Kosovo Accuses Serbia Of Involvement in Paramilitary Ambush

By Staff, Agencies

Kosovo accused Serbia of being behind a paramilitary group which ambushed a police patrol and clashed with Kosovan forces on Sunday.

The authorities in Pristina displayed an array of modern weaponry they said the group was using, including two Serbian-made armored cars and a grenade launcher, alongside a document allegedly showing the grenade launcher, made by the Zastava arms company, had been supplied by the Serbian army.

The Kosovan government also claimed that the group’s leader was a prominent Kosovo Serb politician loyal to the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, and that one of three paramilitary fighters killed on Sunday was a former bodyguard of Aleksandar Vulin, the Serbian intelligence chief sanctioned by the US in July for corruption.

“This group came from Serbia, they are trained in Serbia, financed by them and also equipped by the army of Serbia and its police,” Xhelal Svecla, the Kosovan interior minister, told the Guardian.

“Some of the weapons were taken from the warehouses of the army and handed over to terrorists who came into Kosovo from Serbia.”

Svecla said his ministry had shared the evidence with western embassies and agencies.

“What they wanted to do is to capture territory of Kosovo, and to open a new channel of communication, a new road from Serbia to Kosovo,” he said, adding that the ultimate aim was the partition of the country.

The Serbian government has denied involvement with the armed group, but held an official day of mourning for the three dead.

Vucic has sought to justify their actions by falsely claiming, in a meeting with the Russian ambassador to Belgrade, that the Kosovan government was carrying out ethnic cleansing.

Kosovo alleges that the group was led by Milan Radoicic, the deputy leader of the Belgrade-backed Serb List party, which dominates politics in the four Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo.

Svecla said his country’s intelligence service believed Radoicic, who has been sanctioned by the US and UK, had been wounded and was recovering in the main military hospital in Belgrade.

The claim could not be independently verified. Radoicic has not made a public statement but Serbia’s foreign minister, Ivica Dacic, claimed a video purporting to show Radoicic among the paramilitaries was a “fraud.”

The clash happened at a time when EU-brokered talks aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries are stalled, with Vucic vowing he will never recognize Kosovo, and the Kosovan government consequently refusing to establish a semi-autonomous association of Serb municipalities.