Serbs Keep Up Kosovo Pressure NATO Forces Shut Some Border Roads

By Dan Bilefsky

A mob of 300 Serbs carrying Serbian flags and wielding clubs and tools gathered on a road near this small ethnic-Albanian village in northern Kosovo on Wednesday, prompting NATO to send armored vehicles and tanks to head them off.

Earlier, Albanian police officers, part of Kosovo’s multiethnic police force, were forced out of the neighboring Serbian village, where they were patrolling with fellow Serbs. It was the latest sign that Serbs in Kosovo, incensed by the declaration of independence Sunday, are trying to assert control over the northern part of Kosovo in an attempt to force partition.

Elsewhere, NATO peacekeepers closed off roads between Serbia and northern Kosovo and United Nations police officers guarded checkpoints still smoldering after they were burned down Tuesday by several hundred Serbs in what the police said appeared to be an organized operation, The Associated Press reported.

Indicating that the violence could be a prelude to partition, the Serbian minister for Kosovo, Metohija Slobodan Samardzic, said the destruction of the UN checkpoints was in line with Belgrade’s policies. “It might not be pleasant, but it is legitimate,” he said, adding that Serbia would be seeking to enlarge its jurisdiction over northern Kosovo, which he said already included education, culture and health.

At 12:44 p.m. in Mitrovica, divided between Serbs in the north and ethnic Albanians in the south, 3,000 demonstrators marched to the bridge dividing the two communities, chanting “We won’t give up Kosovo!” – a daily protest organized at that precise time in reference to UN Security Council resolution 1244 under which Serbia insists it still has sovereignty of Kosovo under international law.

Captain Bertrand Bonneau, a spokesman for NATO’s KFOR force, said the 16,000-strong NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo was under orders to maintain security in all of Kosovo, including the north, and would not tolerate any action by either side that undermined this goal.

On Wednesday, the European Union formally began its 1,800-strong legal and judicial mission in Kosovo, provoking sharp criticism from Moscow. Pieter Feith, the EU’s special envoy, appealed to Serbs, who consider the mission “an occupying force,” to stop demonstrating and to live side by side with ethnic Albanians.

But privately, EU diplomats expressed worries that Kosovo’s Serbs could provoke ethnic Albanians, undermining whatever collective Serbian and Albanian authority remained in northern Kosovo, and entrenching Belgrade’s control so that de facto partition became a political, if not legal, reality.

“The Serbs appear intent on provoking an Albanian reaction and to make the international community’s mission here impossible, but we will not allow legal partition,” said a senior EU diplomat, requesting anonymity. But another EU diplomat said that if Serbs pursued de facto division, “there is not a lot that could be done.”

The political temperature in Cabra, a small agricultural village of about 70 ethnic-Albanian families, has particular resonance in northern Kosovo because it was here in March 2004 that three ethnic- Albanian boys drowned under mysterious circumstances, prompting Albanians to riot across Kosovo, torching Serbian homes. Nineteen people, both Serbs and Albanians, were killed.

As the Serbian protesters gathered on the road outside the village Wednesday, local ethnic Albanians vowed they would stay to ensure that northern Kosovo remained in ethnic-Albanian hands. Local children wearing Albanian T-shirts gathered to observe the KFOR tanks parked at the foot of the town.

“This is my land and we must stay here to show Serbia that this is Kosovo,” said Zuka Ilir, an unemployed 28-year-old. “But we are afraid. We don’t know what will happen.”

“I will stay here and fight if I have to,” added Xhevadet Beka, a 26-year-old engineer. “For now we put our faith in NATO, the EU and the United States. But we are very, very afraid that the Serbs will try and take over northern Kosovo, and it is impossible. We will not allow it.”

Aziz Asan, a 50-year-old miner from Cabra, said that he had stayed home from work Wednesday and was afraid to go outside.

Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999 when NATO intervened to halt Slobodan Milosevic’s repression of ethnic Albanians, who make up 95 percent of the population. Yet the north of Kosovo – 15 percent of Kosovo’s territory – has remained under de facto Serbian control, with parallel institutional structures.

NATO troops sealed off the northern border between Serbia and Kosovo, fearful that Serbian militants could cross into Kosovo. The Serbian leader of Kosovo, Nebojsa Radulovic, demanded Wednesday that borders be reopened or “the Serbs will continue with the protests, with consequences we cannot predict.”

Germany, meanwhile, joined the United States, France, Britain and seven other countries by recognizing Kosovo and sent its defense minister there for an official visit. It called Kosovo’s independence a necessary measure to stabilize the Balkans. Austria and Norway said they also were planning to recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty.

The Serbian foreign minister, Vuk Jeremic, addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, warning that diplomatic relations with countries that recognize Kosovo would be damaged. “This is going to have an impact on our future progress to European Union membership,” he said.

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

(c) 2008 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.