BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- The Republic of Serbia Thursday dissolved the government of Kosovo and took control of the rebellious province after a declaration of independence by lawmakers of the ethnic Albanian majority.
The communist Serbian Assembly approved the steps under a 2-week-old law providing for such actions due to 'special circumstances,' including a threat to the territorial integrity of Serbia.
'They tried to declare Kosovo a republic and by that they endangered Serbia and Yugoslavia,' said Zoran Sokolovic, the president of the Serbian Assembly. 'By a decree, we are dissolving the parliament, the government and the (administrative) bodies of Kosovo Province.'
The assembly also dismissed the ethnic Albanian executives and managers of Kosovo's government-run radio and television stations, Albanian-language newspapers and major coal and lead mines.
The communist-ruled republic sent paramilitary police armed with machine guns and wearing bulletproof vests into radio and television studios in the Kosovo capital of Pristina, 200 miles south of Belgrade, to evict their ethnic Albanian staffs.
Film footage on the evening news on state-run Belgrade Television showed parts of the operation, including the manhandling of at least one man by officers.
The television said a cameraman and a journalist were taken into custody for resisting the police.
Albanian-language Radio Pristina and Pristina Television were shut down, with officers posted throughout the buildings, said employees reached by telephone from Belgrade.
They said the radio returned to the air with music after a more than 4-hour suspension, while television broadcasts remained suspended into the evening.
Ethnic Albanians constitute a majority in Kosovo. The province has been wracked by sporadic outbreaks of anti-Serbian unrest for nearly a decade, with ethnic Albanians alleging a lack of human and political rights.
More than 30 people have been killed this year and hundreds injured.
The province's Serbian minority, for its part, contends it is persecuted and charges that ethnic Albanians want to unite Kosovo in a 'Greater Albania' with Albania, the neigboring Marxist country of 3 million bordering Yugoslavia, Greece and the Adriatic Sea.
Kosovo is regarded with fanatical devotion by Yugoslavia's 8.5 million Serbs, the largest ethnic group in the country of 23 million. Serbs see Kosovo as the 'cradle' of their centuries-old heritage and Orthodox religion. There are about 200,000 Serbs in Kosovo.
Efforts to resolve the crisis have been deadlocked for years.
Thursday's move by the republic's assembly was announced in the Kosovo provincial legislature by its president, Djordje Bozovic.
'Under a decree of the Serbian Assembly, the assembly and government of Kosovo Province are no longer functioning,' he was quoted as saying by state-run Belgrade Radio.
'Officials and their deputies in these organs have been dismissed,' he said.
The move transferred administrative and judicial functions to the government and judiciary of Serbia and the legislative functions to the republic's assembly.
Only about 60 Serbian deputies were in the 186-member provincial legislative chamber to hear the announcement because all 114 ethnic Albanian lawmakers boycotted the session.
Monday, the ethnic Albanian deputies issued a declaration in the Kosovo capital of Pristina, 200 miles south of Belgrade, declaring the province was breaking with Serbia and becoming an autonomous republic within the Yugoslav federation.
The declaration was provoked by a referendum Sunday and Monday seeking approval of the Serbian communist leadership's political program, which calls for a new republic constitution withdrawing virtually all autonomy from Kosovo to stifle separatist aspirations among its 1.7 million ethnic Albanians.
Serbian Election Commission Chairman Caslav Ignjatovic announced overwhelming approval of the program, which had been expected because of the emotions evoked among Serbs by the Kosovo crisis.
He said that of about 5 million votes cast, 96.8 percent were in favor. A total of 6.6 million people had been eligible to cast ballots.
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, concerned about a loss of popularity, hopes that eliminating virtually all self-rule for Kosovo will regain support for the communists before promised multi-party elections, the date for which he has yet to announce.
Multi-national Yugoslavia is composed of six republics. Serbia has two autonomous provinces, Kosovo in the south, and Vojvodina in the north.
