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Tensions mount after violence in Kosovo and Serbia
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 20 - 02 - 2008


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, according to dpa.
"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.


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