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Kosovo policeman dies after botched border raid

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:14 GMT

Source: reuters // Reuters

(refiles)

* Police officer dies of his wounds

* EU and USA criticize Kosovo for police operation

* NATO deploys extra troops to keep peace

(Confirms police death, adds Kosovo PM, U.S. reaction, EU's Ashton, more details)

By Fatos Bytyci

MITROVICA, July 26 (Reuters) - A Kosovo police officer died on Tuesday after being seriously wounded during a botched bid by ethnic Albanian Kosovo government forces to take control of two border posts in an ethnic Serb area, police said.

The 31-year-old police officer was shot in the head when a police convoy came under fire in a Serb-dominated area. Another officer was wounded by a grenade blast but was not in a life threatening condition.

The violence occurred when Kosovo police tried overnight to seize border posts in the Serb-controlled northern area of Mitrovica to end rampant smuggling and extend government rule to the north, where it does not provide services or collect taxes.

The raid by special police backed by armoured vehicles was launched on the orders of Prime Minister Hashim Thaci after his government banned all Serb products and Serbia refused to accept Kosovo's customs stamps, needed for cross-border trade.

The European Union and the United States criticised the action, saying the government should have consulted its Western backers, who have 6,000 troops on the ground to keep the peace 11 years after Serbia effectively lost control of Kosovo.

NATO peacekeepers sent troops as a buffer force to the town of Mitrovica, divided by the Ibar River between ethnic Albanian and Serb halves. NATO sent troops and armoured vehicles close to a key bridge over the river and helicopters patrolled the area.

On Tuesday evening a Slovenian military convoy was sent to keep the peace.

"We cannot stay indifferent and tolerate forever that a part of our territory be a black hole," Thaci told a news conference. "We cannot tolerate forever that our sovereignty is violated."

Angry Kosovo Serbs have blocked the roads with gravel, trucks and wooden logs. The action prompted Serbia, which earned EU praise by turning over its last wanted war crimes suspect to the Hague tribunal on Friday, to warn of a rise in tension.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's spokeswoman described the government operation as "not helpful", and Ashton herself spoke to both Thaci and Serbian President Boris Tadic, urging them to "to restore calm immediately."

Her office said Ashton asked both leaders to "help defuse the tensions and do all that is necessary to calm down the situation."

The United States, Kosovo's biggest supporter, called all parties to sit down at the negotiating table immediately.

"The United States regrets that last night's action by the Kosovo government to take control of customs border crossings in northern Kosovo was not coordinated with the international community," said U.S. Department of State deputy acting spokesperson Heide Bronke Fulton.

By Tuesday evening Kosovo special police units had pulled back on the road leading to two northern border crossings and it was not clear who controlled the border crossings.

Landlocked Kosovo, with a 1.7 million population, declared independence three years ago, almost a decade after a 1999 NATO bombing campaign drove out Serbian forces after a brutal Serb counter-insurgency against ethnic Albanian separatists.

Russia, China and a majority of UN member countries refused to recognise its independence, and Kosovo has been mired in poverty, high unemployment, corruption and crime despite strong support from most European Union countries and the United States.

Serbia regards Kosovo as the cradle of its Orthodox Christianity.

EU-sponsored talks between Belgrade and Pristina on trade, energy supplies and freedom of movement have had limited results. One EU ambassador said Pristina may have been trying to make a show of strength to impress its voters.

"Kosovo has had a lot of trouble explaining to the public what's in it for them," though the show of force may have been counter-productive diplomatically, the envoy said.

A Western official in Kosovo said a compromise over the control of borders in largely ethnic Serb northern Kosovo would probably involve creating ethnically mixed border police teams.

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington, editing by Benet Koleka and Tim Pearce)