Serbs torch border posts in northern Kosovo

PRISTINA, Kosovo: Serbs torched two border posts in the northern part of Kosovo on Tuesday, forcing NATO troops to intervene and fanning fears that the Serbian-dominated north could boil over into violence and lead to the partition of the newborn country.

In Jarnije and Banja, about 30 kilometers, or 18 miles, north of Mitrovica, the police said several hundred Serbian men - some wearing ski masks - used plastic explosives and bulldozers to attack the two United Nations border checkpoints. They vandalized and set fire to passport control booths. No one was hurt.

The police said they were stopping buses traveling inside Kosovo and that weapons had been confiscated.

"This seems to have been an organized operation," said Captain Veton Elshani, a spokesman for the Kosovo police service. "This is an expected aftershock after independence."

Local Serbs said the attacks appeared to have been touched off by rumors that Kosovo's new flag was about to be raised at the posts.

NATO troops later closed down the roads leading to the checkpoints, cutting off the only link between northern Kosovo and Serbia.

The police said that 700 to 1,000 Serbs had traveled from Serbia to Mitrovica in the north on Tuesday and that the roads had been closed to prevent militants from entering and taking up arms.

Fears were growing Tuesday night that Serbia could send its police to the north and seek to partition the territory.

In a sign that Belgrade was entrenching its authority in the north of Kosovo, the Serbian government minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, said the attacks were "in accordance with the general government policies," The Associated Press reported from Mitrovica.

"Belgrade has the intention to take over the customs in northern Kosovo," Samardzic said on the private B92 television station. "The customs points were intended to become part" of Kosovo's state border, he said, "and we are not going to let that happen."

The Serb-dominated northern part of Kosovo already has parallel institutional structures, and the majority of Serbs there do not recognize the authority of the Kosovo government.

Thousands of Serbs chanting "Kosovo is Serbia" marched Tuesday to a bridge dividing them from ethnic Albanians in Mitrovica, long a flash point for violence here.

The ability of NATO's 16,000 peacekeepers to maintain order could help determine whether Kosovo will break apart.

The violence came as the European Union's foreign affairs chief, Javier Solana, arrived in Pristina on Tuesday to congratulate Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders on independence and to assure them that the planned EU police and judicial mission was on track.

Serbia, backed by Moscow, has vehemently refused to recognize the mission, arguing that it is an infringement on its territorial sovereignty.

Belgrade was emphatic on Tuesday that it would never recognize Kosovo.

"History," Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said, "will judge those who have chosen to trample the bedrock of the international system and on the principles upon which security and cooperation in Europe have been established."

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels.

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