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Kosovo has reopened its largest border crossing with Serbia, hours after protesting Serbs in its north promised to take away roadblocks, easing a surge in tensions that has alarmed world powers.
Each the European Union and the USA have been urgent Kosovo and Serbia to step again from a mounting confrontation that has seen Serbia put its military on the best fight alert.
Serbs in northern Kosovo, who’ve been erecting roadblocks since December 10 in protest on the arrest of a former Serb policeman – the newest in an extended collection of flashpoints – agreed to start out taking them down after he was moved to deal with arrest.
Most of the roadblocks nonetheless seemed to be in place on Thursday morning, though officers had mentioned the method would possibly take a while.
Tensions stay excessive.
Two burnt-out vans full of gravel stood on a bridge near the ethically divided city of Mitrovica, some 50 kilometers from the reopened Merdare crossing.
Kosovo police mentioned they have been investigating an arson assault.
About 50,000 Serbs dwelling in northern Kosovo refuse to acknowledge the federal government in Pristina or the standing of Kosovo as a separate nation.
They’ve the help of many Serbs in Serbia and its authorities.
Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence with the backing of the West following a 1998-99 warfare through which NATO intervened to guard ethnic Albanian residents.
Kosovo police mentioned they’d reopened the Merdare crossing – an important for highway freight that hyperlinks the landlocked state with western European international locations – after roadblocks got here down on the Serbian facet of the border.
They referred to as on individuals from the diaspora to make use of the crossing, which was closed at midnight on Tuesday, to return dwelling for the vacations.
Two different border crossings with Serbia in Kosovo’s north stay closed since December 10.
Kosovo has lengthy been a supply of pressure between the West, which supported its independence, and Russia, which helps Serbia in its efforts to dam Kosovo’s membership of worldwide organizations together with the United Nations.
The Kremlin on Wednesday dismissed accusations from Kosovo’s inside minister that Russia was influencing Serbia to destabilize Kosovo, saying that Serbia was defending the rights of ethnic Serbs.
– Reuters
