Albanian Kosovars

I. King and W. Mason, Peace at Any Price, How the World Failed Kosovo, C. Hurst Co., 2006, pp. 36-38 (describing the circumstances leading up to the 1990 Kosovar Albanian Unilateral Declaration of Independence, and the lack of any significant effect in the world community of this first attempt at independence by the Kosovar Albanians). 

Kosovo s local assembly approved a declaration of self-determination, and two months later they approved a constitution which proclaimed that tt]he Republic of Kosova is a democratic state of the Albanian people and of members of other nations and national minorities. Thus, as early as 1990, Kosovar Albanians beheved that they had the right to external self-determination. 

In Kosovo, the great powers were instrumental in ensuring that the Kosovar Albanians acquired their long-sought independence from Serbia. First, it was those great powers that are members of NATO that organized the 1999 series... 

---