Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has placed the country’s army on full combat alert and ordered units to move closer to the border with Kosovo, after clashes between Serbian protesters and police in a Serb-majority town in northern Kosovo, reports Reuters. taken over by Agerpres.
“An urgent movement (of troops) has been ordered towards the border with Kosovo”, declared the Minister of Defense, Milos Vucevic, live on television. “It is clear that there is terror going on against the Serbian community in Kosovo,” he added.
In the town of Zvecan, there were clashes between police and protesters after a crowd gathered in front of the town hall building, trying to prevent the new mayor, an ethnic Albanian, from entering his office.
Kosovo police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters.
A police car was set on fire, a Reuters reporter reported.
The protests follow local elections that were massively boycotted.
Around 50,000 Serbs living in four towns in northern Kosovo, including Zvecan, boycotted the April 23 vote to protest the failure to meet their demands for more autonomy – a further setback for the March peace accord between Serbia and Kosovo.
The voter turnout was only 3.47%, and the local Serbs said they would not cooperate with the new mayors of the four municipalities, all from ethnic Albanian parties, as they do not represent them.
Earlier on Friday, the police in Pristina issued a statement in which they said that they were assisting the new mayors to be able to enter the town halls in the four localities.
The mayor of Zvecan was successfully escorted to his office, according to an announcement on the police radio station.
Serbs in northern Kosovo, where they are the majority, do not recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia.
The Western-backed plan, agreed verbally in March by the Kosovo and Serbian governments, was intended to defuse the situation by giving Serbian residents more autonomy, with the government in Pristina retaining ultimate authority.
Editor : A.C.
