugova
CTV.ca News Staff
Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova, who came to embody the ethnic Albanian struggle to win independence from Serbia, died on Saturday after a battle with lung cancer. He was 61.
He died at his home in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, surrounded by his family members, his spokesman Muhamet Hamiti said.
Rugova, a chain-smoker until he was officially diagnosed with lung cancer in September 2005, had been undergoing treatment at his Pristina residence.
The Sorbonne-educated literature professor came to prominence in the early 1990s as the leader of the nonviolent ethnic Albanian movement against the policies of former Yugoslavia president Slobodan Milosevic.
Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999 when a NATO bombing campaign drove out Serb forces accused of atrocities against ethnic Albanians during a separatist war.
The United Nations immediately postponed until February the first formal U.N.-mediated negotiations between Serbs and ethnic Albanians to determine whether Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians should become independent or remain part of Serbia-Montenegro, the union that replaced Yugoslavia.
The talks had been scheduled to begin in Vienna on Wednesday.
Rugova, who was elected Kosovo's first president in 2002, won international respect through the peaceful nature of his opposition to Serb dominance, in contrast to his main rivals, who led the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army that fought Serb troops.
In 2002, Rugova became involved in a series of heated exchanges with Milosevic at his trial for war crimes at The Hague.
"Mr. Rugova, do you think that you personally and the Kosovo Albanians were used as a means of implementing the will of the great powers - yes or no?" Milosevic is quoted as asking.
Rugova responded: "The great powers and the international community came out in our defence, for human rights and against the massacres perpetrated by Belgrade and by you."
In March, 2005, Rugova survived an apparent assassination attempt, the second one within 12 months, after a bomb exploded as his convoy passed through the centre of Pristina.
The head of parliament, Nexhat Daci, is expected to be named acting president until the parliament chooses a new leader.
A Kosovo Albanian woman holds a candle in rememberance of the late Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova infront of the theatre in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Saturday. (AP / Visar Kryeziu