After the Kosovo War of 1998–99, Kosovo spent nearly nine years under United Nations administration while its status remained unresolved. When talks with Belgrade stalled, Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders acted alone. On February 17, 2008, the Assembly adopted a declaration of independence and pledged to follow UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan for protecting minorities. The United States and most EU states soon recognized the new republic. Serbia, backed by Russia, called the declaration illegal, and it still refuses to accept it.
The declaration was the end point of a long crisis. In the 1990s Belgrade stripped Kosovo of its autonomy, and the conflict that followed ended only after NATO's bombing campaign in 1999. From then on, Pristina was run by a UN mission, and Kosovo was neither fully part of Serbia nor a state in its own right.
On the afternoon of February 17, 2008, Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi read the declaration to the Assembly, and the deputies present voted it through while Serb members boycotted the session. Pristina's streets filled with celebrating crowds waving Albanian and American flags. Many chose the Albanian flag because the new state did not yet have one. Its flag, a map of Kosovo in gold beneath six white stars on blue, was unveiled that same day, designed to belong to no single ethnic group.
Serbia asked the International Court of Justice to rule on the declaration. In 2010 the court found that it had not violated international law. Even so, Kosovo's statehood remains disputed, and the dispute still blocks its membership of the United Nations.
Key people: Hashim Thaçi, Fatmir Sejdiu, Martti Ahtisaari