Tensions mount after violence in Kosovo and Serbia (Roundup)

Feb 20, 2008, 15:14 GMT

Kosovo Serbs students attend a protest against the independece of Kosovo from Serbia near the main bridge in the ethnically divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica, 20 February 2008. Kosovo\'s parliament proclamed independence from Serbia February 17. EPA/GEORGI LICOVSKI

Pristina/Belgrade - Northern Kosovo was calm Wednesday, but crossings to Serbia remained closed and tensions remained high a day after local Serbs demolished United Nations' border facilities.

'It's calm after yesterday's incidents,' Kosovo police spokesman for the region, Besim Hoti, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. However, Kosovo police pulled Albanian officers from northern Kosovo, the only area in Kosovo where Serbs are in majority.

Albanians make up a vast, 90-per-cent majority of the population everywhere but in the northern one-fifth of Kosovo and in smaller, scattered enclaves.

The Kosovo police, which reflects the ethnic makeup of the area it patrols, and international police, had backed away from Serb mobs at two crossings on Tuesday, leaving it to NATO peacekeepers of the KFOR mission to deal with the situation.

KFOR Commander Lieutenant General Xavier Bout de Marnhac said the borders would remain closed until 'conditions are settled' and warned against more violence.

'We are looking to reopen (the border) as soon as conditions are settled,' he said in Pristina. 'I want everybody to be aware of my determination to restore and maintain a safe and secure environment.'

The Kosovo parliament has declared independence of what Serbia considers its province on Sunday. The act was or would be recognized by big Western powers, but vehemently rejected by Belgrade and strongly opposed by Moscow.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica last week told Kosovo Serbs that they do not need to obey laws of the 'false state' on Serbian soil and his Kosovo Minister Slobodan Samardzic on Tuesday justified the demolition of UN facilities.

'It may not be pretty, but it's legitimate,' he said in a televised interview.

Serbia and Kosovo Serbs aim to strengthen the partition along ethnic lines. Belgrade already has strong structures of parallel authorities in northern Kosovo and would try to keep the law-enforcing mission sent by the European Union away from the area.

Kostunica promised that no Serb would cooperate with the unwelcome, 'illegal' mission, while local Serb leaders warned that anybody who helps European officials would be branded a traitor.

President Fatmir Sejdiu appealed on Serbs to remain calm and embrace their 'new life' in the sovereign Kosovo. Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and head of the UN administration in Kosovo, Joachim Ruecker, said the incidents were 'isolated,' 'one-time' events.

A western diplomat in Kosovo, however, voiced concern that the incident 'would not be the last ... but first steps in an effort toward partition.'

'Leaders in the north told us that no cooperation can ever be imagined with the EU mission,' the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'We're walking on very thin ice, which may break easily if Belgrade wishes so.'

Pieter Feith, head of the EU mission - over which Belgrade froze its approach to EU membership - however assured that the mission would work throughout Kosovo, including the hostile northern section with the divided hotspot town Mitrovica as its hub.

'We're not pulling out of the north,' he said after meeting Sejdiu in Pristina, and promised that EU officials would be deployed there.

On the diplomatic front, backed by ally Russia, Serbia has asked the UN and the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OCSE) to block Kosovo.

Aware that it is an uphill struggle Serbian leaders have turned to fomenting broad support at home, where the ruling coalition and the opposition jointly scheduled a potentially huge rally in Belgrade.

Schools were ordered to close and free bus and train rides from all over Serbia would be offered Thursday for the afternoon rally in the capital, which organizers hope would draw more than a million people.

Kostunica and the ultra-nationalist leader Tomislav Nikolic were due to speak, while the pro-European President Boris Tadic pulled out, possibly out of concern that the crowd may again, as in riots earlier in the week, turn on Western embassies and demolish them.

On Sunday and Monday gangs of a few hundred people have stoned the US and Turkish embassies and penetrated and defaced the mission of the EU-presiding Slovenia.

Belgrade's rowdy Infrastructure Minister Velimir Ilic said it was 'just Serbian youth expressing a protest at the undemocratic position of some countries and the dismembering of Serbia.'

He also referring to the 1999 intervention against Yugoslavia, with which NATO ousted Belgrade's security forces from Kosovo and paved the way for the current development.

'Foreigners broke our country and we only a few of their windows,' Ilic said. 'They must learn that it too is democracy ... these individual incidents on the side of justice.'

In the face of attacks on its embassy and businesses in Serbia, the Slovenian foreign ministry has this week advised its citizens to refrain from travelling to the country during the crisis.