Belgrade Urges Kosovo Serbs to Remove Barricades

By Staff, Agencies

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic met with representatives of the Kosovo Serbs on Wednesday and asked them to dismantle roadblocks they had erected.

Ethnic Serbs in the north of the breakaway province had put up roadblocks three weeks ago, in protest over the arrest of several Serbs and the deployment of heavily armed ethnic Albanian police in their communities.

The request to dismantle the roadblocks came after the EU and US gave written guarantees that “participants in the peaceful protests against [ethnic Albanian PM Albin] Kurti’s terror will not be arrested,” according to Goran Rakic, a local Serb political leader, who spoke to Serbian channel TV Pink.

Moreover, NATO’s peacekeeping force KFOR also issued new guarantees that “Kosovo Security Forces” won’t be deployed to the Serb-majority counties in the north of the province, he added.

Pristina’s police were not supposed to be in the north, under the provisions of the 2013 Brussels Agreement with Belgrade, which Kurti’s government has said it had no intention of honoring.

The trucks and tractors blocking roads in the north of Kosovo have not yet been removed, however, as the local Serbs are waiting for a visit from Vucic himself, anticipated later in the evening.