Tensions rise in north Kosovo as Serbs block roads

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Tensions were high in northern Kosovo on Sunday, with Serbs blocking roads after shots and explosions rang out overnight, Kosovo police and media reported. No injuries were reported.

The blocking of the roads with heavy vehicles and trucks took place a day after the Serbian president said he would ask the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo to permit the deployment of 1,000 Serb troops in the Serb-populated north of Kosovo, claiming they are being harassed there.

The road blocks, which Serbs say were erected to protest the recent arrest of a former Kosovo Serb police officer, came despite the postponement of the Dec. 18 municipal election that Kosovo Serbs were opposed to.

Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, said Sunday that his message to the Serbs in Kosovo is that “there is no surrender and there will be no surrender.” He claimed the Serbs had been forced to erect the road barricades to protect themselves from Kosovo security forces.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti accused Belgrade of trying to destabilize Kosovo. He said Serbia also is trying to bring an end to the EU-mediated dialogue on normalizing bilateral ties and take it to the United Nations Security Council, where Belgrade hopes to get support from Russia and China.

Unidentified masked men were seen on the Serb barricades that were blocking main roads leading to the border with Serbia, as Kosovo authorities closed two border crossings to all traffic and pedestrians.

Serbia and Kosovo have intensified their war of words in recent days. Serbian officials claim a U.N. resolution that formally ended the country’s bloody crackdown against majority Kosovo Albanian separatists in 1999 allows for some 1,000 Serb troops to return to Kosovo. NATO bombed Serbia to end the war and push its troops out of Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008.

The NATO-led peacekeepers who have been deployed in Kosovo since the 1998-99 war would have to give a green light for Serb troops to go there, something that’s highly unlikely because it would de-facto mean handing over security of Kosovo’s Serb-populated northern regions to Serbian forces, a move that could dramatically increase tensions in the Balkans.