Dozens of NATO troops yesterday secured a municipal building in the Kosovo town of Zvecan, a day after 30 NATO soldiers and 52 Serb protesters were injured in clashes that EU and NATO officials said were unacceptable as they urged calm.
Kosovar police said in a statement that the situation is “fragile, but calm.”
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell urged the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia to immediately de-escalate tensions, after “absolutely unacceptable” clashes in northern Kosovo.
Photo: Reuters
Borrell said he had spoken to Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Alexander Vucic to tell them to avoid any “further unilateral action.”
“I asked both parties to urgently take measures to de-escalate tensions immediately and unconditionally,” he said.
Borrell said Kosovar authorities needed to suspend police operations focused on municipal buildings in north Kosovo and ethnic Serb protesters should stand down.
Photo: Reuters
He said the EU was “discussing possible measures to be taken if the parties continue to resist proposed steps towards de-escalation.”
Russia said “decisive steps” were needed to de-escalate tensions in Kosovo.
“We call on the West to finally silence its false propaganda and stop blaming incidents in Kosovo on Serbs driven to despair, who are peaceful, unarmed, trying to defend their legitimate rights and freedoms,” the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Unrest in the region has intensified since ethnic Albanian mayors took office in northern Kosovo’s Serb-majority area after last month’s April elections the Serbs boycotted, a move that led the US and its allies to rebuke Pristina on Friday.
The area’s majority Serbs have never accepted Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia, and consider Belgrade their capital more than two decades after the Kosovo Albanian uprising against repressive Serbian rule.
Ethnic Albanians make up more than 90 percent of the population in Kosovo as a whole, but northern Serbs have long demanded the implementation of an EU-brokered 2013 deal for the creation of an association of autonomous municipalities in their area.
Serbs refused to take part in local elections last month and ethnic Albanian candidates won the mayoralties in four Serb-majority municipalities — including North Mitrovica — with a 3.5 percent turnout.
Several ethnic Serbs gathered in front of the building in Zvecan, but the situation was calm, a Reuters reporter said, as soldiers from the US, Italy and Poland stood by in anti-riot gear.
A Kosovar police source who asked not to be named said that bulldozers were heading north, ready to remove any barricades set by Serbs.
Additional reporting by AFP
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