WEB DESK
Kosovo Serbs who have been blocking roads in northern Kosovo for 19 days have agreed to start removing barricades from today morning, bowing to calls by the United States and European Union to defuse tensions. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic who met Serbs from northern Kosovo in the Serbian town of Raska said the process of removing barricades will begin this morning. Vucic said, it is a long process and it will take a while.
He also added that the United States and European Union, which are mediating talks between Belgrade and Pristina to resolve outstanding bilateral issues, have guaranteed that none of the Serbs who set up barricades will be prosecuted. Removal of the barricades is expected to defuse tensions between the two sides. Dejan Pantic, the former policeman whose arrest triggered violent protests by Kosovo’s Serb minority, was released from custody and put under house arrest after a request from the prosecutors’ office yesterday.
Meanwhile, NATO’s mission in Kosovo, KFOR, said it supported dialogue between all parties to defuse tensions, which have included Serb roadblocks on major arteries by trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles and violent clashes with police. For more than 20 years, Kosovo has been a source of tension between the West, which backed its independence, and Russia, which supports Serbia in its efforts to block Kosovo’s membership of global organisations including the United Nations.