Kosovo tightens security at border with Serbia in row over detained police officers

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo said Thursday it would tighten security at the border with Serbia as the two states traded accusations of sending armed men into each other’s territory and disputed the details of Serbia’s seizure of three Kosovo policemen.

The dispute adds to tensions between the sides that have flared into violent clashes over the past couple of months and which have stirred fears of a renewal of the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo that claimed more than 10,000 lives, mostly ethnic Albanians.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti called Wednesday’s seizure a kidnapping and said it took place inside Kosovo. He said he would tighten border security, and criticized NATO-led international peacekeepers, known as KFOR, for failing to take a position on the incident.

KFOR is in charge of monitoring Kosovo’s border crossings in the north.

Speaking at a news conference, Kurti showed maps of where the incident allegedly occurred, saying that Serbia’s special police and army units had entered deep into Kosovo territory.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic reiterated his country's position Thursday that the Kosovo police officers were arrested deep inside Serbia and asked what they were doing there armed with machine guns.

He said Serbia acted as any “serious country” would, and dismissed Kosovo as “a quasi-state.”

After a meeting of Kosovo's top security council, Kurti said border checks would increase and traffic from Serbia would be limited, but he added they were not “commercial steps,” suggesting goods would continue to move freely across the border.

“What surprises us is the silence and tolerance of international bodies to Serbia’s actions. Serbia continuously looks for pretexts to escalate and destabilize, and when there is no pretext it is ready and able to create one,” Kurti said.

In a statement late Thursday, KFOR gave no conclusions whether the three Kosovar police officers were “kidnapped” as Pristina says or “arrested” as Belgrade says. The force said it had contacted representatives of both Kosovo and Serbia as it “was not in the area when three Kosovo Police officers were arrested by the Serbian Police yesterday.”

“We call on both parties to immediately reduce tensions and refrain from unilateral actions that could lead to further escalation,” the statement said.

While KFOR monitors the border, Kosovo police can only check the surrounding area and crossings.

The United States repeated the call on both Pristina and Belgrade to “take immediate steps to deescalate tensions.”

“That includes the unconditional release of the three recently detained Kosovo police officers,” said U.S. State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller, according to the Voice of America in Albanian.

In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Kurti complained of bias against his country from the United States and the European Union and tolerance of what he called Serbia’s authoritarian regime.

The latest incident further raises tensions between Serbia and its former province. Serbia had put its troops on the border on the highest state of alert amid a series of recent clashes between Kosovo Serbs on one side, and Kosovo police and NATO-led peacekeepers on the other.

A Kosovo official in Belgrade has requested to visit the three officers. Kurti also contacted U.S. officials and asked them to press Serbia to release the police officers.

The incident came a day after Kosovo police arrested an alleged organizer of protest by the ethnic Serb minority in the country’s north, including one in which NATO-led peacekeepers were injured last month.

Tensions in Kosovo flared anew late last month, including with violent clashes, after Kosovo police seized local municipality buildings in northern Kosovo, where Serbs represent a majority, to install ethnic Albanian mayors who were elected in a local election in April after Serbs overwhelmingly boycotted the vote.

Serbia and its former province Kosovo have been at odds for decades, with Belgrade refusing to recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence.