Russia outraged as NATO troops and UN police secure Kosovo border

NATO troops and UN police moved to secure Kosovo's northern borders on Feb. 20 as ethnic Serbs mounted more demonstrations to assert Serbian control of the northern portion of the country. The moves came as Germany became the latest state to announce it would recognize the former south Serbian province of Kosovo, which declared independence on Feb. 17 French troops sealing the frontier at Jarinje, where the border post was destroyed by masked Serbian hardliners, were stoned early on Feb. 19 as they put up coils of razor wire to prevent a further influx of hardliners crossing from southern Serbia into Kosovo in advance of huge anticipated demonstrations in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and in Kosovo itself. Lieutenant General Xavier Bout de Marnhac, who is the NATO commander, blamed local Serbian leaders for the unrest. "The leaders should think deeply of their responsibility when they trigger this type of demonstration," he said, as visibly nervous NATO forces strengthened their presence at potential flashpoints in the north. Organizers of the demonstrations -- from Serbia's main political blocs -- are expecting several hundreds of thousands of protesters to turn out in Belgrade. The attempt to seal the border came as Russia said that an EU plan to send a mission to Kosovo breached international law and was an example of the west's double standards in recognizing Kosovo's independence from Serbia. The EU had agreed to send a police, justice and administrative mission to Kosovo to support the authorities in the wake of independence. Russia's statement echoes that of Serbian ministers who have called for a boycott of the new EU mission. "The European Union, unilaterally, and without any sanction from the UN Security Council, is sending a mission to Kosovo to ensure the supremacy of the law," the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said. Lavrov told reporters that Brussels' "unilateral decision... is in breach of the highest international law." The EU special representative, Pieter Feith, who will head the Kosovo mission, appealed to Serbs to stop their protests and to build Kosovo alongside ethnic Albanians. "Kosovo is one: internationally supported and with a vision for the future," he said. In a further indication of the policy that Serbs apparently intend to pursue -- following the attacks on the border -- a mob of Serbian men armed with spades and pickaxe handles drove off ethnic Albanian police officers from a joint Serbian-Albanian patrol of the Kosovo police service. The incident took place near Chabra, an Albanian village in the Serb-dominated north. The present Serbian plan of action appears to be to intimidate the UN and the Kosovo police service into ineffectiveness, while Belgrade increasingly asserts its authority in Serb-occupied areas in the north. However, the Serbian minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, denied Serbia was planning to partition Kosovo. Referring to the assaults on the border, he said: "We saved face. We saved a part of Kosovo." In Chabra, a few hundred yards from where the Guardian encountered the Serbian demonstration on the road, villagers fear the same men will come down into their village. "After what happened on the road, I decided not to go to work in Mitrovica," said Aziz Asan, a mine maintenance worker. "Serbia can never come back, but people are afraid. Certain [paramilitary] groups have been sent in from Serbia."