A KOSOVO police officer was shot and seriously wounded during an attempt by ethnic Albanian Kosovo government forces to take control of a border post in an ethnic Serb area of the country, a doctor said yesterday.
The incident occurred after Kosovo police tried overnight to seize border posts in the Serb-controlled north, where the Pristina government does not provide services, collect tax or control security.
Authorities in Pristina said the move was motivated by Serbia’s decision not to recognise their customs stamps, essential for cross-border trade.
The European Union expressed disapproval of Kosovo’s action aimed at establishing control over a region of the country where local ethnic Serbs do not recognise the central government’s authority.
“The operation that was carried out last night by Kosovo authorities was not helpful,” said Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. “It was not done in consultation either with the European Union or the international community and we do not approve it.”
By yesterday afternoon, a Serb official said Kosovo special police units had pulled out of the road leading to the northern Jarinje border crossing with Serbia, where they were encircled by hostile Serbs in a region home to about 60,000 Kosovo Serbs.
Amid high tension, violence broke out, leading to the wounding of the Kosovo officer. A Reuters witness at the Mitrovica hospital saw a man surrounded by a medical team as he was transferred to an ambulance.
Officials in Belgrade said they had no knowledge of the incident. “The latest information indicated all was going well. This is extremely worrying if true,” said a government official who asked not to be named.
Pristina’s attempt to seize the border posts was the latest move against its former ruler following Kosovo’s ban of all imports from Serbia last week.
It prompted Serbia, which earned EU praise by turning over its last wanted war crimes suspect to the Hague tribunal on Friday, to warn of an escalation of tensions.
Kosovo forces seized one border post in an area of northern Kosovo during the night, but were blocked by local Serbs on the road to the second. One Kosovo policeman was wounded in a hand grenade explosion overnight, a Kosovo police official said.
NATO peacekeepers deployed troops to serve as a buffer between the two sides. In Mitrovica, a town divided by the Ibar River between ethnic Albanian and Serb halves, NATO forces also blocked a key bridge between the two sides with armored vehicles.
Kosovo, a landlocked country of 1.7 million, 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 it 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 aimed at resolving trade, energy supplies and freedom of movement have so far produced limited results.
One EU ambassador said Kosovo’s government may have acted to show muscle to its own voters who question the utility of the talks with Serbia.
“Kosovo has had a lot of trouble explaining to the public what’s in it for them,” the envoy said, adding that the show of force may turn out to be counter-productive diplomatically.
A Western official in Kosovo said a compromise over the control of borders in predominantly ethnic Serb northern Kosovo would probably involve creating ethnically mixed border police teams.
