U.S. Called ‘Culprit’ in Kosovo Riots

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo — Serbia’s hard-line leaders yesterday called America “the main culprit” in the violence that has broken out since Kosovo declared independence.Several thousand Serbs chanting “Kosovo is Serbia!” and “Russia, Vladimir Putin!” protested peacefully in the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica, the sixth day of demonstrations against Kosovo’s break with Serbia. Russia backs Serbia’s fierce resistance to Kosovo’s secession.On Thursday night, protesters in the Serbian capital Belgrade set fire to the American embassy, angered by Washington’s recognition of Kosovo. America and the European Union responded by demanding Serbia protect foreign embassies.“The United States is the main culprit … for all those violent acts,” Serbia’s minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, said in Belgrade.Other Serbian leaders have called for calm after the riots. But an aide to Prime Minister Kostunica of Serbia said any future violence also will be blamed on America.“If the United States sticks to its present position that the fake state of Kosovo exists … all responsibility in the future will be on the United States,” a Kostunica adviser, Branislav Ristivojevic, said in a statement.The comments were an indication that Serbia is drifting further from the West and more toward ally Russia.The vast majority of Kosovo’s population is ethnic Albanian and Serbs represent about 10% of the region’s 2 million people.Kosovo had formally remained a part of Serbia even though it has been administered by United Nations and NATO since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists by a former Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, which killed 10,000 people.Kosovo’s minority Serbs have staged protests daily since the territory’s ethnic Albanian leadership proclaimed independence last Sunday. They have vented their anger by destroying U.N. and NATO property as well.In the divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, a few protesters hurled firecrackers as U.N. police in riot gear formed a cordon across the main bridge separating the Serb and ethnic Albanian sides. Demonstrators waved Serbian and Russian flags and chanted in support of Moscow’s refusal to recognize Kosovo’s independence.The protest was far less violent than one Friday, when angry demonstrators hurled stones, glass bottles, and firecrackers at U.N. forces protecting the bridge.In the Serb enclave of Strpce in southern Kosovo, about 100 Serbs also marched peacefully yesterday. They carried Serbian flags to a nearby church, where they rang the bells to sound their disapproval of Kosovo’s statehood. Some carried posters reading “Kosovo is Serbia” and “Kosovo will never be Albania.”“The whole nation is angry,” one of the organizers, Sinisa Tasic, said. “We are furious with the Americans. Wherever they go they create problems.”There, too, solidarity with Moscow was on display.“For the first time ever, Serbia is not alone — it has Russia by its side. Sooner or later, Serbia will get Kosovo back,” Radojko Kecic, 48, said.Mr. Putin’s chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev, and the man expected to easily win Russia’s presidential election March 2, is scheduled to visit Belgrade on Monday.On Friday, the State Department ordered between 80 and 100 nonessential embassy employees, their families and the families of American diplomats in Belgrade to leave Serbia.“We are not sufficiently confident that they are safe here,” Ambassador Cameron Munter said in an interview.America and the EU have warned Serbia to boost protection of foreign diplomats and missions, and the U.N. Security Council has unanimously condemned the attacks on foreign missions.An EU representative, Pieter Feith, said yesterday he recalled his staff from Kosovo’s restive north.There have been scattered protests against Kosovo’s independence in other countries as well. In Athens, Greece, about 2,000 pro-Communist demonstrators marched to the American embassy yesterday. And in Germany, about 1,200 people demonstrated in a square in downtown Stuttgart and 500 others protested in Frankfurt.In Belgrade, the chief Serbian state prosecutor said yesterday that authorities were searching for participants in Thursday night’s riots when the American embassy was attacked. Police said have they arrested nearly 200 rioters in the worst anti-Western violence seen since the ouster of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.Protesters torched several offices of the American embassy’s consular section and attacked the missions of Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Croatia, and other countries. One person died and more than 150 were injured in the violence.Authorities identified the dead person as Zoran Vujovic, 21, of the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad. Serbian media said Vujovic used to live in Kosovo, but fled in the wake of the 1998 war.

U.S. Called ‘Culprit’ in Kosovo Riots

U.S. Called ‘Culprit’ in Kosovo Riots

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