Kosovo: Vučić wants to request the deployment of troops – politics

Many roads in northern Kosovo were still blocked on Tuesday. The protests of the past few days continue. This time they were sparked by the arrest of a police officer of Serbian origin in Kosovo who is accused of having planned a “terrorist attack” on the offices of a local election commission. He is also charged with attacks on the “constitutional order”. As so often, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić personally intervened in the case: he said the arrest was unjustified. The man was arrested when he just wanted to “bring bread” to his family, who live in the same building where the electoral commission is based.

The fact that emotions are stirred up from Belgrade did not fail to have an effect this time either. Members of the Serbian minority in northern Kosovo erected barricades on Saturday, gunfire exchanged with the police, and a stun grenade was flown at a patrol by the EU rule of law mission “Eulex”. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for the barricades to be removed immediately. The British and US embassies in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, said in a joint statement that the police officer’s arrest offered “neither justification for illegal road blockades nor for threats and intimidation against the Kosovar authorities and the local population”. But the international community’s appeals for moderation were largely ineffective.

President Vjosa Osmani announced that local elections originally planned for December 18 and 25 in northern Kosovo would be postponed to April 23 next year due to increasing ethnic tensions. The elections had become necessary because mayors and city councilors had resigned from numerous municipalities in the region – they were protesting against a new regulation in Kosovo, according to which car license plates that had been issued by Serbian authorities before the country gained independence in 2008 now have to be replaced by Kosovar ones.

For a moment it looked like relaxation. But only briefly

Like everything that embodies Kosovo’s status as a sovereign state, the Serbian government sees the number plate regulation as a massive provocation; This also explains why Vučić repeatedly intervened personally in matters that, at first glance, appear to be little more than simple administrative acts in Kosovo. In Belgrade, Serbia’s President awarded a medal to a regional police chief who protested against the new license plate regulation and was fired for it by the Kosovar government.

At the mediation of the international community, Kosovo agreed to wait until later to implement the number plate regulation, and in return Serbia agreed not to issue new Serbian number plates in the region for the time being. But the short phase of relative relaxation is now over. Vučić announced that next Thursday he would formally apply to NATO to send 1,000 Serbian soldiers to northern Kosovo “to keep the peace”.

In doing so, he refers to UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of June 1999; this basically granted Serbia the right to send a small number of police officers and soldiers to Kosovo after the end of the war, for example to guard orthodox churches. However, since Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, many UN member states have no longer considered the resolution to be legally valid.

Foreign Minister Baerbock sharply criticizes Vučić’s initiative

Vučić made it clear that his announcement was primarily a well-placed provocation by adding that he “of course has no illusions” and that he knows that “they will reject this request”. Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti commented on the move with the words: “23 years after the end of the war, Serbia is again threatening war and the return of its armed forces, which committed genocide in Kosovo.”

Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) described Vučić’s initiative on Twitter as “completely unacceptable”. Kosovo has “reduced” tensions by postponing local elections, while Serbia’s rhetoric is doing “the opposite”. Vučić dismissed Baerbock’s comments as “hypocritical”. And he accused EU foreign policy chief Borrell of siding with the Kosovar Albanians in the conflict.

Vučić also said that attacks on members of the Eulex and KFOR missions “should not happen”. He will “absolutely” try to de-escalate. He accused the government of Kosovo of fueling “unrest and fear among the Serbian population” with the presence of “armed to the teeth” security forces in the north of the country.

The Russian government also intervened again in the conflict in the Western Balkans and once again made it clear whose side it was on. “We hope that these tensions will subside as soon as possible,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, “and that the rights of the Serbs are protected, that’s the main thing.”

source site