Kosovo calls for justice for 1,621 missing persons from war

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo’s leadership has called for justice for more than 1,600 people still missing from the 1998-1999 war with neighboring Serbia. On Kosovo’s National Day of Missing Persons, President Vjosa Osmani said, “The violent extinction of thousands of our citizens, including children, was a clear effort to extinguish the people.” The war erupted when the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo, which was then a Serbian province, rebelled against rule from Belgrade, which responded with a brutal crackdown. The issue of the missing is part of an 11-point European Union plan to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia.