/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/OKIHLIKPCJKLRCR6OC6AOCIHIQ.jpg?fit=%2C&quality=89&ssl=1 "Serb security forces detain three Kosovo policemen, says Kosovo official")
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(1/5) Kosovo police officers stand guard near the village of Bare, Kosovo, June 14, 2023. Three Kosovo police officers were detained by Serb forces on Wednesday, but Kosovo and Serbian officers gave different locations for arrest. , accusing each other of crossing the border illegally. …
PRISTINA/BELGRADE, June 14 (Reuters) – Three Kosovo policemen were detained by Serb forces on Wednesday, but Kosovo and Serbian officials gave different places of arrest, accusing each other of crossing the border illegally.
Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti demanded the release of the three officers. He said they had been arrested 300 meters inside Kosovar territory, near the Serbian border.
“The entry of Serb forces into the territory of Kosovo is aggression and is aimed at escalation and destabilization,” Kurti wrote on his Facebook page.
But Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said the three were arrested “up to 1.8 kilometers (1 mile)” inside Serbian territory near the town of Gnjilica. He also accused Kurti of inciting conflicts.
“We are at the crossroads of whether we will have peace or not … and there is a man in the Balkans who wants to incite conflict at all costs and that is Albin Kurti,” Vucic said in a live television broadcast.
He rejected Kurti’s accusation that Serbian police entered Kosovo, saying: “They didn’t even set foot there.”
Vucic said Belgrade was ready to present all the evidence and agree to an international investigation into the arrests and may relocate some of its military currently stationed about five kilometers (3.1 miles) from the border to garrisons inside Serbia to calm down. the tensions.
“It will be hard to get back to normal,” he said.
Kosovo has banned all vehicles with Serbian license plates from entering its territory in response to the arrests, an Interior Ministry official told Reuters mid-afternoon on Wednesday.
Arrests may increase fuel stresses in the predominantly Serb northern part of Kosovo, which borders Serbia and has been the scene of violence in recent weeks.
Kosovo declared independence of Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after an uprising by the 90% ethnic Albanian majority against the repressive Serb government.
In 1999, a NATO bombing campaign drove Serb security forces out of Kosovo, but Belgrade still considers it a southern province.
The violence erupted last month when 30 peacekeepers and 52 Serbs were injured in clashes in four predominantly Serb townships in northern Kosovo, on the outskirts of Serbia.
It erupted after Serbs demonstrated against ethnic Albanian mayors who moved into their offices following a local vote in which the turnout was just 3.5%. Serbs in the area boycotted the elections.
Reporting by Fatos Bytyci, Ivana Sekularac, and Aleksandar Vasovic; Edited by Frank Jack Daniel, Jonathan Oatis, Angus MacSwan, William Maclean
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