Kosovo made international headlines in the late 1990s when Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic ordered troops to suppress an independence campaign mounted by the Albanian ethnic majority.

With a population of 1.8 million, the majority of whom are Albanian, Kosovo was declared an autonomous state of Serbia, in 1974.

But tensions mounted in the 1980s when Albanians campaigned for an independent Kosovo and Serbians complained of persecution at the hands of the Albanians.

Milosevic supported the Serbian nationalism and by 1989, when he became president of Yugoslavia, he began stripping Kosovo of its autonomy.

Initially a passive resistance movement began among the Albainians, but when that failed to restore autonomy a rebel group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), began attacking Serb targets.

By the summer of 1998, Albanians were mounting mass protests against Serbian rule and police and army reinforcements were sent in to crush the KLA.

A cease-fire was brokered by the international community but did not last long. On 16 January, 1999, the bodies of 45 Albanian civilians were found in the town of Racak. The victims had been executed by Serb forces.

The continued persecution of Kosovo Albanians led to the start of Nato air strikes against targets in Kosovo and Serbia in March 1999.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro after the Serbian forces began a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Kosovo Albanians. The international tribunal in The Hague said its investigators had found at least 2,000 bodies.

Milosevic withdrew his troops and police after 11 weeks bombing, the BBC stated that approximately 10,000 people died during the Kosovo war.

The UN was put in charge, pending agreement on whether Kosovo should become independent or revert to Serbian rule.

There are still tensions among the ethnic groups and next week the UN special envoy to Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, is expected to to reveal a plan to grant the province "supervised independence".