Balkans

BRUSSELS – Spain, grappling with its own separatist movements, said on Monday it would not recognize the secession of the ethnic Albanian territory of Kosovo from Serbia.

BELGRADE – Serbia charged Kosovo’s Albanian leadership with treason on Monday for proclaiming the province independent.

HANOI – Vietnam, a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, said on Monday it opposed Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia.

MOSCOW – Chechen rebels fighting to secede from Russia hailed Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, comparing Pristina’s fight against Serbia to their own struggle against Moscow.

A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $ 500-million from the United Nations’ oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

David King, who as the Government’s Chief Scientist played a key role in the investigation into Litvinenko’s murder, has accused the Russian president of masterminding the murder of nearly 300 of his own people in the Moscow apartment bombings in 1999, which Putin blamed on Chechen rebels.

A special session of Kosovo’s parliament has voted to declare independence from Serbia, with thousands of ethnic Albanians jamming the streets of Pristina, the main city, for the historic moment.

BELGRADE – Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica condemned Kosovo as a false state in a televised address to the nation on Sunday minutes after its mainly Albanian province declared independence.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, ending a long chapter in the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia.

BELGRADE – Serbia is ready for years of resistance to Kosovo’s independence and counts on Russian help to defend its claim to the “occupied” territory, nationalist leaders said on Sunday.