The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, has given the Kosovo Serb population until Sunday night to remove the barricades they have erected in protest to the arrest of a former police officer, amid an aggravation during the last hours of the long crisis between Belgrade and Pristina.
According to Vecherne Novosti sources, Kurti has informed of this ultimatum to the countries that make up the quintet on Kosovo (USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy) «whom he has warned that the so-called Kosovo security structures, led by the NJSO Special Police Units, right now on high alert, will take all measures to remove the barricades in the north».
On his Twitter account, Kurti has accused Serbia of threatening Kosovo «with military aggression and have called for the Serbian army to return to our territory.»
«We do not seek conflict, but dialogue and peace. But let me be clear: the Republic of Kosovo will defend itself, with strength and determination,» he said before blaming the barricades on «criminal gangs from the north of Kosovo, who lack even the flimsiest pretext for barricades and violent attacks against the Kosovo Police.»
In immediate reaction to this statement, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has convened an emergency meeting of his National Security Council to discuss a reaction in the case of a security intervention against the Kosovo Serb population, according to the Serbian public television RTS.
The chairman of the Kosovo Serb party Serb List Serbia, Goran Rakic, has also warned that Kurti will send tonight units of the Kosovo Police and Special Security Service to «persecute the Serbian people» and «unleash a storm» on the population.
«This is the moment when the onus is on (NATO force) KFOR and (European Union mission) EULEX to prevent the chaos that Kurti is preparing,» warned Rakic, whose party was governing the four Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo before announcing in November a total boycott with the resignation of all its mayors and its withdrawal from local elections initially scheduled for next week, now postponed to April.
The Kosovo Serb barricades were erected in protest against the arrest of former Kosovo Serb policeman Dejan Pantic, detained by the Kosovo Police upon his return home. Pantic, like 600 other Kosovo Serb officers, resigned from his post as part of the boycott declared by Lista Serbia, in the latest episode of a conflict simmering since Kosovo’s independence in 2008 and the so-called license plate crisis over the power of vehicle identification between Pristina and Belgrade.
In the latest escalation of the conflict, provoked by the unidentified attack last night on a EULEX patrol with a stun grenade, which left no casualties, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, has called for calm and called for the lifting of the barricades.
In response, Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic replied that these obstacles «are there not only because their (Kosovo Serbs’) basic human rights are threatened, but also to protect the Brussels Agreement that you signed and whose implementation should be guaranteed by the EU».
According to her, the barricades are a «call for peace and, also, a call for action by the international community to start doing its job!» she lamented in a message on her Twitter account.
