Renewed tensions in Kosovo, the Serbian army on heightened alert


MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – Kosovo’s Interior Minister Xhelal Sveçla on Tuesday accused Serbia of seeking to destabilize Kosovo with Russia’s backing by encouraging the protest movement of the Serbian minority in the north.

Serbs in Mitrovica erected new barricades on Tuesday morning, as lingering tensions between them and Kosovo authorities prompted neighboring Serbia to place the army and police on heightened alert. [nL8N33H1Z5]

“It is precisely Serbia, under the influence of Russia, which has declared a state of military alert and orders the erection of new barricades, to comfort and protect the criminal groups which terrorize (…) the citizens of Serbian ethnicity living in Kosovo,” Xhelal Sveçla said in a statement.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic stressed on Tuesday that his country “will continue[it] to fight for peace and seek compromise solutions”.

On Tuesday morning, trucks blocked the road connecting the northern part of Mitrovica – with a Serb majority – to the southern part of the city – with an Albanian majority.

The Kosovar government called in a statement on Monday to restore freedom of movement and warned that it could not discuss “with criminal gangs”.

The Kosovo authorities added that the police stood ready to act to dismantle the barricades but specified that they were first awaiting the response of Kfor, the NATO mission in Kosovo, asked to lift these blockages.

Since December 10, the Serbs of northern Kosovo, which they consider to be an integral part of Serbia and which are supported by Belgrade, have set up numerous barricades in Mitrovica and its surroundings, in particular to demand the release of ex-Serbian police officer accused of assaulting on-duty police officers during previous protests.

STATE OF EMERGENCY

These blockages have been the cause of occasional clashes with the Kosovar police and, faced with these recurring tensions in Kosovo, Serbian President Aleksandar placed the Serbian army and police on Monday evening on heightened alert.

“There is no reason to panic, but there are reasons to worry,” the Serbian defense minister said late Monday evening on Serbian television RTS.

Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina peaked again on Monday when the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Porphyry, was denied the right to enter the territory of Kosovo, where the monastery of Pec, seat of the Orthodox Church of Serbia, where the coronations of the patriarchs take place.

The friction of recent weeks between the two communities has arisen from the desire of the authorities in Pristina to demand the withdrawal of Serbian license plates dating from before the 1998-1999 Kosovo war, which led to independence.

Hundreds of police officers, judges, prosecutors and other civil servants as well as mayors of the Serb minority resigned in early November in protest against the entry into force of this obligation.

Serbia lost control of Kosovo in 1999 after 11 weeks of NATO airstrikes aimed at halting the slaughter and expulsion of Albanians.

The former breakaway Albanian-majority province, home to a Serb minority of around 50,000 people in the north, declared independence in February 2008.

Pristina and Belgrade are in talks in Brussels to try to normalize their relations, which has already been the subject of a European Union (EU) plan.

(Report Fatos Bytyci and Ivana Sekularac; French version Myriam Rivet and Sophie Louet, edited by Nicolas Delame)



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