Ko ‧ so ‧ vo /ˈkɒsəvəʊ $ ˈkɑː-/ BrE AmE
a territory between Serbia and Albania. Population: 2,126,708 (2007). It used to be an ↑ autonomous (=having the power to govern itself) area within Serbia until Slobodan Milosevic, the President of Serbia, stopped this in 1989. In the 1990s the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was established in order to achieve independence for Kosovo. In 1998 the Serbs killed many Albanians in Kosovo in a process known as ↑ ethnic cleansing . This continued until 1999 when NATO bombed Serbian targets. Kosovo declared itself independent from Serbia in 2008.