Border protest after Kosovo bans Serbian number plates

ROADS were blocked yesterday in protest at Kosovo’s ban on cars entering the state with Serbian licence plates.

Hundreds of ethnic Serbs used trucks and cars to completely shut down traffic on the roads towards the Jarinje and Brnjak crossings.

Serbia’s police have been removing plates from Kosovo-registered cars entering the country for years and the latest move by Pristina appears to be a tit-for-tat move.

The use of RKS (Republic of Kosovo) plates implies it has a status as an independent nation, something bitterly disputed by Serbia.

Belgrade demands that drivers with RKS plates take a temporary registration number on arrival.

Armoured vehicles and a special police unit were sent to a mainly ethnicserb area of northern Kosovo to monitor the implementation of the ban on Sunday.

“Pristina demonstrates force and nothing else,” one of about 500 protesters who gathered close to the Jarinje crossing said.

The police “will have to leave, if not, it won’t be good, they have nothing to do in the north”, said the protester who did not wish to be named.

Drivers entering Kosovo with Serbian registration plates will have to take temporary ones as long as the same applies to Kosovo nationals with RKS plates entering Serbia, Albin Kurti, the prime minister of Kosovo, said yesterday.

Both ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo routinely remove their licence plates if they are driving through or parking in neighbourhoods dominated by rival ethnic groups for fear of having their cars vandalised.

Many drivers keep screwdrivers in

‘We expect the Serbian president to react and help us as he has always done so far’

their glove compartments to routinely remove their plates.

Goran Rakic, the only Serb minister in the Kosovan government, joined the protesters and called on Pristina to “quit provocations”.

He said Serbs expected Aleksandar Vucic, the Serbian president, to “react and help us, as he has always done so far”. It is understood Mr Vucic will call a meeting of security officials today.

Pristina proclaimed independence from Serbia in 2008 a decade after a bloody crackdown on separatists.