Bill Clinton gets statue in Kosovo
Published 10:20 pm Sunday, November 1, 2009
PRISTINA, Kosovo — Thousands of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo’s capital Pristina welcomed former President Bill Clinton on Sunday as he attended the unveiling of an 11-foot statue of himself on a key boulevard that also bears his name.
Clinton is celebrated as a hero by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority for launching NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 that stopped the brutal Serb forces’ crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.
Many waved American, Albanian and Kosovo flags and chanted “USA!” as the former president climbed on top of a podium with his poster in the background reading “Kosovo honors a hero.”
The statue is placed on top of a white-tiled base, in the middle of a tiny square, surrounded by communist-era buildings.
The gold-sprayed statue portrays Clinton with his left arm raised and holding a portfolio bearing his name and the date when NATO started bombing Yugoslavia, on March, 24, 1999.
An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed during the Kosovo crackdown and about 800,000 were forced out of their homes. They returned home after NATO-led peacekeepers moved in after 78 days of bombing.
