Nato placed the Kosovo town of Mitrovica under de facto military law on Tuesday after riots by a Serb population hostile to independence killed one UN policeman and forced the withdrawal of UN personnel.
The Nato-led peacekeeping force KFOR and the United Nations mission ordered all local Kosovo Serb police officers to park their patrol cars and suspend normal duties. With UN police already withdrawn, the order left French, Belgian and Spanish troops in control of law and order in the northern slice of Kosovo, where Serbs opposed to its February 17 secession from Serbia dominate the population.
"We have not organised martial law," KFOR commander General Xavier Bout de Marnhac told a news conference in the Kosovo capital Pristina. "There is no intent as far as I know for installing it for the time being." He said Monday's riots had "crossed a red line with the deliberate intent to kill people - you know Molotov cocktails, fragmentation grenades and direct fire" aimed at UN and KFOR personnel.
"We are not going to tolerate that," the general said. A column of US troops, some in full riot gear, arrived on the south side of Mitrovica on Tuesday "to help out", as one soldier told Reuters. They are based in south-eastern Kosovo.
At the main police station, three dozen Kosovo Serb police officers carried their holdalls and flak jackets out past Belgian armoured cars guarding the perimeter to the parking lot. "Following yesterday's events KFOR has taken over authority for north Mitrovica and occupied the northern police station. UN police have ordered us to stay at home until further notice," Captain Milija Milosevic told Reuters.
A Ukrainian police officer serving with the United Nations died overnight of injuries sustained in the riots. Polish, French and Ukrainian officers were among 42 UN police and 22 KFOR soldiers injured. The violence was the worst since Kosovo's Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia on February 17 and highlighted the risk of the new state's partition along ethnic lines.
TENSION AND BARRICADES: Soldiers in armoured personnel carriers (APCs) secured key positions in the flashpoint town. The main bridge over the river separating the Serb north from the Albanian south was closed. Razor-wire and upturned garbage containers blocked the way.
The violence was sparked by a UN police operation to retake a UN court seized three days earlier by Serbs. The unrest has cast further doubt on the deployment in the north of a European Union rule-of-law mission in the coming two months.
It left Nato holding the line. But the 16,000-strong peace force has ruled out policing the new state, a job the EU hopes to take over from the United Nations in a rule-of-law mission.
About 120,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo among 2 million ethnic Albanians. Almost half live in the north, adjacent to Serbia and in complete isolation from Pristina. They reject the incoming EU mission as "occupiers". Backed by powerful ally Russia, Serbia has rejected Kosovo's secession and its recognition by the United States and a majority of the EU's 27 members.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated his government's view that Kosovo's independence amounted to a "gross violation of international law". "We have warned that this step would inevitably have negative consequences. It happened," he said at a joint news conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Moscow.
Rice said: "We do agree that all sides should refrain from violence and that all sides should refrain from any provocation and we are sending messages to all sides."
Serbia has offered to govern the ethnic Serb areas, senior diplomatic sources told Reuters on Tuesday, in a plan that would effectively partition the newly independent state. The proposal was made at the weekend by Serbia's Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, but was rejected by Kosovo's United Nations administrators, they said.
The Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group said in a report the EU and Nato would have to send a "clear message" to Serbia and Russia that they would not permit Kosovo to be divided and become "another frozen conflict".
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