Nato peacekeepers issue ultimatum to Serbs over Kosovo border roadblocks

NATO PEACEKEEPERS have given Serbs until tomorrow night to remove roadblocks on the border between Kosovo and Serbia, as a tense stand-off threatens to trigger renewed violence in the region and damage Belgrade’s bid for European Union membership.

Fighting has erupted twice in recent months at the frontier, where local Serbs refuse to recognise Kosovo’s independence from Belgrade and reject the presence of customs officers from the fledgling state’s 90 per cent ethnic-Albanian majority.

Last month, several Serbs and Nato soldiers were injured in a gun battle at the border, and in July Serbs shot dead a Kosovo policeman and razed a customs post when the government in Pristina sent special units to take control of the frontier. Serb barricades still block main roads in the area and locals use rough paths and remote tracks to cross unchecked into Serbia.

The unrest prompted Belgrade to postpone Brussels-brokered talks with Pristina, and cast a shadow over the European Commission’s decision this week to recommend Serbia for EU candidate status as a reward for finally catching Ratko Mladic and the rest of its war crimes suspects.

“Some people in the EU thought Serbia would be totally weak on the eve of being granted candidate status, and decided to put pressure on Serbs in northern Kosovo to integrate,” said Oliver Ivanovic, a moderate Kosovo Serb political leader and state secretary in the Belgrade government.

“Nato troops want to remove barricades and block back-roads that Serbs use, but locals will just make new roads and Nato doesn’t have enough soldiers to block all of them all the time. Serbs there simply won’t accept being separated from the rest of Serbia,” he told The Irish Times.

Local villagers at the barricades concur, and reject claims from Pristina that the protests are organised by nationalist radicals and smuggling gangs who have much to lose from the imposition of a strict customs regime on the previously porous border.

It is very likely that shadowy local “businessmen” are involved in the protests, but across Serb-dominated northern Kosovo there is fury at the West’s allegedly one-sided support for Pristina and its determination to make Serbs accept life under ethnic-Albanian leaders they do not trust.

In the Serb half of Mitrovica, the main town in the north, the contrast with the Albanian sector across the bridge – and with most of Kosovo – is stark.

Serbian flags fly alongside Russian ones, and pictures of nationalist Serb politicians hang beside images of alleged war criminals like Ratko Mladic, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and even Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko.

In Pristina on the other hand, it is former US president Bill Clinton who is honoured with a boulevard and a statue for advocating the Nato air strikes that drove Serb forces out of Kosovo in 1999, ending a crackdown on ethnic-Albanian rebels that killed some 10,000 people.

Russia and China are the most powerful states that do not recognise Kosovo’s independence, while the US and most EU members are among more than 80 countries that do.

Serbia’s government says it is determined to join the EU, but that will be impossible without reaching a settlement with Kosovo, which is also aiming for membership.

In proposing Serbia for EU candidate status, enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele called Belgrade’s relations with Kosovo the “one key priority . . . Whenever there is substantial progress the commission will recommend to the member states the date that accession negotiations commence”. If deadlock continues however, EU states could reject Serbia’s candidacy, with Germany seen as particularly determined to have Belgrade resolve its dispute Pristina.

Kosovo’s government and western powers rule out suggestions that northern Kosovo could be given to Serbia in return for recognition of Pristina’s sovereignty. Such a move could prompt Serbs living in enclaves in the south – about 60,000 of the 110,000 Serbs in Kosovo – to abandon their homes rather than remain under Pristina’s rule.

Serbia’s liberal president, Boris Tadic, faces a tough dilemma: stand firm over Kosovo and burnish his credentials as a patriot but jeopardise his country’s EU prospects; or give up Kosovo and hand ammunition to nationalists who could oust his allies in next year’s general election.

With little room for compromise and violence a constant danger, the barricades of northern Kosovo could decide Mr Tadic’s future.

“What’s being asked of them is to give unmistakable signals that they accept both the territorial integrity of Kosovo and its de facto statehood,” Marko Prelec of the International Crisis Group said about Serbia’s leaders.

“The European Union and the rest of the engaged international community want to finish off the Kosovo-Serbia conflict and they see this . . . as the right time to do it, so the pressure on Serbia right now is and will remain exceptionally high.”