TOPSHOT - A US NATO soldier patrols near the border between Kosovo and Serbia in Jarinje on October 2, 2021 as Serbs remove trucks and cars that used to block the border with Kosovo. Serbia and Kosovo reached an agreement on September 30 to end a tense standoff at their border, EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak said.The two neighbours were at loggerheads for more than 10 days after Kosovo banned vehicles with Serbian registration plates from entering its territory -- mirroring a years-long Serbian practice against vehicles travelling the other way.

A US NATO soldier patrols near the border between Kosovo and Serbia in Jarinje on October 2, 2021 as Serbs remove trucks and cars that used to block the border with Kosovo. (File photo)

Serbia puts army on full combat alert, orders units to move closer to Kosovo border

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Reuters

Published: 26 May ,2023: 04:33 PM GST Updated: 26 May ,2023: 05:04 PM GST

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic placed the country’s army on full combat alert and ordered its units to move closer to the border with Kosovo on Friday, after protesters and police clashed in a majority Serb town in Kosovo.

“An urgent movement (of troops) to the Kosovo border has been ordered,” defense minister Milos Vucevic said in a live TV broadcast. “It is clear that the terror against the Serb community in Kosovo is happening,” he said.

Police and protesters clashed in the town of Zvecan in Kosovo after a crowd gathered in front of the municipality building, trying to prevent a newly-elected ethnic Albanian mayor from entering his office. Police fired teargas to disperse protestors.

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A police car was later set ablaze, a Reuters reporters said.

The protests follow widely-boycotted local elections.

Some 50,000 Serbs living in four north Kosovo municipalities, including Zvecan, shunned the April 23 vote in protest that their demands for more autonomy had not been met - a new setback for a March peace deal between Kosovo and Serbia.

The election turnout was 3.47 percent and local Serbs said they would not work with the new mayors in the four municipalities - all from ethnic Albanian parties - because they do not represent them.

Earlier, police in Pristina issued a statement saying that they were assisting the newly-elected mayors so they could enter municipal offices in the four northern municipalities.

The mayor in Zvecan was successfully escorted into his office, a Reuters reporters heard on a police radio.

Serbs in Kosovo’s northern region do not accept Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia, almost a decade after the end of a war there, and still see Belgrade as their capital.

Ethnic Albanians form more than 90 percent of the population in Kosovo, with Serbs only the majority in the northern region.

The Western-backed plan verbally agreed to by the Kosovo and Serbian governments in March aimed to defuse tensions by granting local Serbs more autonomy, with the government in Pristina retaining ultimate authority.

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