NATO troops on guard in northern Kosovo for third day amid protests

LEPOSAVIC, Kosovo, May 31 (Reuters) – NATO peacekeepers guarded town halls in ethnically polarized north Kosovo for a third day on Wednesday, as Serbia’s defense minister inspected troops deployed nearby. from the border with his former province after violent riots this week.

He unrest prompted NATO to send additional troops to the area and the alliance and the West criticized Kosovo for not doing enough to prevent the violence, during which 30 NATO soldiers and 52 ethnic Serb protesters were injured on Monday.

NATO said it would send 700 more troops to boost its 4,000-strong mission in Kosovo, where Serbs are angry that a 2013 agreement to establish an association of autonomous municipalities where they form a majority in the north was never implemented.

Regional unrest has escalated since April elections that Serbs in northern Kosovo boycotted, leaving four Serb-majority mayoralties to candidates from 90% of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority.

After they were installed last week despite a 3.5% voter turnout, the US, the most outspoken supporter of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia in 2008, decided to cancel Pristina’s participation in a military exercise of NATO.

The US ambassador to Serbia, Christopher Hill, said on Wednesday that there could be additional moves, but declined to elaborate.

“We want more progress in Kosovo, we want the establishment of the association of Serbian municipalities, we want the normalization of the commitments (committed) by both countries, including Serbia,” Hill told reporters in Belgrade.

Kosovo media reported on Wednesday that protesters outside a town hall in Zvecan, which were separated from Polish NATO troops by a barbed wire barrier, smashed the windows of a police car and two cars belonging to the Kosovar Albanian media.

Critical northern cities were largely quiet on Wednesday.

NATO soldiers also stood guard outside a town hall in Leposavic where its ethnic Albanian mayor remained in hiding after entering amid Serb protests on Monday.

“While (these mayors) may have been legally elected, we do not consider their election to be legitimate,” Dragan, an ethnic Serb who lives in Leposavic and declined to give his last name, said Wednesday.

SERBIAN FORCES AT THE BORDER

Serbian Defense Minister Milos Vucevic visited a military base in Raska, near the Kosovo border, and inspected soldiers with tanks lined up behind them after President Aleksandar Vucic put the country’s army on combat alert. .

Vucevic said he wanted peace and stability “but without compromising our ability to defend the sovereignty of the Republic of Serbia and all its citizens,” also alluding to the Kosovo Serbs who do not recognize Kosovo’s statehood.

The United States, NATO and their allies have reprimanded The Kosovo government for stoking tension with Serbia, saying the forced installation of mayors in ethnic Serb areas undermined efforts to achieve lasting peace in the region.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti has accused Belgrade of orchestrating protests in the north to destabilize Kosovo, which secured statehood a decade after a guerrilla uprising against repressive Serb rule.

Furthermore, the Kosovo Olympic authorities asked the International Olympic Committee to open disciplinary procedures against Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic, accusing him of stirring up political tension with comments made at the French Open.

Djokovic wrote “Kosovo is the Serbian heart” in a camera lens on Monday, the day NATO troops and Serbs were injured in clashes in Zvecan, where his father grew up.

Reporting by Fatos Bytici, Ivana Sekularac, and Daria Sito-Sucic; editing by Bernadette Baum and Mark Heinrich

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