Kosovo looked forward on Monday to recognition by the Western powers who went to war to save its Albanian majority, but Russia served notice the new state will never be forced on its Serb allies in the territory.
Fireworks brought to a close a day of celebration in the Kosovo capital Pristina, where parliament adopted a declaration of independence from Serbia and proclaimed the new Republic of Kosovo a sovereign state.
Kosovo's 2 million Albanians were left guessing which country would be first to recognise the sixth state to be carved from Serb-dominated former Yugoslavia, closing a long chapter in its bloody demise.
European Union foreign ministers meet on Monday to discuss Kosovo's secession. Swift recognition is expected from Britain, Germany, France and Italy as well as the United States.
At an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, Western powers resisted a Russian bid to block Kosovo's independence, and said NATO and the EU would take responsibility for the region's stability.
Proposing the independence declaration to parliament, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said Kosovo would be a country of "all its citizens", a gesture to the 120,000 Serbs still living here.
But Serbia and Russia swept that aside.
"We'll strongly warn against any attempts at repressive measures should Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with this unilateral proclamation of independence," Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said in New York.
Serbs in Kosovo, led by the Serb-dominated north and with the full backing of Belgrade, reject the territory's secession, reinforcing an ethnic partition that NATO and the United Nations have failed to erase since the 1998-99 war.
