Kosovo's ethnic Albanians declared independence on February 17, 2008 following the failure of talks with Belgrade to decide the fate of their breakaway province.

The former southern Serbian province - with a population of about 2 million - was run by the United Nations after NATO bombs drove out Serb forces in 1999 but the European Union has taken over much of that role since independence.

A small U.N. mission remains, mainly in Serb-dominated areas.

NATO's intervention was aimed at halting the killing and ethnic cleansing of Albanians in a two-year counter-insurgency war.

Western powers backed independence for Kosovo under European Union supervision. Kosovo has been recognised by more than 60 states, including the United States and most of the European Union.

But Belgrade, supported by Russia, insists Kosovo remain part of Serbia.

Kosovo's 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority suffered years of discrimination and oppression at the hands of Belgrade, until calls for independence led to a guerrilla war fought by the Kosovo Liberation Army.

A bloody Serb crackdown followed in 1998 and 1999. Around 10,000 people died and some 800,000 refugees fled to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. The majority have since returned.

But many of Kosovo's Serbs have left the province, and just 120,000 remain. Around half live in the north around the city of Mitrovica. The rest are scattered in enclaves protected by NATO's 14,000-strong peace force, KFOR, which is due to be reduced to 10,000 in 2010.

Minority groups - including Roma and Serbs - say they face intimidation and discrimination from the Albanian majority. This has complicated the reconciliation process and prevented the safe return of an estimated 228,000 displaced people across Serbia, including 21,000 within Kosovo.

International efforts to broker a solution have failed.

Slavs and Albanians have lived side by side in Kosovo since the 8th century, when the region became the centre of the Serbian empire. As a result, the Serb people see it as the cradle of their nation and view the many Orthodox churches and monuments in the area as a vital part of their history and culture.

Serbia lost the territory to the Turks in the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. It became part of the Ottoman Empire and, in the centuries that followed, its ethnic make-up gradually shifted from a Christian Slav majority to an Albanian Muslim one.

But Serbia regained control of Kosovo in 1913 and it become part of the communist state of Yugoslavia after World War Two. A 1974 law granted full autonomy to the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo, but calls for full independence began to grow after the 1980 death of Yugoslav leader Tito.

Resentment grew on both sides throughout the 1980s, and this was harnessed by the Serbian nationalist politician Slobodan Milosevic when he came to power in the late 1980s.

The new president used Kosovo and its importance in Serb history as a political tool to stir up nationalist feeling among his people, and slowly began to strip the province of its autonomy.

The Albanian majority reacted by launching a passive resistance movement and holding a general strike. But when their unilateral declaration of independence in 1990 prompted Belgrade to dissolve their parliament, the region began to move towards an armed response.

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) formed in the mid-1990s and was behind attacks on Serb policemen and collaborators - Serb and Albanian - who were viewed as helping Belgrade. These killings escalated towards the end of the decade, at which point Serbia struck back with deadly force.

In 1998, Milosevic's Serbia sent in troops to quash the KLA and put an end to Albanian hopes of independence. The international community, which had been criticised for not doing enough to limit Milosevic's murderous wars in Croatia and Bosnia earlier in the decade, moved quickly in the face of killings in Kosovo.

In September that year, NATO gave Milosevic an ultimatum - get his troops out of Kosovo and restore rights to the Albanians, or face air strikes. The Serb leader agreed, but it soon emerged that many "withdrawn" troops had been secretly replaced.

In January 1999, 45 civilians in the village of Racak were killed by Serb troops, causing outrage worldwide. NATO troops and international observers began to build up their presence in the area. But Milosevic rejected an internationally brokered peace deal and allowed his troops to continue driving Albanians from their homes.

The NATO air strikes began on March 24 and continued until June 10, when Milosevic climbed down and withdrew his troops.

Some 800,000 people fled Kosovo during the war and NATO air strikes.

The majority of displaced ethnic Albanians found themselves living in terrible conditions after crossing into Albania and Macedonia.

Most came back after the deployment of international peacekeepers stabilised the security situation.

Around half of the Serb population also fled the province after NATO entered and the United Nations took control, amid a wave of revenge attacks.

Around 206,000 people from Kosovo are still displaced in Serbia, according to the Norwegian-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

About 20,000 more are displaced within Kosovo itself and 16,000 in Montenegro.

The U.N. refugee agency has not been actively encouraging displaced people to return home, but has said it will help anyone who chooses to do so.

The Serb minority has been living in fear of another serious Albanian attack since violence erupted in March 2004 in the divided northern town of Mitrovica when hundreds of Serb houses and places of worship were destroyed.

The attacks were sparked by a false rumour that Serb youths in the flashpoint town had chased four Albanian children into a river, where three drowned. The United Nations later blamed the violence on Albanian extremists.

The declaration of independence came after protracted talks with Serbia to determine Kosovo's fate ended in deadlock at the end of 2007.

Kosovo became the last state to emerge from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

Serbia, backed by Russia, rejects independence and has encouraged Kosovo's Serb population to do the same.

Serbia's prime minister at the time of independence, Vojislav Kostunica, described the move as "a gross violation of international law". Belgrade says it will use its economic, political and diplomatic means against recognition of Kosovo but will not resort to violence.

Kosovo's Serbs say they want self-government for the Serb enclaves and want to remain part of Serbia. They fear their lives would be at risk if they were under the control of an independent, Albanian-ruled Kosovo, whose institutions have little say in Serb areas protected by KFOR and whose teachers and doctors, for example, mainly receive salaries from Belgrade.

The Albanian majority insists it's trying to reintegrate Kosovar Serbs into the political process.

The European Union has taken on supervision and policing of Kosovo.

Negotiations to decide the final status of the U.N. protectorate started in February 2006 in Vienna, chaired by the six-nation Contact Group set up to oversee the process, comprising Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Italy and the United States.

At the time, analysts believed enough good will existed on both sides to make the process worthwhile.

Few Kosovar Albanians wanted to merge the territory with Albania - that could have destabilised nearby Macedonia which has an ethnic Albanian minority.

After several unsuccessful rounds of talks, U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari presented a plan to both Belgrade and Pristina in February 2007 which aimed to set Kosovo on the path to independence and form the basis of further negotiations.

While the proposal avoided the word "independence" for Kosovo, the plan set out the framework for an independent state under a foreign overseer, European police mission and NATO peace force. It also offered self-government and protection for remaining Serbs.

The plan was accepted by the leaders of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. But Belgrade rejected it outright, reiterating its offer of broad autonomy for the province.

Many analysts say Serbia's quest for the holy grail of EU membership means it's unlikely to risk a new conflict over Kosovo.

Russia and Serbia are trying to stop Kosovo joining any international institution such as the United Nations. However, Kosovo joined the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank one year after declaring independence.