Nato peacekeepers move into tense northern Kosovo

Nato peacekeepers yesterday moved to stabilise the escalating crisis in northern Kosovo, seizing two border crossings with Serbia that are in the centre of a trade ban dispute.

The Nato troops acted after one of the posts was firebombed and bulldozed, apparently by ethnic Serbs, and had succeeded in preventing large scale violence for the time being, a spokesman for the Alliance’s KFOR force said.

“It is a tense silence at the moment,” spokesman Ralph Adametz said.

The main roads to the Jarinje and Brnjak border posts were still blocked by local Serbs, making sure no police or custom officers from Pristina could approach, he said.

Dozens of masked youths, thought to be ethnic Serbs, attacked the Jarinje post late Wednesday with Molotov cocktails and then flattened it with a bulldozer, according to witnesses.

They forced some 25 Kosovar police and customs officers, as well as members of the European Union’s EULEX mission, to take refuge on the Serbian side of the border.

The attack came two days after the government in Pristina dispatched police units to take control of the two crossings and implement a new ban on imports from Serbia.

The move provoked an angry response, with one Kosovar police officer being killed and four others hurt in clashes with local Serbs at the border.

It was the first time since Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008 that Pristina had moved to take control of the region populated almost exclusively by ethnic Serbs.

Belgrade and the ethnic Serb minority which is mainly concentrated in the north have never recognised the authority of the breakaway ethnic-Albanian government of Kosovo.

Pristina had suspected local ethnic Serb police of turning a blind eye to goods being brought across the border despite the trade ban it had introduced.

A Belgrade government spokes­man said Serbia had addressed the United Nations Security Council, where “consultations” on Kosovo were due to take place later yesterday.