Tensions again flare in Kosovo

Aug 21, 2011, 12:15 GMT

Pristina/Belgrade - Tensions again rose Sunday in the Serb-dominated northern Kosovo when NATO peacekeepers and European Union police moved to seize a dredger used in riots last month.

A crowd of local Serbs blocked the unit of the NATO peacekeeping mission (KFOR) that seized the dredger from a facility in Lesak, a town in the Serb enclave in the north of the mostly Albanian Kosovo.

The Serbs removed the roadblock and allowed the KFOR unit to leave with the dredger shortly after noon, Serbian state television RTS said.

KFOR was backing up the EU police, a part of the EU's law-enforcing mission (EULEX), which prosecutors ordered to take the machine as evidence in the investigation of the riots, a KFOR spokesman, Hans-Dienter Wichter, said in Pristina.

The dredger was used in late July to destroy a barracks at the Jarinje border crossing and threaten Polish KFOR soldiers at the site.

One Kosovo policeman was fatally shot during the violence at two contested border crossings in the north that exploded amid a trade war between Kosovo and Serbia.

During the following two weeks, Serbs maintained roadblocks on key roads in the north, but finally agreed to remove them after KFOR brokered a deal between Serbia and Kosovo to ease the tensions.

According to the agreement, KFOR took provisional control over the border crossings in the Serb enclave, allowing Belgrade and Pristina to resume the talks under EU auspices that were disrupted in July, paving the way to the trade war.

That precipitated into violence in the volatile north, where the Serbs resist the authority of Pristina and maintain a parallel authority with political and financial backing from Belgrade.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. So far 80 nations have recognized it, including the big Western powers, but Serbia has vowed never to accept the secession.

Under pressure, however, Serbia agreed to launch talks with Kosovo with EU facilitation. The aim of the talks is to resolve real-life problems stemming from Kosovo's secession.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to visit Belgrade Monday and Tuesday.

She said she will urge Belgrade and Pristina to resume their dialogue and warn Serbia that no prospective EU member will be allowed to join before it resolves major issues of contention with its neighbours.

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