Serbian City

"Landep News"

Serbian City

NATO sends hundreds of extra troops to Kosovo after the rise of tension between the Kosovo Albanians and the Albanian Serb minority in the north, where one Kosovo police officer already lost his life in an attempt to take a border crossing in the north, at the border with Serbia.

NATO motivated its action by the fact that the troops patrolling the north must be relieved, adding that it is not because of the escalation of tension.

600 German and 100 Austrian troops from Kfor reserve battalion will be relieving the troops already existing in the northern area. Kfor’s has about 6,000 soldiers stationed in Kosovo.

There are 60,000 Serbs living in the northern part of Kosovo, who refuse to recognize the independence of Kosovo, and the sovereignty over their province.

The tension sparked a few days ago, when Hashim Thaci, prime minister of self-proclaimed Kosovo republic, ordered the police to take control of two crossings into Serbia, thus preventing smuggling goods from Serbia into north Kosovo.

Hashim Thaci said that it was time for the northern zone of Kosovo, where the Serbs live, to recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo Republic, and allow the government to collect taxes from the Serbs.

Serbia has refused to receive imports from Kosovo, because of the stamps they were coming with, that read “Republic of Kosovo.” As a result, Kosovo imposed a ban on products coming from Serbia, very important for the survival of the Serb community in the north of Kosovo.

This was the reason of the order given the police to install sovereignty in the north and make sure the embargo is respected.

Kfor Troops

As soon as the police arrived in the area, the Serbs erected ramparts and one of the police officers was shot in the head by a Serb, while another was wounded. As a result of this reaction, the police troops were pulled out of the region.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton criticized the Kosovo prime minister’s decision to antagonize the Serbs, and demanded that the situation be brought under control again.

NATO dispatched troops in the area in order to prevent the conflict from escalating further.

Hashim Thaci blamed the escalation of tension on the Serbian government, whom he accused directly of manipulating, controlling and even organizing the activity of the Serbs in the northern part of Kosovo.

In turn, the president of Serbia, Boris Tadic, slammed the declarations of the Kosovo PM, adding that the escalation of tension is detrimental to Serbia’s effort to be admitted to the European Union.

Tadic called the people who clashed in Kosovo hooligans, whether they were Kosovo Serbs or Albanians, and asked the people of that country to refrain from further violence.

The Kosovo case remains in discussion and its solution is pending for Serbia’s road map towards the EU.

The province separated from Serbia in February 2008, eight years after the war in Kosovo and the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999.

Since then, the province lived under an international protectorate, which ended in a proclamation of independence which was never recognized by Serbia, or by many other countries in the region.

Serbia never recognized the independence of the province, but now the EU demands an agreement on Kosovo, as a last episode of a painful process that lasted almost a decade.

Last month, by handing Goran Hadzic to the International Criminal Tribunal on former Yougoslavia, Serbia concluded its cooperation with the international authorities that judge the crimes committed against civilians during the years of the Yugoslavian wars.

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