Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has announced the dismantling of the barricades erected by ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo. This will be completed in the next 24 to 48 hours, he said on Thursday night, according to the Serbian state television RTS. He had previously met with representatives of the Kosovo Serbs in the southern Serbian town of Raska.
In the past three weeks, militant Serbs have erected barricades in a dozen places in northern Kosovo, blocking, among other things, the access routes to two border crossings to Serbia. They were protesting against the arrest of a former Serb officer in the Kosovo police who, according to the Kosovan authorities, is said to have directed attacks on the electoral authority. A court in Pristina released the ex-official on Wednesday and put him under house arrest.
Kosovo, which is now almost exclusively inhabited by Albanians, used to belong to Serbia and has been independent since 2008. To this day, Serbia has not come to terms with this and is claiming the country’s territory for itself. The area north of the divided city of Mitrovica is almost exclusively inhabited by Serbs. Belgrade has repeatedly relied on the local people to stoke tension and unrest.
