NATO has urged Kosovo this Saturday to reduce tension, one day after the Pristina government forcibly accessed the official buildings in the north of the country (where a large number of people from the Serb minority live) to install mayors ethnic Albanian. The United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom have also warned of the escalation in the area and have called for “restraint” and to avoid “inflammatory rhetoric” to Kosovo and Serbia, which has raised the alert level of its Armed Forces in the border. In recent days, there have been clashes between the Kosovar police and minority Serb protesters in the border town of Zvecan —where a dozen people have been injured— and there have also been attacks on the European Union mission in Kosovo (Eulex), according to a statement from the four countries. NATO keeps its peacekeeping mission in the area, where it has some 3,800 people stationed, on alert.
The situation is still very tense in the north of the country, where heavily armed police in armored vehicles stand guard outside municipal buildings, Reuters reports. The incidents in Zvecan (7,300 inhabitants) occurred when Kosovar officers tried to help the newly elected mayor of Albanian origin gain access to the City Hall. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters and gunshots and explosions could be heard in videos posted online and picked up by the BBC. The Serb community, the majority in that territory although it only represents 5% of the 1.8 million inhabitants of Kosovo, does not recognize the authority of the councilor of Zvecan and two other municipalities, Leposavic and Zubin Potok, elected in elections with a 3.4% participation for the boycott of the Serb population backed by the Government of Belgrade.
Local officials in Zvecan have claimed that five officers were injured and at least four vehicles were damaged during the riots. Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, has defended the actions of the police in escorting the new mayors. “It is a right of those elected in democratic elections to assume their positions without threats or intimidation. Citizens also have the right to be served by those elected officials,” Kurti said on Twitter this Saturday.
Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, and nearly a decade after the end of the war, the country’s northern Serb minority still regards Belgrade as its capital. The United States and the main EU countries (this is not the case of Spain) recognize Kosovo as an independent country.
In Serbia, Defense Minister Milos Vucevic has assured that Kosovo is acting to “terrorize” the Serb minority and has described the situation as “very difficult”. The instability in the north of Kosovo has been at peaks in recent times and despite attempts at mediation by the European Union. This Saturday, Russia, which supports its ally Serbia, with which it maintains ties, has blamed Kosovo, the United States and the EU for what it has considered a “provocative maneuver” by Pristina that “threatens the security of the Balkans”.
The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, criticized the Kurti government on Friday for its actions in the north of the country and stated: “It has unnecessarily escalated tensions, undermining our efforts to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia and that will have consequences on our bilateral relationship with Kosovo”.
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The new unrest in Kosovo coincides with the internal problems of the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, who called a demonstration in Belgrade for this Friday to counter the mobilizations unleashed in the country after two mass killings at the hands of a 13-year-old teenager in a school, who killed 13 minors and a guard on May 3, and a 21-year-old man who shot and killed 8 people two days later. This Saturday, Vucic presented his resignation as leader of the ruling Progressive Party (SNS) after weeks of protests against his government, but affirmed that he will remain head of state, reports Reuters. At a party congress held in Kragujevac, in central Serbia, Vucic appointed Defense Minister Milos Vucevic to replace him at the head of the party.
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