Late Sunday, protesters parked trucks filled with gravel and other heavy machinery on roads leading to two border crossings, Jarinje and Bernjak, in a Serb-majority area. Kosovo police said they had to close the border crossings. “The overall security situation in the northern municipalities of Kosovo is tense,” NATO’s KFOR mission in Kosovo said in a statement. The statement said KFOR was “closely monitoring” and “prepared to intervene if stability is compromised”. In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blamed the heightened tension on what she called “unfounded discriminatory rules” imposed by Kosovo authorities. Fourteen years after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, 50,000 Serbs living in the north use license plates and documents issued by Serbian authorities, refusing to recognize institutions under the capital, Pristina. Kosovo has been recognized as an independent state by more than 100 countries, but not by Serbia or Russia. Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s government had said it would give Serbs a 60-day transition period to obtain Kosovo license plates, a year after abandoning efforts to enforce them amid similar protests. The government also decided that from August 1, all citizens from Serbia visiting Kosovo will have to obtain an additional document at the border to be granted entry. A similar rule is applied by the authorities in Belgrade for Kosovars visiting Serbia. But after tensions on Sunday afternoon and consultations with the EU and US ambassadors, the government said it would delay its plan by a month and start implementation on September 1. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell welcomed the delay. “Expect all roadblocks to be removed immediately,” Borel tweeted, adding that open issues should be addressed through EU-facilitated dialogue and focus on overall normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia. Earlier on Sunday, police said shots were fired “in the direction of police units, but luckily no one was injured.” It also reported that angry protesters beat several Albanians who were passing through the blocked streets and that some cars were attacked. Air raid sirens sounded for more than three hours in the small town of Northern Mitrovica, which is mainly inhabited by Serbs. A year ago, after local Serbs blocked the same roads over traffic signs, the Kosovo government deployed special police forces and Belgrade flew fighter jets near the border. Tensions between the two countries remain high and the fragile peace in Kosovo is being maintained by a NATO mission that has 3,770 troops on the ground. Italian peacekeepers were visible in and around Mitrovica on Sunday. The two countries committed in 2013 to a European Union-sponsored dialogue to try to resolve outstanding issues, but little progress has been made.
