UN Security Council To Hold Urgent Meeting On Kosovo Violence

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UN Security Council To Hold Urgent Meeting On Kosovo Violence

28.07.2011 09:56

By RFE/RL

The UN Security Council has called an urgent meeting at the request of Serbia to discuss violence and flaring tensions in northern Kosovo.

Diplomats say the talks at the United Nations headquarters in New York later today will be behind closed doors rather than the open session sought by Belgrade.

The consultations come after a group of ethnic Serbian hard-liners attacked a border checkpoint in northern Kosovo late on July 27. About 50 masked Serbs stormed the Jarinje crossing, demolishing a checkpoint known as Gate 1 with a bulldozer and setting buildings on fire with Molotov cocktails.

Gunfire was heard during the altercation, and NATO KFOR peacekeepers deployed after the violence began say shots also were fired at them.

NATO peacekeepers have since taken control of the two border crossings.

Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci accused the Serbian government in Belgrade of orchestrating the violence.

"An organized criminal group led by the leaders of Serbian parallel structures and motivated by the Belgrade authorities has first attacked Border Post 1 and then Border Post 31" in Brnjak, Thaci said.

"These violent acts were ordered, coordinated, and led by the highest political structures of Serbia."

But Serbia's minister for Kosovo, Goran Bogdanovic, also condemned the attack as "an act of extremists and criminal groups." Speaking during a visit late on July 27 to the Jarinje post, Bogdanovic said the attackers were not local Serbs from the area near the checkpoint.

"What has happened here tonight deserves condemnation. All efforts we have engaged in the past 48 hours were in vain," Bogdanovic said. "This is an act of extremists and criminal groups. This is not an act of the people of the Leposavic municipality or the people of Kosovo and Metohija.

"This is not contributing to the peace and stability in Kosovo and Metohija. We will, however, continue to struggle for our rights, and we will do everything we can to restore law and order here."

'Undermining Peace Process'

Chief Serbian negotiator Borko Stefanovic also criticized the attackers, saying they were undermining efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution to growing tensions between ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanians in northern Kosovo.

"This violent act, an act committed by criminals and extremists, represents a clear attempt to undermine the process we are pursuing and the attempts to resolve all the issues in a peaceful manner," Stefanovic said.

"This greatly aggravates the position of Serbs in the north of Kosovo and Metohija and is not contributing to the resolution of the problems that brought us here in the past couple of days."

The violence comes after a special police force was deployed by Pristina on July 25 in an attempt to seize control of border posts in Kosovo's Serb-controlled north, prompting what Belgrade describes as a dangerous escalation of tensions.

One ethnic Albanian police officer was killed by a hand grenade in the initial altercations. -- and the Kosovar special police only managed to seize one checkpoint before a group of ethnic Serbs blocked roads to prevent them from reaching two other checkpoints on the border with Serbia.

The government in Pristina has never controlled those northern border crossings since it declared Kosovo's independence from Serbia three years ago.

Stalemate In Northern Kosovo

Belgrade lost control of Kosovo in 1999 when NATO waged a bombing campaign to halt killings of ethnic Albanians in a counterinsurgency campaign.

In fact, ethnic tensions have remained high in the north since NATO deployments in June 1999 and the de facto partition of northern Kosovo through the city of Mitrovica.

There are some 60,000 Kosovo Serbs who still live in the north. Most do not recognize Kosovo's independence from Serbia and still consider Belgrade their capital.

Kosovo's government in Pristina said the move by its special police earlier this week was an attempt to stop Serbian goods from entering the territory after a similar import ban announced by Belgrade.

Maja Kocijancic, a spokeswoman for EU foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton, told RFE/RL that Kosovo's police did not consult the EU or other international officials before trying to take control of the border crossings.

written by Ron Synovitz, with reporting by RFE/RL Kosovo unit's Arbana Vidishiqi in Pristina and news agencies

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/security_council_meeting_kosovo_urgent/24279185.html

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UN Security Council To Hold Urgent Meeting On Kosovo Violence