Serbia blasts NATO forces over inaction during Kosovo clashes
Serbia’s top political and security leadership, led by President Aleksandar Vucic, meets in Belgrade a day early after violent clashes in Kosovo.
Serbia has condemned NATO-led peacekeepers stationed in neighboring Kosovo for failing to end Kosovo police’s “brutal actions” against ethnic Serbs.
Serbian forces stationed near the border will remain on high alert until further notice, the government added.
Serbia’s top political and security leadership, headed by President Aleksandar Vucic, met in Belgrade on Saturday following violent clashes a day earlier between Kosovo police and ethnic Serbs that left more than a dozen people injured.
In response to the clashes, Vucic on Friday ordered troops closer to the Kosovo border.
“Due to the brutal use of force by [Kosovo Prime Minister] Albin Kurti and his troops against the Serbian people in Kosovo…the armed forces of the Republic of Serbia will remain at the highest level of combat readiness,” said a statement after the meeting of top Serbian leaders.
The statement also said that a NATO-led international civilian mission and troops – stationed in the former Serbian province since Serbian forces were forced to leave the region in 1999 – “were not doing their job” to protect the Serbs.
Meanwhile, NATO urged Kosovo to ease tensions with Serbia, a day after the government forcibly entered municipal buildings to install mayors in ethnic Serb areas in the north of the country.
“We urge the institutions in Kosovo to de-escalate immediately and call on all sides to resolve the situation through dialogue,” Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for the transatlantic military alliance, said in a Twitter post. message.
She said KFOR, the 3,800-strong NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, will remain vigilant.
‘Violent obstruction’
Nearly a decade after the end of a war there, Serbs in Kosovo’s northern region do not accept Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence and still regard Belgrade as their capital.
Ethnic Albanians make up more than 90 percent of the population in Kosovo, with Serbs only the majority in the northern region.
The United States and several Western countries condemned the Kosovar government for using the police to forcibly grant access to municipal buildings. Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti defended the police’s actions on Saturday.
“It is the right of those elected in democratic elections to take office without threats or intimidation,” Kurti said on Twitter. “It is also the right of citizens to be served by those elected officials. Participation – not violent obstruction – is the right way to express political views in a democracy.”
It was not the first time Vucic warned that Belgrade would respond to violence against Serbs, and he has stepped up combat readiness several times during moments of tension with Kosovo.
However, any attempt by Serbia to send its troops across the border would mean a clash with NATO forces stationed there.