Slobodan MILOSEVIC became president of the Serbian Republic and his
ultranationalist calls for Serbian domination led to the violent
breakup of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines. In 1991, Croatia,
Slovenia, and Macedonia declared independence, followed by Bosnia in
1992. The remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro declared a
new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in April 1992 and under
MILOSEVIC's leadership, Serbia led various military campaigns to
unite ethnic Serbs in neighboring republics into a "Greater Serbia."
These actions led to Yugoslavia being ousted from the UN in 1992,
but Serbia continued its - ultimately unsuccessful - campaign until
signing the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995. MILOSEVIC kept tight
control over Serbia and eventually became president of the FRY in
1997. In 1998, an ethnic Albanian insurgency in the formerly
autonomous Serbian province of Kosovo provoked a Serbian
counterinsurgency campaign that resulted in massacres and massive
expulsions of ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo. The MILOSEVIC
government's rejection of a proposed international settlement led to
NATO's bombing of Serbia in the spring of 1999 and to the eventual
withdrawal of Serbian military and police forces from Kosovo in June
1999. UNSC Resolution 1244 in June 1999 authorized the stationing of
a NATO-led force (KFOR) in Kosovo to provide a safe and secure
environment for the region's ethnic communities, created a UN
interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to foster
self-governing institutions, and reserved the issue of Kosovo's
final status for an unspecified date in the future. In 2001, UNMIK
promulgated a constitutional framework that allowed Kosovo to
establish institutions of self-government and led to Kosovo's first
parliamentary election. FRY elections in September 2000 led to the
ouster of MILOSEVIC and installed Vojislav KOSTUNICA as president. A
broad coalition of democratic reformist parties known as DOS (the
Democratic Opposition of Serbia) was subsequently elected to
parliament in December 2000 and took control of the government. DOS
arrested MILOSEVIC in 2001 and allowed for him to be tried in The
Hague for crimes against humanity. (MILOSEVIC died in March 2006
before the completion of his trial.) In 2001, the country's
suspension from the UN was lifted. In 2003, the FRY became Serbia
and Montenegro, a loose federation of the two republics with a
federal level parliament. Widespread violence predominan