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Kosovo moves to seize Serb-controlled border posts

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 07:57 GMT

Source: reuters // Reuters

Trucks with goods from Serbia are stopped and turned back at the Merdare border crossing point between Kosovo and Serbia July 22, 2011. REUTERS/Hazir Reka

Jul 26 (Reuters) - By Fatos Bytyci

MITROVICA, July 26 (Reuters) - Kosovo police tried to seize control of several border control posts in its Serb-controlled north overnight, prompting Serbia to warn of a dangerous escalation of tensions.

The move is the latest from Pristina against its former ruler after it banned all imports from Serbia last week.

"This situation is very dangerous," Oliver Ivanovic, Serbia's state secretary for Kosovo, told Reuters.

Late Monday night Kosovo special police forces attempted to seize control of three border posts in an area of northern Kosovo over which it does do not have administrative control.

They succeeded in taking control of one of two major road crossings from Serbia to Kosovo but local Serbs blocked the road from the second border crossing, police said.

"This is not an action against the local people there...but it is our policy to have rule of law, to control our border crossings and also to have a single economic system which has not functioned in that part of the country for many years," Kosovo's Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuci said.

One Kosovo policeman was wounded in a hand grenade explosion overnight, a Kosovo police official said.

NATO peacekeepers who still patrol Kosovo more than a decade after the end of the war there deployed troops to serve as a buffer between the two sides, spokesman H ans Dieter Wichter said.

"We have deployed a lot of troops in all areas to calm down the situation," he said. "If there's violence we will intervene."

In Mitrovica, a town divided by the Ibar River between ethnic Albanian and Serb halves, NATO troops blocked a bridge dividing the two sides with armored vehicles.

Kosovo declared independence three years ago but has suffered through continued poverty, high unemployment, corruption and crime despite strong support from most European Union countries and the United Stats.

Serbia lost control of Kosovo, a landlocked state of 1.7 million people which Serbia regards as the cradle of its Orthodox Christianity, in 1999 when NATO waged a bombing campaign to halt killings of ethnic Albanians.

Ethnic tensions remain high in the northern part of the country, home to about 60,000 Kosovo Serbs who do not recognise the Kosovo state and see Belgrade as their capital.

The Kosovo government's move to take over the border control posts is risky because it involves moving forces into terrain surrounded by ethnic Serbs hostile to them.

"It is quiet but very tense now. Kosovo special police is completely isolated. They cannot link with their logistics or reinforcements," Ivanovic said.

"They cannot put the situation under their control unless they deploy 2,000 to 3,000 police, which they don't have, and that would not go without a response."

Last week Kosovo banned all imports from Serbia and introduced a 10 percent tax for imports from Bosnia as both countries have blocked Kosovo's exports since Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence.

Local Serbs attacked and set on fire the two border crossings known as gate 1 and 31 when local Serbs when Kosovo declared independence in 2008. Kosovo has controlled them since then. (Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; writing by Adam Tanner; Editing by Angus MacSwan)