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U.N. and NATO troops battle Serbs in Kosovo
by Matt Robinson

Reuters Translate This Article
18 March 2008

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) - Serbs fired guns and threw grenades at U.N. police and NATO troops in Kosovo on Monday in the worst violence since Albanian leaders declared Kosovo's independence from Serbia a month ago.

NATO said its troops came under automatic gunfire in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo in clashes with Serbs, who oppose independence. The clashes began after U.N. special police backed by NATO peacekeepers stormed a U.N. court that had been seized by Serbs on Friday.

Serb media reports said about 70 civilians were wounded, the in addition to two dozen U.N. police and a dozen members of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force.

The clashes highlighted the risk of Kosovo's partition along ethnic lines following the independence declaration on February 17. Serbia's ally Russia demanded restraint by NATO and Serbia said it was consulting Moscow on joint steps to protect Kosovo Serbs.

A Serbian party leader said NATO was behaving like the Nazi occupiers of World War Two, but a NATO spokesman said alliance forces would not give in to what he called organised mob violence.

It was the third major challenge to NATO and U.N. authority in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo since protesters burned down two border posts last month. A European Union office was also forced to move out because of security threats.

A Serb hospital director said three Serbs were badly hurt .... A NATO spokesman said warning shots were fired into the air, not into the crowd.

KFOR troops later secured the area.

'NATO condemns in the strongest form the violence we have seen in northern Kosovo today,' NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. 'KFOR will respond firmly to any acts of violence, as is its mandate from the United Nations,' he said.

Serbia blamed the U.N. and NATO for heavy-handed action.

Serbia's caretaker prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, accused NATO of 'implementing a policy of force against Serbia' and said Serbia and Russia were discussing moves to stop 'all forms of violence against Kosovo Serbs'.

This raised the prospect of Serbia inviting Russian troops into Serb-dominated northern Kosovo as peacekeepers, undermining the authority of the NATO-led KFOR mission, creating potential for conflict, or heralding a partition of the territory.

Serbian President Boris Tadic, recalling the March 17, 2004, Albanian riots in which 19 people were killed and hundreds of Serb homes burned down, warned of the risk of provoking a fresh Albanian 'pogrom' against Kosovo's 120,000 minority Serbs.

Tomislav Nikolic of Serbia's largest party, the hardline opposition Radicals, called it a 'a brutal and savage action' against Serbs, the state news agency Tanjug reported.

He said it reminded him of actions 'Hitler's occupying regime carried out against Serbs' in World War Two.

DAWN RAID

The clash began at dawn when several hundred U.N. special police backed by NATO peacekeepers stormed the U.N. court and arrested dozens of people.

Hundreds of Serbs fought back with stones, grenades and powerful firecrackers, forcing the U.N. police to pull back and leave KFOR to face the rioters. Rioters attacked U.N. vehicles, breaking doors to 10 of those detained in the raid.

NATO said shots were fired at troops.

'We used automatic weapons to respond but fired only warning shots,' French spokesman Etienne du Fayet de la Tour told Reuters. 'We shot in the air, not into the crowd.'

A KFOR spokesman said 8 French KFOR soldiers were injured by 'grenades, stones and Molotov cocktails'. U.N. police ordered a pullout 'after attacks with explosive devices suspected to be hand grenades, and firearms' a statement said.

Fourteen Ukrainian police in U.N. uniforms were injured when 'fighters' attacked their police station', Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko said. Poland said 13 officers were hurt.

Serbia's minister for Kosovo in the caretaker government, Slobodan Samardzic, said the U.N. had broken its word by moving in to evict the court-building occupiers.

'This what they have done to us. We'll pay them back,' he told a crowd in Mitrovica. Serbs should trust Belgrade, he said.

Asked if the violence would force the European Union to halt or delay deployment of its planned rule-of-law mission numbering some 2,000 police and magistrates, EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana said: 'Let me be very clear. The answer is no.'

But Russia, which says the EU mission is illegal, blamed Kosovo's 'illegitimate' secession for the rioting.

'A turn of events which leads to violence and clashes cannot be allowed,' Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. 'The international presence should show restraint and act strictly in accordance with its (United Nations) mandate.'

(Additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci, Shaban Buza, and Marija Novak; Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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